Kate Swoboda is one of the bloggers I discovered even before I began my coaching education. She’s a coach and an artist and a photographer and a writer and a retreat leader, and she’s now adding e-book creator to her list of vocations. Today, Kate releases her Courageous Living Guides, a labor of love that has been in process for a long time. In preparation for the Guides’ release to the world, she invited fellow bloggers to interview her. I jumped at the chance to do so and was delighted that she offered such thoughtful, detailed answers.
After you read the interview, be sure to hop over to Kate’s blog, learn more about the Courageous Living Guides, or chat with her on Twitter.
Kylie: What made you decide to focus your coaching work on women?
Kate: I originally worked with both men and women, and found that most of the men who came to me wanted to keep things very goal-oriented, whereas when I worked with women, they were tapping into more emotion- or heart-centered work. This is not to riff off a stereotype that women are “more emotional,” so much as it is to say that many women (dare I say most?) get more social and gender conditioning around accessing emotions than men do. The women weren’t getting on the phone and bawling all of the time — it’s just that many of them had a more heart-oriented desire to get to the bottom of finding fulfilling work, or tapping into self-care, or traveling, or whatever it was that someone wanted to explore. I’m incredibly attracted to that — the attitude of not just a desire to do, do, do but also the deeper implications behind it, and the tender and yet ferocious parts of us that are humans having a very human experience.
Kylie: What’s the biggest challenge that comes up repeatedly for your clients? How did you address it in the Guides?
Kate: The biggest challenge by far is transforming the relationship to the inner voices. I call those voices the Inner Critic, and most of us have felt so beaten up by those voices that it feels astonishing to think of coming into relationship with them. Most of us want to tell those voices to just “fuck off, already” (I know I did). Unfortunately, that just doesn’t work — nor does trying to affirm them away with lots of pretty thoughts, usually. It’s so important to know that those voices are just afraid — that’s all.
The Courageous Living Guides use a variety of approaches. I refer to them often as heart-centered, yet practical — because I wanted to create something that was about being gentle with oneself (no one needs a jerk with a whistle screaming at them to “get over” themselves) yet also practical (because, as I already mentioned, positive affirmations alone aren’t effective for most people — people tend to need a framework, some foundation they can build upon).
The Guides offer this framework in the form of on-the-spot exercises, inquiry questions that can reveal some deeper truths, prompts, and repeated entreaties to remember that it wouldn’t serve anyone to slip into self-abuse.
Kylie: I’m interested in the nitty-gritty aspects of how people come to like themselves. Can you talk about some of the things that you have seen that take people from a negative relationship with themselves to a positive one?
Kate: The shift doesn’t happen so much in one huge way, as it happens in lots of small little ways that collectively add up to one huge shift. I’ll try to summarize a few of the things that make that up: transforming the relationship with the inner voices is a huge piece. One of the tools that I use and describe in the Guides is a tool that my own coach taught me: “Re-do, please.” I hear something my Inner Critic says and then I respond with something like, “That didn’t sound respectful. Re-do, please.” Then the Critic comes back with something else and over and over, I keep using that tool until something shifts. (This is the part where I share that of course, I’m human — sometimes the Inner Critic voices run amok before I get present and then start using the tool.)
Self-care is also hugely important — when I’m not practicing self-care, the Inner Critic voices just have a field day. I’d also pinpoint the growing and increasing realization that the more I realize that I am in choice in my life, and that the Inner Critic is just a scared part of me who’s afraid and simply wants to be heard because she’s trying to keep me in a comfort zone with all of that criticism, the less I see these voices coming up.
For myself, I have felt more and more compassion for my Inner Critic, who is really just scared, and also even some admiration for all that she’s trying to hold. It’s this very cool thing that has been building over time. Each year, I’m amazed at how much more clear and capable I feel than I did the year before.
Kylie: I’m interested in how meditation came into your life, and what it took for you to make it a regular practice. Can you tell us?
