Aliveness Over Conditioning

What identity coaching is really about

Much of modern life trains us to become functional before it teaches us to become alive. Identity coaching begins with a simple question: what happens when we stop organising our lives around adaptation, expectation and inherited conditioning, and start organising them around aliveness instead?

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I’m very aware that I haven’t been writing on here much.

It has not been from a lack of ideas. If anything, quite the opposite. If you could see the squirrelling away of thoughts that I have across notebooks, writing documents and content plans you’ll see that I got myself into an option paralysis. One that got cemented in the further fragmentation of my energy between coaching work, bespoke workshops, brand development and the thing that any sensitive, creative folk can hardly bear to whisper “sales…shhhh”.

Unfortunately, it was writing that took the hit.

Writing — the thing that lights me up. And for my flavour of neurodiversity, is the strongest medicine to anchor me so existentially back into myself. Like a Freaky Friday jolt back into your body, you wonder what fourth wall you’d gotten lost through in the interim.

But enough is enough. This is a sacrifice I can’t condone within myself anymore. The fragmentation needs to stop — and to do that, life required a good spring pruning. Which I have done.

So I’m back, and intend to be with you all far more regularly.

When The Path Under Your Feet Becomes Clear

Talk to any coach about their own story of why they do what they do, and they will usually end up with the punchline — “I help others navigate what I struggled with myself”.

And so while I’ve been going through this patch of simplifying my life, to remove the superfluous friction, and create structures that genuinely support me, I’ve also been asking the question:

What runs through it all?

What unites the themes of my workshops, the incubating article ideas, the patterns that show up again and again in the types of coaching clients that tend to benefit most, and what have I been grappling with myself, my whole life?

And just like that, it started to emerge…

How do you rewild yourself? To allow yourself to be who you are when you’re feeling most alive and naturally expressed? When eros is running through your veins. When permission to be innate was never up for debate. To believe that I can have myself as well as having relationships with others. If all the conditioning that society has imparted on you, intentionally or not, were to loosen its grip. To have the freedom to change it up and evolve based on those inklings of inspiration, rather than fall into the consistency as king trap in every frickin’ corner of your life (unless that’s your spice of life).

And I saw it…

What becomes possible if aliveness, over conditioning, becomes the organising principle for one’s life?

And I could see the different fragmented strands coil together as one…

• Through my writing I attempt to articulate what makes up our existence through philosophical, creative and experiential musings.

• In my workshops I guide others into the creatively-rich functionalities of our elusive psyches and culture.

• In my Artist In The Boardroom collaborative research project (still ongoing), we are rewilding some of those most sensitive to the workings of aliveness (Artists) into businesses, so that their value can contribute not only to culture but to where collective power is really held.

• In my own art and poetry, I dive into the darkest corners to try and inspect and somehow grasp my own eros. My own life-force.

• And on my own path of individuation, I’ve trialed and tested, fallen over, gone round in circles, mades leaps, been struck by epiphanies, gritted through and been humbled repeatedly. And each time I get clearer about myself as well as the structures, tools and frameworks that are getting me there.

And in my coaching work, well… it is helping others to walk the path back to themselves also — in what I realise now is — Identity Coaching.

I explain more of what that is below. But I realised that even random, playful ideas I had were also centering around this topic. For years I’ve had an idea for a greetings card that says “Congratulations, You’re More Your Than You’ve Ever Been!”

The answer had been there all along.

What Is Identity Coaching?

Essentially, I help people navigate transitions and reinventions when the way they’ve been living or working no longer works for them.

Usually people come to me when something that used to help them succeed isn’t helping anymore. It might be perfectionism, people-pleasing, overachieving, masking, or an old idea of success.

Truly, there is nothing wrong with them as a person. No matter how much they may have internalised that story. What’s really happening is that they’ve just reached a point where the old strategy has become too expensive to their energy resources to keep doing.

So our work is to re-anchor them to themselves.

To who they feel they are when they are feeling most grounded, alive, and naturally expressed. And understanding the stories, beliefs and societal conditioning that are, unconsciously shaping their decisions and pulling them away from that.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
“Annalise has a knack for giving names to things which previously only presented as feelings”
— Doug Belshaw, Systems Design

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
“I booked a Personal Mythology session thinking it would be interesting. I didn’t expect transformation. In two hours, Annalise helped me see my true essential nature.
— Kate Griffiths, Colour Psychology Consultant

How do you know if Identity Coaching is the right approach for you?

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
“Annalise helped me understand my thought patterns in a way that felt empowering rather than overwhelming. She created space for me to explore how my brain works while still helping me bring clarity and structure to my thinking.”
— Bethan David, Office Manager

Well first of all, you might have thought to yourself things like:

“Everything is technically going well, but I don’t know why I’m feeling off”

“I’m figuring out what’s next”

“I don’t want to lose myself in this role”

“Why do I keep getting burnt out?”

…Any of it sound familiar?

I often say that I tend to work most with the creatives, changemakers and the purpose-led businesses. The ones who tend to hold the weight of the world’s injustices on their shoulders. The sensitive, altruistic folk that have, up until now, learnt to over-function for the struggling world around them, while often denying their own needs on an hourly basis. The canaries in the mine who are some of the first to gasp for air in a world that, quite frankly, wasn’t designed with them in mind.

And we DON’T just get them coping better, polishing their armour before they push harder to become someone they’re not like traditional coaching.

We explore what would actually change if they finally designed themselves into that flourishing future they’ve been advocating for.

If they did things differently — and actually did things like themself.

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Start Your Journey Back To Your Own Aliveness

So if something in this resonates, you’re welcome to reach out and we can explore.

From my eros to yours,
Annalise, xxx