Presence coaching
We live in a time of transition, of great uncertainty.
You are unique. Your context is unique. You are the only one who can navigate your world, using tools that work for you.
Presence coaching can help you create those tools.
The world is changing. Fast.
When making decisions we care about, most of us try to do the best we can within our current context. But in today’s rapidly changing world, figuring out what IS best is increasingly challenging.
Transitions have always been a part of life, and feeling stressed, lost and confused as we go through them is nothing new.
What is new for us is the fact that the anchors we once used to stabilise ourselves during transition periods are themselves failing, shifting or losing relevance. Well-mapped paths lead us to places we no longer wish to go, once-reliable institutions are faltering, and older generations are trying to find their own footing in a world vastly different than the one they grew up in.
We need a different approach to navigating this reality.
Is presence coaching right for you?
Presence coaching might help you if the following questions feel relevant…
Do you feel compelled to make a difference in the world but feel unsure regarding what is yours to do?
Do any of these phrases strike a chord for you: midlife crisis, existential crisis, meaning crisis, ecological grief / despair, spiritual awakening, the shock of systemic awakening, dark night of the soul, time for a change, paradigm collapse?
Do you have stable enough financial foundations to focus on your other values?
Do you feel overwhelmed by information about the issues which concern you, or else wish you could feel more confident applying theory in your own life?
If this resonates with you, and you want to take on the challenge, and you discover you can trust me as your guide, we can work (and play!) together to find and calibrate your personal compass, and create the dynamic maps and other sensemaking tools you will need in order to better navigate these times of turbulence and transition as an effective, creative, life-loving steward in the service of current and future generations.
What is Presence Coaching?
What is the purpose of presence coaching?
The purpose of presence coaching is to enable your ongoing, effective presence in your everchanging presence landscape, so you can presence what you have to bring to the world, for the benefit of all…
Quite a mouthful, hey?
Here’s another way to look at it. In presence coaching, we will work together to unearth and calibrate your personal compass and create the dynamic maps and individualised sensemaking tools you need in order to navigate the unknown as an effective liminal agent.
Once you have those navigational tools and feel confident in using and maintaining them on your own, our presence coaching work will be done.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I will show you the door and never let you back in if you need or want some help in the future! The door will always be open. It just means that we do have a goal to achieve through presence coaching, and you should be able to sense when we’ve succeeded. (I likely will too, but your sense of completion is what matters.)
Presence coaching is challenging, intense, and not for everyone…
Presence coaching really isn’t for everyone, and that is perfectly okay. We all have different strengths, interests, skills and responsibilities to fulfil at different times in our lives. Presence coaching is intended for those who:
wish to develop their capability to work effectively towards a viable, sustainable and hopefully thriving future for all;
feel ready to take on a challenge; and
are willing and able to trust me as a guide.
Let’s unpack this a bit, starting with the first bullet point.
Develop your capability to work effectively towards a viable, sustainable future for all
Our species is facing multiple crises, wicked problems, and existential risks. The choices we collectively make and the cumulative actions we take over the course of the next few decades will determine whether and under what conditions — dystopian or otherwise — future generations will exist. The stakes are breathtakingly high and we are in unknown, liminal territory, horribly entangled in our own dysfunctional and failing systems.
Our choices matter. And right now, we’re making dreadful choices... not because we’re bad or uncaring, but because we’re stuck. In some respects, the stickiness is real and there’s nothing we can do about it, but in others it’s not real… or at least not real in the sense that we actually can do something about it, if we can perceive the relevant possibilities and choose them (rather than chasing down the obvious but wrong ‘solutions’ that just get us even more stuck than we already were). Perceiving the relevant possibilities that lead towards extricating ourselves from the mess is much, much easier said than done. Frankly, it’s a minefield.
We need more people who can do this, who are willing to themselves step out into unknown territory and trust their own compass and ability to perceive what is really there. We need more people who regard leadership as the service, burden and responsibility it is in this context. Such leaders will be the ones who end up making the difference.