Kate: Oh, I don’t make meditation a regular practice, in the sense of having a regular schedule, style, time of day…and this doesn’t really concern me. I practice meditation, or — more often — creating stillness — a lot more now than I ever did when I was trying to force myself to be on a schedule! My story is that I initially wanted to meditate but then felt nuts doing the traditional sitting style. For a few years, I did what I call “practicing stillness” or “creating stillness.” I’d just sit quietly and be, without adhering to a structure. Then I got really into Soto Zen and for a few years, I was a regular attendee at a Zen center in the Bay Area. I think I received benefits from all of that — but I wasn’t really able to sink into it deeply because I was more concerned with doing it because then I’d be able to say I meditated and went to the Zen center and all of that.
Now, I typically do one of two things, as it suits my purposes: Sometimes I sit formally, using the posture and style that I learned when studying Zen formally. Otherwise, I create stillness by just being. While waiting for a video to upload I’ll stop, get very present to my sensory experience and breathing, and just “be” right there at my desk. There are other things that I do, but those are the two most common. Purists would say that this is cheating, but for me, for now, it works — I’m open to staying present to what I feel I need and shifting that if necessary. I’m enjoying more benefits with this approach than I did before.
Kylie: What growth have you experienced through your meditation practice?
Kate: (I’ll speak more to practicing stillness with this question, since I know that I don’t have the traditional “meditation practice” in the truest sense of the word — I moreso have my way of practicing meditation than a “meditation practice.”) The growth mostly happens off of the cushion. I don’t entirely understand it, but it is obvious and apparent to me that when I take time to breathe and “be,” I’m happier, calmer, less inclined to snap at someone. I’m more tuned in to my thoughts and can catch the Inner Critic voices before they go too far. I can see someone get upset with me and not react. I have an easier time accessing the compassionate thoughts or trying to see something from someone else’s point of view. This is all really important to me, because before I began doing work on myself, I was just pissed off all of the time. It felt pretty relentless. When I slow down, life just seems easier. There’s far less to be angry about. I’m less concerned that someone should have done it differently (including myself!). There’s more love and acceptance for everyone — myself and others on the planet.
Kylie: Do you have any suggestions of good resources for neophyte meditators?
Kate: First and foremost: believe in the power of five minutes, and create the experience for yourself. This is something that I’ll be teaching during my upcoming Create Stillness retreat in March. I’ll be offering people lots of different styles of creating stillness/meditation, exercises, some inquiry and thinking about how to create a process that really works for them, so that they can get all the benefits without a side of guilt!
I think that all of my time “creating stillness” before I got involved in Zen was a vehicle to that style of meditation, which felt far too rigid to me at first. I often wonder how many other people out there might be incredibly interested in some kind of meditation practice, but they’ve tried and quit before and feel discouraged and think they “aren’t the type.” I think we are all the type, if we create permissiveness for getting still.
Kylie: Do you have a very favorite topic or exercise in the Courageous Living Guides? If so, what is it, and why do you love it so?
Kate: This is such a great question, and one no one has ever asked me! I think my favorite topic is that of BEing the journey, which I talk about most in Courageous Beginnings. I think there is such power in reframing our lives from being “on a journey” (with all of the potential to fall “off” your journey, take wrong turns, critique whether or not it’s right, etc.) to “BEing your journey,” which is about embracing all that comes into the circle of one’s existence, ditching the energy required to critique it or assess it, and powerfully choosing what you want to make your life mean.
I basically see the Guides as being, literally, like Guides that you’d talk to in real life — big concepts are put out there, and you’re encouraged to explore, and things are broken down into smaller doses to sink into with a guide helping along the way. There’s more of a process with the work that I do, whether it’s the Guides or coaching or retreats, than the idea that one needs to arrive at some “right answer.”
Kylie: Alright. One last question. If you could have one magic power, what would it be?
Kate: SUCH a cool question. For sure — it’d be the ability to heal physical illnesses instantaneously and permanently, with a touch of my hand. I personally hate being sick, and my first stop would be the local kids’ cancer ward.
. . .
Thanks so much to Kate for sharing her words here. For more on the Courageous Living Guides, look over here. Glitter and champagne (or kombucha, in my case) for this exciting day.
And a note: Both photographs in this post are by Kate herself. I’m pretty sure that makes this the first time another photographer’s work has been featured here. Double excitement!
