In the last year I have taken part in three different “online group programmes,” each with a different goal in mind.
Simplicity Unlocked with Laura Oldfield - A coach and mentor helping small business owners achieve their potential.
Spring Journaling with Jules Wood - Life coach offering journal clubs and wellbeing workshops
Spring Reset with Julie Cooper Nutrition - Bespoke nutritional therapy and personalised health coaching.
I should declare an interest that each of the programmes was run by someone whom I work with as a performer, so I started each predisposed to want to like it. But knowledge of their artistic skills and talents, and the fact I would call them all my friends didn’t mean I was guaranteed to get what I needed from the programmes.
At the beginning of last year I was running a franchise business and, having little experience running a customer-facing sole enterprise I enrolled on Simplicity Unlocked. I’d been watching Laura evolve her business for a few years, and done planning and goal-setting workshops with her in the past so it made sense to work with her to really dig deep into my business goals and get some much needed accountability (we’ll come back to this) in getting sh*t done! The other women on the programme (Laura directs her courses particularly at women running their own business) were entrepreneurs in many different fields and I found it so valuable to hear their experiences and struggles, and share their triumphs too. As well as holding space and bringing people together, Laura was excellent at reframing and probing us to look at our business from new angles, asking the right questions in order to get our own ideas down on paper of where we wanted to take our enterprises. She trod the line between urging us in a particular direction and helping us find your own path extremely well; it’s thanks to her I started this Substack and decided I could give writing a go. As you see, so far I haven’t much in public to show for it, but I have lots of ideas, some started, some not. I’m the kind of person who needs to work myself up to things!
As it happened, owing to a relocation, I had to give up my business last autumn before it had really got going and whilst that hadn’t been in the plan originally, it was the right thing for our whole family and I was happy to take all the skills I’d learnt whilst running a business and everything I’d learnt about my own goals, and let them rest under the surface while I threw myself into juggling just the two hats (excuse the mangled metaphor): performing and family!
Which brings me onto the next group programme which I joined in March this year. Jules Wood has just started out as a life coach after many many years as a very successful singer (she’s very much still doing this too!)
As I already knew her as a kind, generous and bubbly musician, I was keen to give her group journalling club a go. Six months into relocation and the aforementioned hat-juggling (I’m sticking with it). I was definitely ready to give myself some space and address the personal goals I’d had on the back-burner since the summer. One evening a week for 5 weeks, I and 6 others (all women again) worked through journalling prompts led by Jules, and explored what came up in conversation too. It seems so simple, just one evening a week dedicated to really thinking about yourself, and what you want and need. But so few people, particularly women and those with with caring responsibilities take any time to do this and I think courses like Jules’s are invaluable to giving ourselves permission to do that very simple thing for ourselves.
Through Jules’ course I’ve got myself a writing accountability partner, a long-time friend and occasional colleague who without Jules’ course I’d never have learnt was also writing. I’ve also picked up a habit I’ve dabbled with in the past of just getting stuff down on paper. Stuff no-one is going to see, but it’s really helped me organise my, often racing and scattered, thoughts on so many things.
Most recently, I’ve completed a 10 day Spring Reset with Julie Cooper Nutrition. Besides feeling a real boost to my health, I gained information in the form of seminars on nutrition, meal plans and delicious recipes, and what I think was the golden ingredient (pun not intended but not edited out either…) was accountability, camaraderie and fun. Julie understands what it is like to be a touring musician (which she also very much still does) with family and all sorts of things to juggle and the challenges to self-care that presents. She, and everyone in the group were very supportive of the difficulties around nutrition facing us all in our hectic lives. She offered tips and tricks to help us stay more mindful of how to fuel ourselves through busy periods and long days. It was absolutely 100% positive with not a whiff of the D-word or the W-word1
Besides an excuse to big up my friends (does anyone still say ‘big up’??) I’m wondering what links all these programmes together and why were they so successful for me and so many other women? Arguably, all are based on information that is out there if only one knows where to look. With the possibly exception of Julie’s seminars, there was no totally new information changing hands, just a fresh point of view of what’s in front of you. For me, the group element is extremely important: the feeling of being on a journey together. Is this something we gained from the lockdowns? A connection with people on the same journey as others who are physically removed? And like so many things, did the pandemic accelerate the development of this kind of learning? I myself am an unapologetic Accountability Junky: useless at setting and meeting my own goals, but if I make a commitment aloud in the presence of people, any people, I am many times more likely to follow through on it. Surely I’m not alone in this??
I found it reassuring that in all three cases, as well as living the hat-juggling (I’m owning it) life-style, Laura, Julie and Jules were very much on a learning journey themselves. Rather than telling us solely that we need to do X to achieve Y - a trope of many self-help “gurus2”, they are facilitating self-exploration both collectively and individially. This works for me. Having taken myself to the brink of some serious navel-gazing, I’m going to sign off thus:
Trusting is a vulnerable state, and you’re more likely to trust someone you already know. Perhaps I wouldn’t have sought their help if I hadn’t already had a relationship with them, but I’m so glad I did. If you think you need any help in the areas they offer, go and find them and get to know them! Future you will thank you!
diet and weight-loss SHHHH!!!
By the by, I recently binge-listened to this podcast about gurus by Helen Lewis of The Bluestocking.
i have read two articles by you - descriptive, fascinating and beautifully written. Thank you