In this complex process we need guides. This is why I am stepping up to the plate as a guide, and also why I am being incredibly selective about the clients I take on and the nature of the service I provide. Presence coaching is clearly needed and I do enjoy helping people this way — always have — but I’m also taking a lead role on other projects I believe are important and needed, and there’s only so much Kylie for me to spread around. :)
Take on a challenge
Presence coaching is especially challenging because it requires vulnerability, radical honesty and humility that is foreign to most of us today. To use an analogy, we’re accustomed to buying clothes off the rack or even online, not stripping to our underwear and subjecting ourselves to a tailor’s critical eye.
Like life coaching, self-development coaching and existential coaching, presence coaching requires you to engage in deep introspective work, but there’s more to it than that.
Outrospection (empathic perception) and extrospection (perceiving external to self) are also necessary. Outrospection is critical because we humans are deeply social creatures, and we tend to look to each other not only for a sense of belonging, but also for cues about our environment. This is another minefield of complexity.
When do you defer to an expert?
In what ways can you trust another’s perception?
When do social norms reinforce stuckness?
Extrospection is also more difficult than it might first appear. What assumptions distort your perception? What if they are wrong? What are the real constraints in a given situation? Which are negotiable, which are not? Are the only paths the ones you can immediately see, or are there others? What if you could climb, or swim, or tunnel, or backtrack, or even fly? (Yes, imagination is important too.)
As you can probably tell, presence coaching cannot really respect your comfort zone, so you must be ready to leave it, to discover where your boundaries really are.
If we work together, I will be bringing an unrelenting yet generous multi-perspectival focus to deep listening, Socratic questioning, and continuous shared discovery of your context — both internal and external. It is likely to be uncomfortable frequently, and at times emotionally painful or frightening. I fully recognise and respect the courage, commitment and radical honesty required to go through this process (I do it continually myself) and will be as kind as I can be within the constraints of what is necessary to achieve our shared objective in working together. You can slow down or stop at any time you want; we just can’t have our cake and eat it too. :)
Able and willing to trust me as a guide
After what you’ve read above, hopefully this point is a no-brainer so I’ll keep it short.
Given how high our stakes are, I like to optimise time and resources so to some I come across as direct. This is part of who I am. Just like I aim to work with who you are. Some people trust me with their lives, others are put off by this getting straight into the issue at hand. In Discovery we both get a chance to see if our ways of being can dance into synergy.
Trust cannot be forced. Trust must be present for this process to work.
This is why the first conversation is strictly for the purpose of Discovery, and free of charge. No sunk costs, no expectations, no misleading signals and no offence taken.
The first session, Discovery, is free.
Even if you are ready for a challenge and care to make a difference in the world, you will have to decide whether you are willing and able to trust me as a guide.
(I also need to decide whether I am willing and able to guide you.)
The process of Presence Coaching
Discovery
Discovery has just one purpose: For both of us to discover whether we wish to work together. There are no commitments or expectations, for either of us.
I will ask about your current life situation and how you think and feel about that. What brought you to this point in your life? Is there anything in particular you feel passionate about? What draws you to presence coaching? Do you have any reservations?
You can ask me anything you want to know as well. Try to get a sense of whether you feel safe enough with me to be vulnerable, to be guided and challenged by me.
While I don’t expect it, I do recommend browsing around this website a little prior to the Discovery conversation so you can make the most of the hour to fill in any information gaps that are important to you. This will usually give you a much better read on my style and approach than listening to a comparatively ‘canned spiel’ on the fundamentals.
Decision and logistics
If you decide not to go ahead with presence coaching, you can let me know at any time during the Discovery conversation or via email afterwards. (I will do the same.) Ideally, I would love feedback regarding the reason for your decision, but that is entirely your choice.
If we both wish to proceed, I’ll schedule a 15 minute call to work through admin and logistics, including a terms of engagement, setting the appointment/s, invoicing, and exchanging contact details (e.g. Signal, messenger).
Sessions are 90 minutes with a strict end time. Payment is to be made in advance of the session (see Services for more details).
