What I learned from coaching

Posted on February 26, 2011 by Yukari

Just yesterday, I have finished my 3 month session with my coach, Jenny Ferry.
I met her at Blissdom Canada. She sat next to me at one of the sessions (I think), we started talking and hit it off, and she offered to be my coach. At the time, I had no idea what to expect. But ever since we came back from Blissdom, (she lives in Phoenix, AZ and I live in Victoria, BC) we kept in touch over email and had almost once-a-week sessions over Skype.

Yesterday was our exit session. As I sat down to talk, with a cup of tea as usual, she asked me various questions. Did the session meet my expectations? What did I think I took away from the coaching…?

She reminded me what I initially wanted out of the coaching. And she asked me if I got what I wanted.
My answer was no, because what I was asking for was not something she could just “give” to me through coaching.
What I got out of it was the awareness, that what I wanted was not something I cannot just “get”. And I am happy with the awareness/realization. I think it’s huge.

And there are other things I got out of the coaching. I told her the biggest thing I got out of it was again, the awareness – awareness when I feel that reaction “I don’t want to see/think/talk about it” It is a very good sign that I should dig deep and shed a light in there.
I have often ignored those bad feelings/things, but I have learned not to do that. That is a very valuable lesson in my opinion.

Also, by talking to her every week, I was trained to stop and think and ask myself a question. When I feel sad/mad/overwhelmed/stressed or even when I am extremely happy, now I kind of have a habit to stop and think WHY I am feeling that way. This helped learning more about myself and help myself grow.

While I was talking to her over Skype, my friend Heather Greenwood Davis’s recent blog post about her experience at Dove (She was one of the 14 women who did the video for Dove with me)came to mind. She wrote a great post about importance of flexibility.
Jenny was saying although what I got out of the coaching was quite different from what I hoped to get out of at the beginning – as if we had a map of where we wanted to go – we guided through different paths using the map and we actually found something else.
Isn’t that brilliant?
When she said this, it totally reminded me of Heather’s post.

As I write this, my heart is filled with gratitude for Jenny. Literally, I had more than one meltdown in front of the Skype screen and bawled my eyes out few times. Those were the moments I just needed somebody there to listen. And she did that for me.

My journey is not over yet and I am sure I will need more help in the future, but I am confident now that I have the map and the flashlight to shed the light on those scary places.

Thank you, Jenny.

Singing In The Rain with Dove Canada

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Yukari

I’ve always loved that “Singing In The Rain” by Gene Kelly. But I have never dreamed I’d be doing the same!!

I was one of the 14 women to be in the Dove Canada‘s Singing In The Rain music video for their new hair care line – Nutritive Therapy Nourishing Oil Care.
5 women out of 14 was outside Ontario- Jillian from Calgary, Tammi from Red Deer, Lynette from Halifax, Tara from Montreal, and me, from Victoria. We all were put up in a beautiful Hotel Le Germain.

I arrived in Toronto Monday night and had a great dinner with Jillian. (Found a great Mexican restaurant thanks to my friend Ivan Meade‘s tweet – love just how Twitter works like that!) I had very little sleep that night. Too excited? Um, maybe. What am I, 5?!?

Anyhow, after breakfast and quick shopping trip to Sephora with Tara, we were chauffeured to Showline studio to shoot the video.
First we were sent to this studio beautifully transformed into a hair/makeup lounge.

Celebrity Hair stylist Mark Townsend is now working with Dove, and he was there to oversee it all. He works with Lea Michele (Rachel in Glee) and Jennifer Lawrence. He was very friendly. While I was getting my hair washed he was telling me how excited he was about this weekend’s Oscars. He said Jennifer and Lea lives across the town from each other so he got a hotel room for the ladies to come to in between their places and he will start working around 11am. And after that, he’s going to a much deserved vacation.

After hair, makeup and wardrobes were done and we were sent to rehearsal. The choreographer for this project was Aakomon Jones(AJ) – he worked with Usher on his “OMG” video, as well as with Madonna, Beyonce to name a few.
He and his assistant Drea were very patient with us 14 giggling-chatting women. We managed to learn the basic steps, and we were off to the set.

The set was bright and hot, with all the lighting. We were to dance in a shallow pool of water-yes, they even had the rainmaker guys above us.

