The Pilgrim Coach

Geoff Ashton

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Reflections on a coaching life

EPISODE 1

A Life Going Well

How are you today? And how do you know? In their book, ‘A Life Worth Living, a guide to what matters most’, Miroslav Volf, Matthew Crausman and Ryan Mckinally-Linz give us three facets that are almost universally held to be important elements of a thriving life. If your life is going well with desirable circumstances, feels good, and is lived well (out of your values) it is likely to be well on the road to thriving. To these three I added a fourth. A thriving life is a life of impact beyond ourselves - perhaps as part of a bigger cause, or by leaving a legacy in a phase of life, a particular location, with particular people, or at the end of our mortal existence. In this podcast we explore the first of these facets of a thriving life - a life going well - through the lens of gratitude. I share an exercise you can use to identify not just what you’re grateful for, but also what makes those objects of gratitude important for you. Create your own gratitude inventory as you identify what you are always, especially, unusually and surprisingly grateful for. Once we start thinking about gratitude we find ourselves guided to explore wider issues - who and what contributed to those circumstances for which we are grateful. After all, we did nothing to create the world we were born into, and many of the circumstances that we enjoy are because of the actions of other people - actions that we didn’t, and in fact couldn’t, influence. On this multi-layered journey of discovery, we consider where gratitude might take us, in the company of three fellow-travellers in life - a literal fellow-traveller on the UK railways, a cosmologist, and a fourteenth century English mystic. Some helpful links A Life Worth Living : A guide to what matters most Revelations of Divine Love : Julian of Norwich How to read Julian of Norwich : Podcast - Ryan Mckinally-Linz

23 min
EPISODE 2

A Life Feeling Good

On a scale of 1 - 10, how happy were you yesterday? If the first facet of our gem of the thriving life is a life going well, the second is a life feeling good. But what does the good life feel like, and in what should we invest in order to get it? Since "happiness" is a very flexible term that could encompass anything from joviality, to delight, to love and host of other ideas, I'd like to suggest four ways we could think about this. When you're enjoying the thriving life, what are you feeling? Are you feeling lucky, are you feeling pleasure, are you feeling contentment, or are you feeling joy? And if you think these are just four different ways of talking about the same thing, think again. According to those among history's greatest influencers who think you should pursue contentment, the pursuit of pleasure will give you the opposite. Find somewhere comfortable to relax, and join me as we explore together the key insights of some people - recent and not so recent - who have contributed massively to what we can do about discovering the life which is feeling as it should. Other things you might find interesting The Happiness Hypothesis, Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, Jonathan HaidtA Broad Place, Jurgen MoltmannPaul's Letter to the PhilippiansA Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters MostFinding Happiness, A Monk's Guide to a Fulfilling Life, Abbot Christopher Jamison

23 min
EPISODE 3

A Life Lived Well

One of the more demanding areas to explore in coaching, and in life in general, is how we live out our values. Values don’t just deal with questions of pragmatism - what’s useful or effective - they reflect what we stand for. And to stand for something, usually means that you will find yourself standing against something else. Your values are likely to rub up against other people’s. In short, there is a cost to living out our values consistently. There are plenty of ways you can identify your values, such as through on-line assessments, working through values card decks, by observing your heroes, or in conversation with a coach or mentor. That’s the easy bit - the challenges arise when it comes to putting your values into practice. How about this one. What do you do with the challenge of when two of your values rub up against each other? You stand for justice - fairness for everyone - and you stand for loyalty - you privilege certain close relations, be they to friends, family or your team. What do you do when your values, each of which are good in themselves, clash with each other? There are ways of adjudicating between values when they clash and it makes sense for you to have worked out your own principles for how you will do this before any values challenge arises. I'd like to offer you some clues. To start with, it’s helpful to explore where your values come from. You can follow your heart, follow your family, follow the crowd, follow the rules or follow the One. When you are clear about from where you are drawing your values, you may well be able to find a defining value around which the others revolve. I provide a worked illustration - a values clash - and six different suggestions about how you could resolve it. And I share some straightforward and intuitive coaching questions anyone can use to get a better handle on these issues. The third facet of a thriving life is living it well. I hope that, through your own exploration of these insights, you will be able to live it better.