Presence coaching sessions
Expect to spend 2-20 minutes settling in to each session. We will work out together the best way to do this for you. Silence and breathing works best for some; a general chat style of check in works best for others. If there is a particular issue pressing on your mind, it can help to talk it through a little before diving in to the rest of the session. It’s important to remember that no matter how long this settling in process takes, it is not wasted time — the sensitivity required for presence work is impossible if you are distracted.
There is no hard formula for the approach we’ll take. That said, early sessions will likely be more heavily weighted towards familiarising me with your context — what you feel you know about yourself, boundaries and their nature (e.g. are they hard or flexible, do you know when they’re being approached or only when they’re crossed, are they ones you want to keep or expand?), what feels de/motivating for you, what constraints are there in your external environment.
As we progress, we’ll look more at tools to work out which ones give you, personally, the type of affordances you need. Over time I intend to curate and collect links in the Resources section of this site, however since the toolkit assembling process is highly individualised, what ends up in the Resources section may not be relevant for you.
Once we have a toolkit assembled for you, if you choose to, we can work together on applying it in your life until you feel confident using it on your own. You will always be welcomed back if you wish to continue coaching, however my aim is to get you set up for life and not dependent on me.
There is also no hard and fast rule for the number of sessions required to build your personal navigational toolkit. It really depends on your current state of awareness around yourself, the world, and what you want to do, as well as our combined ability to familiarise me with your context. I would suggest 6 sessions at an absolute minimum, and 12 as a more likely ballpark for most.
In terms of session frequency, it should usually be possible to arrange between 1 and 8 sessions in a month. Two sessions per week (8 per month) is very intensive and I would recommend having a fairly clear slate as a prerequisite for that pace. A good rhythm is weekly or every second week.
How Presence Coaching
(& Presence of Mine)
came to be
In 1999 a work colleague at one of my many temp jobs surprised me by casually commenting that I had “an unusual and compelling presence”. As a psychology student, that word ‘presence’ really snagged my attention — sure, I could sense the presence of others, but not my own! I started digging into the concept and became increasingly intrigued by its multiple facets.
Being present to reality, present to one’s self, and present for others. Becoming aware of what is present, and what is not, and of what possibilities are present at the point of choice. Presencing something, delving down and in, bringing it up and out and through to life. Making your presence felt. To me, presence speaks of relevance, of reality, of energy, of integrity and of meaning. It feels whole, connected, intentional. Honest. Earnest, even.
Years later, in 2016, after delivering a particularly noxious (to me!) IT project I felt the need to nurture my creativity and do something that made people happy for a change, and so took a few weeks off work to train as a colour analyst and personal image consultant. My intuition soon suggested the business name Presence of Mine and even though it wasn’t the most obvious fit for a personal image consulting business, I pounced on it immediately. I was amused by the wordplay, but mostly I sensed there was a lot more to this ‘presence thing’ than I could put my finger on at the time. I thought maybe I would find a way to share my ridiculously large ‘collection’ of models, maps and tools in a way that others might find helpful… but my early ideas felt frivolous and off-target, so apart from some occasional colour and image consulting, I kept Presence of Mine on the shelf.
As a result, my business name was settled long before I decided to offer coaching, and as I was working on defining the purpose and scope of what I intended to do, I actually considered and discarded several other terms to describe it: Agency, sovereignty, transition, complexity, existential. All important and relevant, but too narrow. I might have chosen ‘life coaching’ if that didn’t already have other meaning firmly attached to it, but it does, so I didn’t. Instead, I ended up choosing the one word that is as alive to me as ‘life’ is, and has the multiple facets I need: Presence.
Presence Coaching
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If we both decide to work together following Discovery, we’ll start 90 minute presence coaching sessions.
These are paid in advance, either individually (AUD $660, inclusive of GST) or in blocks of 6 (AUD $3,720, inclusive of GST).
Sessions cancelled up to 24 hours in advance will be refunded, less a $200 admin fee.
We will handle scheduling of presence coaching sessions during the logistics call (after Discovery and deciding to proceed).
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The discovery meeting is always the first step towards starting Presence Coaching (yes, even if we know each other!)