Equal to, not less than.

At the end of April I attended the inaugural ICF Virginia Summit and was honored to watch one of my coaching clients participate on a panel in front of my peers. She talked about how I changed her business. How the questions I asked made her see herself differently. She explained that she came to me thinking coaching was about someone telling her what to do and left realizing it was about deep reflection and self awareness. My colleagues leaned over and whispered. "Wow. You're amazing. Clearly you had a big impact on her." Professionally, I live between two worlds. Real estate demands I stand tall and confident. Coaching invites me to be vulnerable. In that room full of coaches, I got to be both. And they saw it. More importantly, so did I. My first instinct was to minimize it. Oh that is not a big deal. She did the work. I just asked questions. Instead of deflecting, I paused and I let myself actually feel what those compliments meant. I caught myself in my normal habit of deflecting my abilities and acknowledged the years of training and development that led me to ask the type of question that evoked awareness in my clients. In that moment, I broke a pattern of instinctually fighting against receiving the compliments, I wrote them down in order to stand in them. I recognized that I deserved to hear them and deserved to feel proud. Surrounded by the colleagues I so admire, I acknowledged to myself that I am one of them. I embody coaching. I am really good at it. I do not have to shrink to make room for their excellence. My excellence belongs here too. Think of a time you caught yourself staying small in a moment that deserved your full presence. What would it have felt like to stay in it instead of stepping back?