When You Don’t Know All the Answers

A coaching client of mine recently had a patient die. Death is not uncommon in her specialty. What was uncommon was feeling like she had navigated the extremely sad situation with much more humanity and elegant vulnerability than in the past.

After mindful coaching, this physician felt much more ok with "not knowing the answers."  Humans don't know all the answers.  Especially when it comes to death and end-of-life care.

Accepting her own humanity, and that it's normal to not know all the answers changed her experience supporting her patient and their family through their grief and her patient’s death.  

When she changed her thoughts and expectations and showed up as a perfectly imperfect human, she was able to experience this patient's death in a whole new way.   

She was able to be present, caring, and connected on a whole new level.

Mindful coaching enabled her to come to this end-of-life caregiving experience with new expectations.

What resulted at the end of the month-long end-of-life caregiving experience after coaching?

She was still tired.  Very tired.  

But this time it was good tired.   

Tired like she had finished a good long run rather than a dehydrated, exhausted, cramping feeling.

Coaching doesn't make difficult life experiences easy,  It makes them smoother, less exhausting, and more meaningful.

If you would like to get more comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing, learn to show up more present, caring, and connected in difficult situations, and find more meaning in your work and life, reach out.  Coaching helps you show up more buoyantly for everything.