Principles of Coaching

Before we begin, please read this agreement.

This form sets the context in which you will get the outcome you want. It also covers some of the issues of law governing our relationship.

Chrissy Marquardt reserves the right to update this policy as needed.

Last updated: January 24, 2022.

How I Define Coaching

“Coaching supports you in trusting your Inner Compass and Inner Truth more than other people’s Map of the world.

“Coaching is the exploration of personal growth and development, and the facilitation of transformation and change. It is the process of asking deep and powerful questions to help clients break through limiting mental, spiritual, and emotional beliefs, for the purpose of achieving a desired goal or outcome that has otherwise been unattainable.

The highest intention behind coaching is to empower you towards making different choices in your life so that you can have your desired future instead of a default future. If nothing changes, nothing changes.

Coaching creates a container and facilitation for transformation.”

I also love to define and refine coaching by sharing what it IS and what it IS NOT.

 

Coaching IS curiosity, being open-minded, intuitive, non-judgmental, heart-centered, and empowering. Coaching is NOT assumptive.

Coaching IS: exploring options, question-based, choice drive, client-led, collaborative, enlightening, and solution-focused. Coaching is NOT advice-giving.

Coaching IS: expansive, forward-moving, future-facing, inviting. Coaching is NOT therapy (past-focused as opposed to future-paced)

Coaching IS: exploration, discovery, inquiry, creativity, murky, unpredictable, vulnerability, and spaciousness to be a hot mess in a place of safety. Coaching is NOT explanation.

Coaching IS: internally driven, internally focused, an exploration of your inner landscape, process-driven, and an internal journey of transformation at the client’s pace. Coaching is NOT outcome-driven.

Coaching IS: full of possibility, courage, and potentiality, infinite, limitless, outside the box thinking and doing. Coaching is NOT finite or limited.

Coaching IS a collaborative and co-creative process that guides you to find the answers within yourself and to create a model of the world that is authentic to YOU. Coaching is NOT strategy-driven, consulting, or following someone else’s view of the world.

Coaching IS about leading you to choices that are right for YOU. What is right for you may be wrong for someone else, and that is okay.

Coaching IS empathy and compassion. Coaching is NOT sympathy

14 Beliefs I Embody in My Coaching Practice

1. Coaching is a Tool for Transformation

I am a coaching practitioner and facilitator of transformational magic. My highest purpose as a life coach is to facilitate your personal transformation and growth as a human being.

2. You Are Enough

I operate under the belief that you are enough, your voice matters, your goals, and dreams matter, and that your worthiness is your birthright.

3. Your Were Born Worthy

You were born worthy, and therefore do not need to seek your self-worth from external factors – including society, your relationships, career, institutions, and social networks. Unnecessary.

4. You Are In The Driver’s Seat of Your Life

Coaching puts you back in the driver’s seat of your life and moves you towards responsibility for your life and your choices. When you are in the driver’s seat, you get to navigate the map of your life, instead of asking and taking directions from others. Nope.

5. You Are A Whole, Resourceful Being

I believe you are a whole, resourceful, capable being, and you already have all the resources within you to be successful. My job is to guide you to your Inner Compass, and more importantly, help you to remember who you were before the world told you to be someone different, in order to fit in.

6. You Are The Greatest Expert On You

You already have everything within you to be your most authentic, courageous, and empowered self. What is right, good, and true for you may be completely wrong for someone else. What is right for others may be wrong for you. Coaching is a collaborative and co-creative process that guides you to find the answers within yourself and to create a model of the world that is authentic to YOU.

7. You are not broken, the system is broken

You are not broken, you do not need to be fixed, and you do not need to outsource your faith, love, and worthiness to society in order to feel valued and validated. We need fewer people changing who they are to fit in and more people being their true, authentic selves. I coach women+ with a feminist lens as a Cycle Breaker to help shatter the patriarchal glass ceiling of our social conditioning, at the intersection of Motherhood, Entrepreneurship, and Self-Discovery.

8. Coaching will not solve all your problems, it equips you with better tools to handle your problems

The most powerful tool that I can offer you as a coach is the self-awareness to help you navigate the mental, emotional and spiritual beliefs that are not serving you and are preventing you from stepping into your fullest potential. Empowerment is a by-product of proactive and practiced self-awareness.

9. My Coaching is best served Decaf

Coaching is a strengthening and transformational tea that needs to be steeped within you over time. I’m not a high-caffeine, quick-win, one-night-stand kind of a gal…or coach. Think of me as more of a decaf coach, which has a more calming and grounding effect, and can take a bit longer to move through your system. The longer the transformational tea of coaching steeps within you, the stronger it will be and the more permanent the change. This is why my coaching engagements are a minimum of 6 months or longer.

