Hello, it’s Siri. Welcome to my weekly newsletter on managing your energy, time and head space for work that matters to you. I am an ICF Certified Coach, with more than 450 hours of client coaching. My coaching sessions are “advice-free zones” unless the client specifically asks for advice. So I offer my best insights, reflections, advice here, in this newsletter which is published every Sunday.
In this issue, we’ll explore decision-making and how the middle path between two options can contained untapped potential and surprising solutions.
Last Thursday, I was in a coaching session as the client.
I wanted to use the session to work through a decision about one of my writing projects. I had started a weekly newsletter, Readers Who Meditate, where I delve into books on meditation, personal transformation and integrating inner work practices into every day life. The decision was whether to discontinue the project or keep it going. I had mentally set March 2025 as the deadline by when I would stop writing the newsletter. Despite having made the decision, I had some lingering feelings around it and a sense of incompleteness, so I wanted to use the coaching session to understand what was underneath my discomfort.
As I explored the decision, I reconnected with how dear the project is to my heart. I remembered why I started it and how important it is to my work as a coach, and Siri as a person. The coach held space for me, reflecting what he heard, what he did nto hear and asked questions that helped me explore deeper.
I realised that when I began this project last year, my circumstances were different. I hadn’t decided on my professional direction yet, so there was time and energy to invest in the newsletter. Early this year, I launched my coaching practice, Saner Work Life. Much of this year has been spent finding my footing in building my coaching practice, running a business and navigating the world of solopreneurship. Despite this, I continued the newsletter sending out a 1500-word edition every Friday. Each edition took 5-6 hours to compose, draft, edit and format.
As my business is growing, I find myself unable to give the intense attention and care that every edition of Readers Who Meditate demands. Trying to write an intense personal newsletter alongside my coaching hours, education, training, writing this newsletter was exhausting me. I loved writing it, and at the same time I was having trouble keeping the pace I originally started. While exploring the decision of whether to continue the newsletter or not, a third option started coming to the forefront. Pausing the newsletter for three months.
Well, some momentary relief from not having to make a yes or no decision! Yay! But what happens after three months and what will guide my decision then?
As my coach dampened my momentary relief with these questions, I had to lean into what that pause of three months was meant to do for me. I had started this project to support me in keeping up a meditation habit. Today I have a streak of 444 days of having meditated for atleast 30 minutes almost every day. On a few days, I meditated for 10 minutes. If during the pause, I could keep up the meditation habit then the purpose would still be fulfilled. I also toyed around with the idea of shifting to a less frequent publishing schedule – writing once or twice a month or writing when I wanted to tell my readers about this awesome book that I just finished reading.
The middle path for my decision, to pause led me to explore other options that was neither continuing or discontinuing the way things are now. It helped me to explore options to change, and to work with my changing schedule.
The power of a middle path is often overlooked when it comes to decision making. So many decisions seem to follow Hamlet’s famous soliloqy, “To be or not to be – that is the question”. In my experience, exploring the middle path in coaching sessions can be transformative. I need the space offered by either a coach or a therapist to explore the untapped potential of the middle path. Though the middle path may not seem like a complete option initially, I find that it becomes clearer when explroed with someone trained to hold space without judgement and is able to listen actively and deeply to both what is said and unsaid.
I see this power when my clients bring their own decisions or questinos to coaching sessions. Often, they leave saying, “This isn’t what I expected, but it’s exactly what I needed.” The magic of the middle path is waiting to be tapped by the right spell.
If you’re wrestling with a decision, I invite you to explore the middle path. What potential lies in between your options?
