Sometimes the Only Way to Know Is to Experience It

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is how much time we can spend trying to decide whether something is right for us.

We imagine how it might go. We wonder whether it will be worth it. We try to predict how we’ll feel afterwards.

Sometimes we end up stuck, not because we don’t want to take the next step, but because we’re trying to answer a question that thinking alone can’t answer.

There are some things we only know once we’ve experienced them.

It’s a little like deciding whether you’d enjoy spending time with someone. You can read about them. You can look at their photos. You can wonder whether you’ll get on.

But until you’ve actually gone on the date, sat down together over a coffee and had a conversation, you don’t really know what it will feel like to be in their company.

There are many areas of life where we can gather more information, think a little longer and eventually reach a clear answer.

But sometimes the way out of indecision is simply to try something and gain the lived experience of what it is actually like, rather than continuing to imagine what it might be like.

That doesn’t mean forcing ourselves into a yes.

Sometimes the experience gives us a clearer no.

Either way, we know something we couldn’t have known before.

I think about this when I write descriptions of the ways people can work with me. I want to make it as easy as possible for someone to recognise whether something feels like a yes or a no for them.

Not to convince them.

Just to help them hear their own answer.

And yet, however much I try to describe the experience, there are parts of a conversation that words can’t fully communicate.

You can read every page on my website. You can learn about how I work. You can wonder whether coaching is for you or whether we would be a good fit.

But you still won’t know exactly what it is like to spend that time together until we do.

All of which brings me to something I haven’t actually shared with you yet.

For the rest of August, I’ve created two seasonal conversations.

One of the things that mattered to me while creating them was making it as easy as possible to recognise whether they felt like a yes or a no.

Not to convince you.

Simply to help you hear your own answer.

A Comfy Chair Session is an hour where you can put everything down for a while. You don’t need to arrive with a clear question, a plan or something you want to fix. We begin wherever you are and see where the conversation takes us.

A Day Where You Don’t Have to Hold Everything Together offers more room. We spend time together at several points across the day, with space between our conversations for you to rest, wander, notice what comes up or simply enjoy not having to make the day productive.

They are different invitations for different moments.

For one person, an hour may feel exactly right. Someone else may recognise that what they are longing for is the spaciousness of a whole day.

August tends to have a different rhythm. People are away, routines shift and work can become a little quieter. I wanted these conversations, and their seasonal prices, to feel accessible if one of them already felt like your kind of yes.

Both will be available throughout the rest of August.

Beyond that, I genuinely don’t know.

A Comfy Chair Session may continue, probably at a different price. The day may return in its current form, evolve into something else or simply belong to this particular season.

For now, though, they are here.

If you’ve been wondering what a conversation with me would actually be like, perhaps you don’t need to decide in advance whether it will work exactly as you hope.

Perhaps you only need to notice whether you’d like to have the experience.

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