profile

Michael McDonald, Transformational Coach

To join my mailing list, including articles and offerings (both local and online):

Featured Post

Coaching Tip: What is Heard

It doesn’t matter what you say; it matters what is heard. Coaching isn’t downloading information from one brain to another; it’s opening up someone’s mind so that they see something new. An insight invariably shifts someone into a new, better world – an internal shift from which miracles outwardly spring forth. Sometimes you might share a story or idea, and especially if it comes from being deeply embodied and having had a profound impact on you, it’s a much more evocative transmission that...
Read now
25 days ago • 1 min read

Coaching Tip: Where’s the Wisdom?

For about the first decade of my coaching career I collected methodologies. I dove into everything that interested me, finding approaches that went deeper with things liked, that felt like colorful variations of other strategies, and approaches that went way out or directly contradicted other approaches. As that approach matured, I started optimizing, filtering, picking favorites – what models and tactics of transformational work gave the biggest ‘bang for the buck’? When a client got more...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read

The Temple of the Heart

I returned from Burning Man about two weeks ago. The clothes have been washed, the shoes rinsed with vinegar, and the bins are back in the closet. There are many tales and lessons being woven around the remarkable rains and days of mud, of people coming together and adapting, bonding, and playing in the face of new challenges. But I’m drawn to share about something else, not unique to this burn but a regular and sacred thread of my personal Burning Man experience over the last couple years:...
2 months ago • 2 min read

The Next Step

Find a limiting belief that’s creating resistance, and see through it. Find a missing action, and take it. Find a conversation you’ve been avoiding, and have it. Find a skill that’s weak enough that it’s holding you back, and practice it. Find an assumption which isn’t happening, and drop it. Find a feeling you’ve been avoiding feeling, and feel it. Find something you’ve been trying to fix, and instead ask yourself what you want to create. Find something you’re struggling with, and ask for...
5 months ago • 1 min read

Living Wisdom at The Center SF (Fri 6/30)

Something awesome is trying to happen, and your job is to allow it.” Inner Guidance​There’s an underlying intelligence behind life that is there to guide us. It doesn’t always make sense, and it is often difficult to see, and sometimes feels scary or disorienting, but it is wiser than our little personal self and can always be trusted. In this workshop we’ll be exploring: The reality-shifting power of insight The nature of your inner guidance What gets in the way of following it How feelings...
6 months ago • 1 min read

Integrity is Aliveness

Integrity gets a bad rap. It’s one of those ‘precious words’ that a lot of my clients have a lot of unconscious stories built up around: It’s both something they really want, or at least think they should want, but they also have a lot of stories about how difficult, rigid, and life-sucking it’s going to be in order to ‘be in integrity’. Most people think of integrity as something structural, e.g. “doing what you say you will do” or “always telling the truth” or “starting what you finish” or...
8 months ago • 2 min read

Successful Victims

Many of my clients start out as ‘successful victims’: They’re talented, hard-working, and have a lot going for them: some are masters at their craft, some have great relationships, some have had great success in their careers, some have created a lot of free time for personal development, etc. In many ways they’re ‘winning’, but they’re also unhappy. They each have their own explanations why they’re unhappy: they need a purpose, a life partner, or more money or success or skill or time. They...
8 months ago • 3 min read

The Missing Conversation

What’s the conversation you’ve been avoiding? When relationships go sour, whether it’s an intimate relationship or family or with potential client or in an organization, chances are there’s a conversation you’re not having. (And chances you instantly knew which conversation that was as soon as I asked!) Which is why I often ask this question in initial coaching conversations when someone is struggling with a relationship, executive, or leadership issue. We often focus on the ups and downs of...
9 months ago • 1 min read

Why It’s Not Working

There’re many potential reasons that ‘it’–that goal, aspiration, path, story that you’re seeking–just doesn’t seem to be working… Thinking You might be in your head instead of in the world. I find that conceptualizing and creating cohesive mental models is great creating more understanding and consistency around something that is working, something you've got a grasp of that you'd like more of. But to get to new progress, you need to get out of your analytical thinking (all memory and...
9 months ago • 2 min read

Making Friends

The desire for community, friends, partnership, etc. has been popping up in many of my conversations (both social and coaching conversations) over the last week. For those of you who are seeking ‘your people’, here are some of my recent insights on the matter: Who you’re with is (indirectly) a product of who you’re being. As you grow and change it’s natural for your friends, relationships, and communities to follow suit. But there’s also usually a big lag time, because relationship change is...
9 months ago • 2 min read
Share this page
Built with ConvertKit