There is nothing like waking up first thing on a holiday morning to have an 800 number ringing on one’s cel phone. I tried to send it to voice mail, but I accidentally picked it up instead and found a real person on the other end from my credit card company apologizing for the intrusion on Christmas morning but wanting to verify recent suspicious purchases.
Fraud apparently does not take a holiday!
In fact someone has been helping themselves to my credit quite happily for the last 24 hours all over Brooklyn. Once I verified all this was indeed true and they told me my credit card had already been shut down, reality sunk in and I resigned myself to undertake the tasks of contacting credit bureaus to issue fraud alerts and creating a list of all the vendors linked to my card as well as figuring out how to make all my year end purchases.
This was not at all what I expected to unwrap this morning, but this is what the Universe decided to plop in my lap today.
Sadly, this is not my first rodeo. In this day and age most of us have had something like this happen. In fact, previous experience helped me get out of the “victim state of mind” pretty quickly and move into solving the problem vs sitting in it.
I started thinking about the energy it takes someone to intentionally do this. I did not lose my credit card. There was no chip in it. There was however, focused intention and follow through to obtain my number and execute this level of fraud… Small purchases first and then the move onto bigger ones. What would happen, I wonder, if those people who do this as “their living” would just aim their energy in a better direction?
We use the word FRAUD in coaching a lot. We talk about the “fraud factor”– don’t we?
Well after today, I really get that we have to give up the “fraud-speak.”
So, here is my holiday giftie to you all if you are willing to receive it.
I wish for you to let go of the idea that you could ever be a fraud. Fraudulence implies intention. An intent to deceive and to misrepresent yourself… and I have to say I have never met a true health and wellness coach who matches this description. Ever!
We need to put our energies elsewhere! Perhaps you are afraid you might not know enough or that as well-meaning as you are, you don’t have what it takes to help a potential client. Well, frankly you may not. But that does not make you a fraud.
Imagine some of your own beloved practitioners. Is there a chance they don’t know everything? Of course! Is it more likely what they do know comes from a combination of learning and experience? Absolutely.
Let your current level of learning and experience do three things for you and you will never ever be a fraud:
-Define your current scope of practice. Don’t take on clients with too complex a set of issues. Clients will naturally challenge you to learn more. Remember you are both Educator and Coach. Coaching has so much less to do with educating than you might think!
-Show you your learning edge. We are all life-long learners. Discover something you need or want to learn more about. Go for it! You always need to be evolving both as a coach and a human. This keeps you connected to your passion!
-Keep you in humble service to those you wish to help most: Focus on supporting your clients to do what they already know to do. Then lean in from there. They need your support and listening more than most of the data or information you can share! If information fixed everything we would not need coaches. What we do need is to support our clients in taking small consistent actions over time.
- May your passion, purpose and commitment shine through everything you do in you life and in your practice.
- May you be kind and compassionate with yourself in all your perfect imperfection.
- May you replace “fraud” with “Kaizen” — and master the art of small steps and continuous improvement.
- May your most authentic self be the one who shows up for work every day.
Your clients will thank you for it… as they will see, first hand, an example of how to love and accept themselves more fully as they, themselves take their own imperfect steps toward their goals and dreams!
Going Quantum With You!
Marilena
