My clien
t the other day told me a deep, dark secret. It was in part why she signed up for a Session on Writing. She specifically wanted to talk about blogging.
Her secret? She was afraid to write. She could write, but only if she pushed herself, and that felt inauthentic because what she would write was stilted, and didn’t sound like her. She giggled nervously as she described how uncomfortable writing made her feel. She had a case of writer’s block.
I had her do a writing exercise, and gave her 15 minutes to do it. As soon as I gave her the prompt, she looked at her computer, and then me, and then back to her computer, and then back at me.
She saw me writing with her in solidarity. I heard the tapping sound of her keyboard. She was writing, too.
After 15 minutes, I asked her to share. She sighed a few times, and then read it out loud.
It was beautiful. She told a story of how an 8-year-old boy and his parents had taken her course, and when a situation arose within the family, the boy used what he learned to get the family out of an awkward, emotional mess.
She told me I was the first person who believed in her ability to write, and told her that she could write well. She saw how easy it could be because we talked in advance about how to come up with blog topics for her ideal audience. She also knew I wasn’t going to criticize her work or make her feel small and stupid for not being able to write.
Of course, her problem was not that she was incapable of writing. Her PERCEIVED problem was her own thinking that she was not a competent writer, or very creative about coming up with topics.
By the time she left, she had a list of topics, and strategies for coming up with new ones, a freshly written blog post, and a new-found confidence in her abilities. All it took was a few hours and someone saying, “You can do it.” How can we make every session with clients have an identifiable outcome?
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