10. I am a Heart-Centered, Trauma-Informed Coach

Yes, please: I lovingly invite and embrace Curiosity, Courage, heavy doses of Empathy & Compassion, Clarity, Choice, and Co-Creation in our coaching conversations.
No, thank you: I kindly decline agendas, assumptions, explanations, advice-giving, strategy, sympathy, or limitations in coaching conversations, or any conversations for that matter.

11. There is only Feedback

There is no failure, only feedback. Failure is stagnation and finite, Feedback is an empowerment and an option to try it again, improve and grow.

12. You Are Always At Choice

Coaching broadens your life choices and shifts the conversation from “I can’t” to “How can I?”

My highest intention is to empower you towards making new and different choices in your life, so that you can have your desired life by conscious design, instead of an autopilot default future. If nothing changes, nothing changes.

13. You are A Courageous Visionary

The greatest honor and Highest way in which I serve my clients is to help you to work on a goal, a dream, or a vision that is bigger than yourself, scares you shitless, and yet courageously brings you closer to your path of Purpose and Self-Actualization.

14. Both Positive and Negative Vibes Are Welcome

As a heart-centered, trauma-informed coach, I do not bypass the mental, emotional and spiritual experiences that often are excluded from the coaching spaces and conversation of goal setting and personal growth. We are here to have the full human experience, which includes positive and negative emotions. Emotions are data, not directives (h/t Susan David) and they are gifts for a greater life lesson. I lovingly hold space for all emotions with compassion, kindness, and empathy and without judgment, fear, guilt, or shame.

How I show up as your coach

I am intuitive and use my intuition to help forward the work and your experience.

I reflect back to you as a mirror to yourself and your subconscious mind. I am not a psychic and won’t give you “downloads” that tell you what to do or how. The information I read is nothing you don’t already know. But it is helpful to have these stories brought to the forefront and heard with such clarity.

You are a Whole Person and not Broken

You’ve handled your life up to now and will continue to do so after me. You are a whole person, you are not broken and therefore do not need to be fixed.

I practice my work totally rooted in love.

This includes how I show up, how I approach you, the questions I ask, and how I use my intuitive gifts. If I invite you to continue working with me, I will present the program that I believe in my heart will get you the exact results you’ve asked for and nothing less.

I am here to facilitate change and transformation, and the transformation happens when you show up to do the work.

My role as a coach and as a healer is not to heal you, but to hold space for you while you awaken your inner healer, so that you may begin the process of healing yourself. I will create a safe space for you to feel open and supported; I call this a coaching container. I will also use this container to challenge you in a loving way. You are responsible for your life and what you do with what we uncover.

I am human and also do the work.

I am an open book and will share pieces of my own experiences if I think they will serve you. But I don’t feel it’s serving or safe to bring all of my stuff into your session because you aren’t here to take care of me. This can appear as though I’ve got it all figured out – I don’t. I practice what I preach and am, like everyone, a work in progress. I work with coaches and spiritual mentors as well as journal, meditate, and reflect on my own fears and desires just like you.

My Principles of Coaching

There is no failure, only feedback.

Failure is a negative label for useful results and undesired outcomes that put an end to something. Failure defines and labels you based on past behaviors that led to an undesirable outcome, instead of your future potential. Feedback is a positive label that I use for useful results. Feedback calibrates on your future potential, incorporates learning to try again AND improves your way towards your desired outcome.

There is no judgment, only observation, and reflections.

As your coach, I create a container of safety and coach from a place of non-judgment. I act as an internal mirror to your subconscious mind, for the purpose of observation and reflection.

As the client, you are 100% responsible for your experience and your transformation.

As your coach, I am responsible for creating and maintaining a space of safety and exploration. I am here as a facilitator of change and transformation. As my client, you are 100% responsible for how you show up, your process, and your transformation through choice. You are in charge of your mind, and therefore your results. Being responsible for our minds and our own processes means that we don’t blame external circumstances for our undesired results. When we take full responsibility for ourselves and our lives, we create more options and therefore more choices that move you towards your desired outcomes.

You are not your behaviors

We are all humans and make mistakes. You are the DOER of the behavior, but your behavior itself does not DEFINE you. As your coach, my intent is to coach the highest purpose of your behavior and coach the beliefs and stories that lead to your behavior. When you change your stories and beliefs, your behavior changes. My intention is to coach you out of the “box” that is your behavior so you can be empowered to make new choices that lead you to your desired outcomes.