Maria Iliffe-Wood – författare

One of the hallmarks of maturity as a coach is awareness of how your values, beliefs, and other factors affect your coaching interventions. It takes skill to notice these influences which can manifest both physically and mentally during coaching, while simultaneously ensuring a client focused approach. Coaching Presence examines how self-awareness can be built across key aspects of coaching practice, introducing a model that will help you make a conscious and deliberate choice for every approach or intervention that you use with your client. It explores how, by paying close attention to the motivations behind every coaching choice, you can minimize the unconscious negative influences and bias to produce the best outcome for the client and their wider system. It will also help you recognize when conscious visibility expressed explicitly to the client may actually be the best coaching solution. An online supporting resource includes a ''Leader as Mediator'' white paper.

What happens when you combine six students and one teacher with the Jack Grapes Method Writing (JGMW) programme? Magic! Jules Swales ran a summer refresher class, for the students who''d been studying JGMW with her for a couple of years. The students attended with the only intention of being better writers. The short stories in this book are examples of what''s possible when people use their superpower, write like you talk, combined with the JGMW exercises. 

Over the five weeks each writer used the exact same method to come up with six unique pieces of writing. Jules Swales describes the method and the exercises at the beginning of each week so that you can see what the students were up to and be surprised by what showed up. Each piece is a profound and individual expression brought about through the straightforward techniques of JGMW. Whilst the authors have studied the Method Writing for around two years, every piece in this book was written in the five-week period of one summer refresher class. 

"The writers in this book speak as human beings, as all of us, caught in this thing we call life, a shimmering kind of experience between our being born and our passing away. These writers in this book are witnesses to, what William Faulkner called, "the human heart in conflict with itself." If you''re hungry, this book will feed you and nourish your heart."

Jack Grapes, Author of Method Writing and Last of the Outsiders

The Authors

There are six authors involved in the creative pieces in this book. They hail from the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada and Panama. They met through online Method Writing classes taught by Jules Swales, who has contributed her expertise as a teacher to this book. 

Not feeling good enough? Want to feel different about your life and learn how to feel ok?  Imposter Syndrome, excessive worrying, anxiety, people pleasing and putting the needs of others above your own is common in millions of people. If personal development and self-help books didn''t work for you then you will want to read A Caged Mind. This book may evoke insights within you that have the potential to change your life. It is NOT a "how to fix yourself " or a "how to change your life in 7 days" book. It is a book of hope. 

Maria Iliffe-Wood, a woman in her fifties, wanted to feel better. In her life there was an undercurrent of unease, anxiety and never feeling good enough. She spent years and thousands of pounds looking for a way to fix herself. Nothing brought her the relief she was looking for. Then a spiritual understanding changed everything. These short snapshots in time, over time, show how insights changed her life at a deep level. They show that you don''t need books on how to be happy, you need a simple understanding of how life works, to live an easier, better life. Insights changed Maria''s life. Reading this book may evoke insights within you that have the potential to change yours.  

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Reviews

"Between 2013-2019 sales of self-help books were up by 12%, running somewhere around 18.6 million volumes. People of all walks of life buy self-help books. They read one book after another hoping to ease their discontent and unhappiness. Maria Iliffe-Wood''s book A Caged Mind is part of a new genre of self-help writing, that takes the reader through the writer''s own personal experiences, as a way to show the healing journey. I was captivated as I read A Caged Mind. I was drawn in by the author''s willingness to reveal herself on the page. I found myself relating to her stories and anxiously turning the pages to see what and how she negotiated the next experience. The writing is true and honest, as Iliffe-Wood takes us on a journey with her through myriad twists and turns of her life and what she saw and learned as she went. And like any great book, as I read A Caged Mind, I was both entertained and educated. This is a must-read for anyone who is a human. The last self-help book you will ever need to read."

Jules Swales, Writing Teacher and Poet

"A Caged Mind speaks straight to the heart and soul. I was mesmerized from the first line to the last. In simple, skillful language that crafts vivid images of moments in her life, the author describes spiritual insights that freed her from limits she created with the power of Thought. Through Maria Iliffe-Wood''s unvarnished voice and generous sharing, we see what became possible for her outside of the caged mind. Her story is the human story, our story, and can awaken in all of us hope, freedom from suffering, and astonished awareness of a daring, creative, full way to live. I will recommend this book to all of my clients at home and abroad. To quote the last line of the book, it is good!"

Linda Sandel Pettit, Ed.D.

Self-Expression Coach and Intuitive Spirituality Teacher, 3 Principles Practitioner, Author, Counseling Psychologist, Retired, Owner, 3 Principles Intervention, LLC

"Maria''s journey to freedom from the cage of her thinking is brutally and beautifully intimate....heartbreakingly real and inspiring!"

Steve Chandler, Author of Creator and Right Now