By Allison Iantosca, PCC
Coaching holds a frame long enough for cumulative and meaningful change to happen.
My husband had a birthday last week. Oddly, my age anxiety rises more on his birthday than on my own. Maybe because his comes six months before mine. Maybe because he is two and a half years older. Maybe because it’s always strange to say I’m married to someone who is that age even though I am only thirty months behind.
As if he is a harbinger for my own older self.
We were talking. Standing at the stairs — he about to go down, me about to go up. I can’t remember the topic. Kids. Work. Laundry. Something ordinary enough that I could carry on a whole separate dialogue in my head while offering coherent ums and ahs at the right moments. (I don’t do this…very often.)
“Does he look any different?” I wondered.
“Older today out of respect to the calendar?”
Of course not. Not today. Not because the clock struck another year.
But cumulatively? Yes.
Greyer. Softer. Safer.
A deepened sense of companionship.
A wisdom I have grown to trust.
An enduring, un-erasable love — no matter what happens next.
A knowing.
If we slowed it down enough, we could witness this frame by frame. The solidity of adjustments made from awareness of impact and intention. Who we each want to be to the other. What we grow into because we contacted what was happening in any moment. And then what we become because of what we were willing to adjust.
It got me thinking about what coaching clients expect of themselves when “change” is the stated goal.
“How many sessions will it take?” they ask, with just enough hope that there might be a formula.
One.
It might take one session to see something new about yourself. One aha that’s strong enough to bring you back for another.
And yet change is cumulative.
It is the gathering of ahas. The small adjustments made with awareness and intention. The willingness to notice impact and choose differently next time. Until one day, before your own eyes, you realize you have grown into someone steadier. Wiser. More self-trusting.
Coaching is long enough.
Long enough for you to see the structure you’ve been living inside — what it gives you and what it costs you. Long enough to feel its edges. Long enough to decide whether it still fits.
You become aware of what has held you.
You decide what stays and what changes.
You adjust.
And over time you deepen your wisdom and companionship and love with that most important person.
You.
Allison Iantosca, PCC is a Gestalt International Study Center (GISC) trained coach certified by ICF with extensive leadership and management experience. She is an Executive Coach and is the Owner and President of Boston based FH Perry Builder.
*Photo Credit: Ian Gao Unsplash