Everybody on the set was extremely positive, patient and encouraging. I can imagine how annoying it could have been, 14 non-dancers come in chatting away and constantly making mistakes. It was getting really hot on the set and I wanted to complain, but I couldn’t, knowing how tiring it is for all the crew. Obviously they have been working all day to prep for this on the balmy set.
We had to make several last minute changes to our learned routine, but nobody made any negative comments, they quickly adapted to the new plan, smiled and went with it.

Here’s the sneak peek video shot by Julia‘s daughter Grace. The video will officially launch on March 15.

They sent me home with the whole Dove Nourishing Oil Care line (Shampoo, Conditioner, Treatment and Leave-In Smoothing Cream)
I used it right away, and honestly – I am not saying this because they gave them to me – it is amazing.

I have very fine, straight hair. But because I have straight hair, I curl it almost every day(we always want what we don’t have, right?)
I am usually reluctant to use anti-frizz serum/oil products on my hair because although they smooths my hair, it will not hold the curls.
But after using the line, I was pleasantly surprised how my hair felt healthier, had more volume, and it actually held the curls quite well that lasted all day! I’m so happy!

This was a lot of fun and at the same time very humbling experience. Big THANK YOU to Terri McBay from OgilvyOne who was in charge of the whole project. You did a great job!

Disclaimer: I was paid for my time and travel experiences for this project but nobody asked me to write a post about it and was written by me purely because I wanted to tell you about this amazing experience.

Life Statement and what I’m up to next little while

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Yukari

I am so behind on blogging. I do have so many “topics” I want to write about, but again, when you are so time deprived, what drives you to start writing is not the array of “topics” I “should” write about, but the momentum and the things you feel passionate about.

I have just finished my session with my coach, Jenny. Today we did three mini-visualizations and wanted to come up with my life statement.
If you know me at all, the word “connection” is a frequent keyword for me, and it did not take too long for us to find out those obvious value.
I also love to inspire and also to get inspired.
We worked together and created a sentence that describes my life….according to Jenny, these statements comes with metaphor part and then impact you will have for others. We figured out the impact part and she was asking me if there is any metaphor I wanted to use.
She mentioned that I was like a ray of sunshine, that reminded me of an affirmation I really like- “I am a divine being of light”.
Don’t ask me why, but I just love it. So we decided to incorporate that, and we tweaked things a bit, and here it is, we came up with my life statement;

“I am a divine being of light who inspires others to connect and find meaningful life”

We were pretty happy with what we came up with. But of course, our work didn’t stop there.

Jenny suggested I share this with my friends and also do a blog post about it. Don’t you love how my coach totally pushes me?
My first response was, “I don’t know…” which of course means, no.
I got that same familiar feeling of “I don’t wanna do that!” moment.

Jenny : “Are you feeling vulnerable?”
Me : “YES!”
Jenny : “Why don’t you tell me about it.”
Me : (Oh gawd, do I have to? )

If you are reading this blog for a while you know I am a huge fan of Brené Brown and all her work. I am getting used to the idea of admitting when I feel vulnerable and even talk about it. When I’m feeling sad, lonely, or fearful, I think I am getting better at embracing it and talking about it. But, this side of vulnerability is sort of in a opposite side of the scale.
I especially had a hard time with “Divine being of light” part. I love the part of the statement and I love the image of beautiful white light,
but had such hard time agreeing on telling people about it. *I* wanted to keep the statement somewhere private, and revisit it just for myself.
People might think I’m so full of myself, to call myself a divine being of light? What is she thinking?

In the end, I agreed on putting it on Facebook and we ended the session. But Jenny did challenge me to write a post about it and here I am, doing it. Not because I’m supposed to. Because I still believe it is so important to embrace your vulnerability, if you want to live a wholehearted life. It just took me a little to get used to the idea, because this is a little different kind of vulnerability.

What is your life statement?

—

I’ve got some exciting things happening for the next little while!
First, I am going to Toronto to work with Dove again. I have worked with them when they had a G(irls)20 summit last fall, and very excited to work with them again. I don’t know if I have any free time there, but if you are in the area, I’d love to get together for drinks..

I’m also very excited to join TEDxJuanDeFuca team, which is coming up on April 30th. I will be helping out on social media side. They are currently looking for some great speakers, so let me know if you are interested.

Speaking of exciting, I’m in Social Media Camp team as speaker coordinator again! #SMCV11 is June 3rd and 4th.

Hope to see you at these events!