Why is the Inclusive Life Coaching Certification For Me?

Participants become part of a community that is remodeling their industries.

Shift by shift. Brick by brick..

When we began creating the Inclusive Life Coaching Certification in earnest, the metaphor of remodeling surfaced. 

“Remodeling” means taking a structure that has already been built and changing the shape or form of it in some way.

When it comes to the IL Coaching Certification, the remodeling project that participants are taking on is the remodeling of their own individual practices. In doing so, participants become part of a community that is remodeling their industries. Shift by shift. Brick by brick.

Building a Liberatory Foundation

 Many DEI trainings give lip service to equity and inclusion, which is akin to giving a room a fresh paint job when the floor is caving in. This level of training does not make the building safer for anyone, particularly for people with marginalized identities. DEI lip-service reassures those with privilege that they are good people without challenging any power structures.

Without a deep and strong foundation in diversity, equity, and inclusion, a coach in the western world is almost certainly going to tend to reinforce dominant norms and ideals. Not only does this perpetuate unjust systems and practices and harm our clients with (oftentimes, multiple) marginalized identities, it effectively blocks new ideas, new solutions, and authentic individual expression.

The IL Coaching Certification is designed to go beyond relatively comfortable conversations about implicit bias to the foundation of our practices, the foundation of our understanding of social identities, and the ways in which identities are impacted by the systems we are all working and living within. In this program, we will find where the foundation is weakened with dry rot, determine where walls need to be knocked down, all for the purpose of building a structure that is spacious, safe, and inclusive.

So, is this for you?

What’s Involved in the Remodel 

The premise of the Inclusive Life Coaching Certification is to remodel industries and create shifts brick by brick to advance change. This involves some serious work and commitment. Below, we’ve laid out the mindset and proverbial tools you’ll need as you gear up and decide to join this program. The IL Coaching Certification is for you if: 

1.  You are committed to dismantling all forms of oppression (racism, anti-Blackness, cis-het patriarchy, ableism, classism, ageism, healthism, sizeism, extractive capitalism…) in your work practices and client and colleague relationships even if you don’t fully understand what this commitment means and requires of you.
2. You desire authentic and transformative relationships. The IL Coaching Certification is built on the reality that we cannot do this work alone. You will be part of a small and intimate community, receive 1-on-1 coaching, and participate in ongoing courageous conversations with the Inclusive Life instructors and co-participants. Being part of this authentic community will change you and the way you perceive, work, and relate to the world around you.
3. You want accountability. So many folks do not want to hear about their mistakes, let alone take responsibility for them. Privilege obscures our understanding of other people’s lived experiences. Thus, we cannot be left to our own devices. In the IL Coaching Certification program, we practice generous accountability with one another, trusting that none of us get free if we do not share hard truths with one another, nor if we brutalize one another along the way. In this community, we also grow in our capacity to practice generous self-accountability.
4. You practice humility: As people who have chosen careers in the helping professions, many of us have an investment in being good and doing good. Having our identities dependent on our self-perception of goodness can shroud our own culpability and collusion in systems of oppression. By participating in the IL Coaching Certification, you are signaling that you can look at your participation in and perpetuation of these harmful systems.
5. You are willing to be uncomfortable. We cannot unravel our deep socialization without pain and discomfort. You will be stretched and challenged by this process. Deliberately turning inward and developing a practice of inquiry around discomfort are capacities you need to be willing to grow.
6. You understand that understanding is not enough. Our socialization lies beneath our cognitive awareness in our nervous system, which perpetuates our biases and social contracts, betraying our best intentions. The IL Coaching Certification is a body-centered approach to liberation, which involves getting out of our heads and into the body where we can learn to stay, experiencing our sensations and emotions without necessarily acting on them, overriding them, or stuffing them.
7. You want to show up. One of our all-time favorite quotes by our friend Congressman Jamie Raskin is “Change is made by the people who show up.” Change is made, not by the ones who know the answers, nor the ones who have experience or know a lot of things. Change is made by the folks who bring themselves imperfectly into the mix of struggle. 
8. You are willing to dis-integrate before you integrate new ways of being.  We unknowingly replicate systems of oppression in our work and relationships until we identify the ways in which we have internalized them. When we meet patterns of oppression within ourselves, we come to a place where disintegration is required– in other words, an unraveling and disentangling from these deep patterns. It is a process that must be done in the presence of others who can witness and lovingly hold space for your eventual reintegration. 
9. You join us as a learner and a teacher. We all have our learning edges, where we cannot fully understand the barriers holding back people of various marginalized communities. You will be a great fit for this program if you know you are not arriving with nothing to offer this community, nor is anyone else.
10. You are ready to lead. The world needs leaders who model and prioritize inclusion, equity, belonging, and liberation, and are willing to take risks, leverage privilege, and develop the analysis and skills to step in and step up.

Inclusive Life is not not the only place to take a deeper dive into this work. We urge all coaches, therapists, and helping professionals to find an aligned and in-depth training, no matter if it’s this program or not.

What we offer is a deep and personal commitment to meet you where you are now, with your particular strengths, life experiences, circumstances, and struggles. The program will be different because of your presence, along with the needs and questions that surface. Together, in community, we will practice and build something different. 

One of the main reasons for remodeling is that the old structure isn’t working anymore. It’s outdated and it is structurally unsound, making it unsafe. 

We ask you to question if your work and your industry need remodeling. 

If yes, we– and the Inclusive Life Coaching Certification– are here for you.

Want to Learn More? 

We invite you to hear directly from Nicole about why this certification matters and all the pertinent details involved in the program.