When you allow your being to be amplified, not altered…where what’s wanting to come through gets the room and reverence it deserves. When you know you want to go to these depths and show up with such daring and heart—that’s sacred work. And it’s your gift to you.
“I don’t know how to do me at 73,” I said recently. “But I’m going to show up anyway, just to be curious about who I am and how I do me today.”
Mastering the art of being you doesn’t happen all at once. It unfolds incrementally—choice by conscious choice. It’s not something I know as a theory. It’s something I know as a human who is choosing to grow in real time, in real relationships, with real presence.
For me, wanting to become someone worth talking with—being with—requires that I meet the moment as openly as my clients do, as my children do, and my readers do. That’s the work. That’s the practice.
We go through training programs—MBAs, coaching certifications, even hairdressing school—and we’re handed tools and techniques that promise to keep us on the path to success, progress, and mastery. But the straight-and-narrow path rarely leads to the kind of presence that brings growth or conscious choosing. When we stick to what we’ve been taught—when we stay within the well-worn grooves of structure—we often miss the glimmering magic of the unknown. We miss the experience of flow, creativity, emergence, wonder, mystery. There is so much of ourselves we never experience when we stay within the safety of the script.
And, is that what we came here to do?
Every client, every conversation, every session, brings something new into the world—something that has never existed in exactly this way. And yet, many of us keep trying to use the same thinking that created the circumstances in the first place to try to solve it.
Paul Selig’s Guides speak to this. They say, in effect: when we live by “shoulds,” we limit our ability to hear God and receive the guidance that is meant just for us. After 73 years of walking with this truth, I can tell you they’re right.
Listening beyond the “shoulds” takes courage—it requires us to take leaps of faith into uncertainty and doubt. But when I leap, something opens. And my clients? They leap more easily, too. They sense that it’s safe to follow something deeper than the rules.
Because what your clients need isn’t the old you, the polished you, the perfected you. They need the real you—the one who’s willing to stay present with them and for them, in the process of unfolding. As you grow your capacity to be with yourself, you grow your clients’ capacity to do the same.
That’s what makes you someone worth talking with—being with. That’s the heart of the work.
We think we have to know how to do it all. We don’t! We don’t have to be fully healed or fully formed or fully ready. We just have to keep showing up. With presence, with curiosity, with love. Not just for our clients—but for ourselves.
This Changes Everything!
Life is never static. Coaching is never static. Relationships—of any kind—are never static. You are not the same coach in every session. You are not even the same person in every session. Life moves you. It stretches you. It brings you face to face with yourself again and again—beyond tools, techniques, rules, and “shoulds.” And if you let it, willingly allowing this experience will open you up to a you that exceeds your wildest sense of self. I’m just sayin’!!
So yes: every new session is a new you. And every new you brings something truer to the relationship.
I created a course called Mastering the Art of Transformational Coaching. The title matters to me, because it’s about focusing on art—not just skill. Mastering the art of coaching invites us into something alive and evolving. It’s not a credential or a finish line. It’s a way of being. It’s how we meet ourselves—over and over again—in all our becoming.
You are mastering yourself as you coach and as a person becoming someone worth talking with—being with.
When I try to have the answers, when I try to do things right, say things right, as a parent, as a coach, or as a friend, the feedback is, that I’m failing miserably in being that person worth talking with—being with. I know how it feels when I try too hard, when I lose connection, when I forget the simple truth that presence is enough.
I remember once, when my daughter was young, she said to me, “Mom, stop trying to be a therapist with us!” I said, “But I don’t know how to be a mom!” She replied, “I don’t care if you don’t know how to be a mom—I just want you to be one anyway.” JEESH!!!
In that moment, I felt so vulnerable. So unqualified. So exposed in my insignificance and incapacity to get it right. But I kept on practicing being me as a mom. I kept showing up. And my daughter continually let’s me know when I’m being someone other than someone worth talking with—being with! I pay attention!! That’s the art. That’s the practice. That’s mastery—not in knowing all the answers, but in being willing to stay. To feel. To soften. To listen.
This kind of mastery is intimate. It’s humble. It’s lived. It shows up in the pause before you speak, the breath you take to come home to yourself, the moment you don’t offer advice, and instead, stay in the space of “I don’t know.” It lives in your tone, your pacing, your willingness to be moved.
There is no script for being you. There is no formula for being with someone who is unraveling, awakening, resisting, remembering. There is only your capacity to be with—with them, yes, but first with yourself.
This is the paradox of mastery:
It looks like presence. It feels like love. And it grows not from certainty, but from conscious presence.
So, if you’re in a moment of not knowing, if you feel unsure how to “do you” in this moment in your life, take heart. Just keep showing up over and over again, with presence, with curiosity, with love.
That’s the art. That’s the way. That’s the you worth being with.
Rosie
