|
What is the Practice Community?
If you enroll in one of our coaching programs, you automatically
become a member of our Practice Community. “Community”
in the sense that all who belong share a common purpose –
to grow personally and to improve their own marriage or couple
relationship or prepare for a future one. “Practice”
in the sense that coaching clients on this site acquire new relationship
skills and attitudes by practicing them as they are learned.
In addition to being a meeting place for people who share a common
purpose, the Practice Community is also where people record their
learning goals and their efforts to achieve them. Doing so is
a critical part of the change process in our approach to relationship
coaching.
A blog is an online journal
When you join the Practice Community, you will get your own
personal blog. A blog is an online journal. It has all the advantages
of any journal, plus new ones unique to the online experience.
The benefits of keeping a journal
If you are like most people, keeping a journal will help you
take yourself seriously, if you don’t already. Finding the
time, the energy and the words to write down your thoughts, feelings
and experience makes you more conscious about your life, less
inclined to let it slip by without reflection – and more
likely, often, to make decisions about how you want to live and
what you are going to do to realize your dreams.
A journal can also be a log for change
You can also use your journal as an aid to turning good resolutions
into action. The journal is where you can declare personal-change
goals, like losing weight or learning a language, and log your
progress – or lack thereof. In this case, the journal is
a form of “going public,” if only to yourself –
and staying disciplined about your goals, because you declared
them. There they are – in writing.
Journaling in the Practice Community
Blogs as a journal form stand out because, first, they are usually
public – other people can read them. And, second, they invite
comments. With blogs the “write and respond” format
invites community. The way we use blogs in our coaching programs
invites communities of mutual support. People get invested in
each other’s personal work and – when encouraged -
volunteer their own experience and wisdom.
How the blog supports your relationship
work
When you use your blog to support your relationship-coaching
work, you share the picture of yourself and your relationship
that you want to realize. You describe the steps you commit to
taking, in order to realize your vision. You note your “relationship
experiments” – the action steps you make to try out
new learning and practice your skills. And you describe how well
– or poorly those experiments went.
A host of options
You can keep your blog secret: Only you can read it. You can
share it with others, but anonymously - use an assumed name, not
your own. You can open your blog to comments by other Community
members. Or you can make it strictly “no comment.”
If you and your partner are doing couples coaching, you can each
have your own blog and dialogue with each other in a third, shared
blog. Finally, you can pay a nominal fee and keep your blog going
after you have finished your coaching program.
As the record of your commitments, the relationship work you
do and the results, your blog can become a powerful tool for staying
focused, not losing your way and eventually - achieving your goals.
|
Overview
