The Badge I Almost Forgot About

A while ago, I went looking for something I hadn’t thought about in years: my CPCC badge.

CPCC stands for Certified Professional Co-Active Coach.

I earned the credential through the Co-Active Training Institute in 2012, after completing the Co-Active training and a rigorous six-month certification program.

I still had my certificate safely tucked away. But the little digital badge that came with it? Gone. Or so I thought.

I couldn’t find the original email. I couldn’t download it again. And apparently, they only send it once.

So began my slightly ridiculous search for a badge I hadn’t thought about for years.

I realized somewhere in the process:

I had stopped calling myself a coach, but I never really stopped coaching.

When I started painting, art and coaching gradually became intertwined. Actually that was my lofty plan from the start. It took me years to perfect until I didn’t realize what I was actually doing.

You can see it in the questions I ask students.

• What are you noticing?
• What happens if you don’t fix it?
• What would you do if you let your brush take control?
• What does your body tell you when you step back and look?

Students think they are stuck because of the painting. But quite often, the painting is simply where something else shows up.

• Fear of getting it wrong.
• Wanting approval.
• Comparing yourself to someone else.
• Not trusting your own decisions.
• The urge to make something “good” instead of finding out what might happen.

That’s where my coaching background quietly enters the room.

I don’t tell students what their paintings should look like. I’m much more interested in helping them notice what they’re doing, what they’re feeling, and what might happen if they give themselves permission to try something different.

It has become so much a part of the way I teach that I almost stopped noticing it myself.

Until I remembered that badge.

Funny how a small digital image can remind you of a much larger part of your own story.

The badge represents training I completed many years ago. But what I learned didn’t stay in a coaching room. It followed me into the studio.

And perhaps that’s what experience does.

I developed my own coaching style, with paint.

We don’t necessarily leave one part of ourselves behind when we move on to something new. When something new captures our attention, that’s naturally where our focus goes. But there may come a time when we look back and realize that what came before never really left us.

It was simply waiting to be integrated.

What have you learned somewhere along the way that is still quietly showing up in your life today?