Who would have known that it’s possible to change so much –shift so much dead weight– so fast? Working with Erkan for three months has been a revelation. A phenomenal relief. He has helped me shed light and transformative attention on areas of my productivity that have been holding me back and in pain, and I believe would have continued to do so indefinitely. Because why would a participatory arts-curator / scholar-pedagogue who is community-organising in freedom-respecting tech and regenerative agriculture ever think to get business coaching? Well, because she was chronically stressed and didn’t have the vocabulary to understand that she was drowning in project creep, carried some particularly creative misunderstandings about how to schedule and prioritise tasks, and badly wanted and needed to spend more time with her child and family. And because Erkan is a family friend who could kindly see through all that and was entirely unfazed and clear about none of it being inevitable, or deserved (!), or impossible to deal with. He also has no compunctions about calling me out, or anyone, ever, on the unhelpful stories we have been telling ourselves. Among other things, Erkan modelled for me how to breeze through breakdowns in communication and scheduling, dissolve drama, unapologetically make choices in alignment with my values, and identify areas of genius as well as areas of present incompetence that demand delegation. Erkan and I don’t always agree and have a backlog of historical / eco-political debates to enjoy during family excursions, but I will work with him again in a heartbeat, and it’s a clear fact that, through his support, I’m now able to afford this and so much more, both in time, money, headspace, and professional confidence in my values, my gifts and the abundant –but as it turns out, slower and sweeter– ways of sharing and multiplying them.
More about Erkan here.
allonan 