25 min
EPISODE 4

A life of impact

How many CVs do you have? If you’ve applied for a variety of jobs you probably have several, tailored to your prospective employers. I expect you put them in different formats - chronological, skills based, or a hybrid. What they all have in common is what you can do. But what’s on the CV that other people have on you - the one that reflects who you are - your character CV? It’s the combination of evidence on these two records of your life impact that will give us the focus of the last facet of a thriving life - a life of impact. A great way to bring the two together is through my version of the popular and well-known Ikigai concept. Whilst the general shape of Ikigai is tried and trusted, I found that aspects of it didn’t resonate that well with some of my clients. So I re-worked the concept to meet my own audience - Hereditas. I wonder how you would re-frame it for yours. The four areas I chose around which to explore life direction and impact are these - passions, partners, powers and persistence. The first three of these are focused on what we do - our achievement CV - and the fourth brings into clearer focus the people we are (and are becoming) - our character CV. Building our character CV requires particular strengths. In my last podcast I explored the cardinal virtues (strengths) of fortitude, temperance, justice, wisdom. Here I complete the set with the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. Hereditas provides a framework for giving shape to a thriving life, starting with us. There is an alternative. That is to adopt an existing vision of a thriving life and to make that as your centre. To where are you looking to build your own centre for a life which can go well, feel good, be lived well, and make an impact? In all my work, these are the most foundational of all the questions I confront. I wish you every success in finding answers which lead to a credible, sustainable, and universally applicable vision of a life worth living. Resources Ikigai For the Life of the World: Theology that makes a difference Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun The Gospel of Happiness, How Secular Psychology Points to the Wisdom of Christian Practice Christopher Kazcor

23 min
EPISODE 5 BONUS

Supporting the British armed forced through coaching

The nature of modern warfare is changing rapidly. Whether its deterrence, peacekeeping, or active combat, service personnel need, more than ever, to be adaptable, insightful, skilful and able to recover quickly from set-backs. Thank you for joining me again as I speak to a fellow traveller in life, and the world of coaching, Dr Chris Mackel. Chris is a highly experienced coach with a deep business background. I discuss with Chris his coaching work with senior officers in the British Army. I learn about their career paths, their expertise and their responsibilities - to their troops and their families, to civilian support staff and - when deployed - to the wider communities where they are situated. Recorded in May 2025, we explore the challenges of modern military leadership - from motivation, to adaptability, to responding to failure, and explore two approaches Chris uses in his work. Chris describes the DISC personality profiler for particular use in his one-to-one coaching work, and the Connect 4 model for use in teams - which focuses on trust, constructive conflict, commitment and accountability. We conclude with reflections on what this work with the British military has given to Chris, and how his work and wider life is shaped by his Christian faith. Resources Disc Assessment

44 min
EPISODE 6 BONUS

Chaplaincy coaching in the UK armed forces

Of all the roles in the British armed forces, what is the role of the military chaplain? It's a very important role. Chaplains work with people who have work in demanding situations - sometimes even taking life. We want them to behave in ways that reflect the values of our society, in ways that are morally responsible, even under the pressures of armed conflict. As well as their responsibilities in communicating and maintaining those values, chaplains also perform other vital roles, working with others to maintain morale and resilience among serving personnel and their families. In this podcast I continue my May 2025 conversation with Dr Chris Mackel who, as part of his work with the British army, was coaching people in the chaplaincy role. The role is multi-faceted and nuanced, and in it we explore the relationships between chaplains, senior officers, and others who provide spiritual support to service personnel. We explore the different pressures a chaplain works under - to what extent is their role a career or a vocation? How does coaching support the people performing these roles? Chris also shares his own approach to working with other people of the Christian faith. If you also work in a sector where you have to wrestle with the tensions between vocation and career, or are just interested in getting deeper insights into our armed forces, listen to this follow-up to my previous conversation with Chris about coaching in the forces. Resources The Alpha Course 180 degree feedback in the UK military

27 min

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Reflections on a coaching life

Creator

Geoff Ashton
Episodes

8
Seasons

2
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© 2025 Geoff Ashton