Dear Courageous Pals,

I always have so much fun playing with gremlins! Literally…not only have I drawn many of my gremlins running sessions like these in the past, I actually needle-felted several of my gremlins when I was in coaching training.

Gremlins are those little inner saboteurs who show up and get in our way, over and over. Our gremlins are always personal to us, but they might be recognizeable to others, too: “Uncle Underestimator” or “Miss Bossy-Pants”; “Proctor Pinch-Penny” and so forth. They don’t get in our way because they like making our lives miserable - far from it: they do it because they’ve got a positive or protective intention for us and they don’t know any other way of carrying that intention out. Gremlins are acting for the right reason, but with the wrong approach. Fortunately, you know better: you’ve probably got capabilities and resources your gremlins just don’t know about. In our session we discussed ways of understanding the good things that our gremlins want for us, and how we can update their helpful but misguided suggestions with actions and beliefs that will really work for us right now.

Science behind the slice

‘Gremlins’ is a fairly common term among the coaching community, but as a core psychological concept you might also hear it referred to as the ‘saboteur’, as in the book The Saboteur at Work by Michael Drayton, or the similar, related concept the ‘inner critic’ which we covered in our March Courage Pie. Here’s an insightful open-access article about several different gremlin archetypes and another way of getting out of the old gremlin patterns. And just for you, Courageous Pals, a peek into the Caitlin Vault of Archived Posts with further guidance on getting to grips with those gremlins.

Coming up…

Not long now! On 8 November I’m doing an online workshop for the Yorkshire Festival of Story about finding courage in the complicated, my favourite topic! Please do join me. Want to find out more about the session? Read my interview by the Festival organisers.

In January, Solas Yoga and I will be hosting an in-person yoga and group reflection 90-minute workshop here in Edinburgh. Give your new year a boost with guided visualisations, journaling, and gentle movement to get you pointing in the right direction. Find out more!

Last call, last call!

Reminder that from January I will start running Courage Pie as a series of free walking lunchtime meetups in the Meadows - so these are your last few chances to experience Courage Pie online. Join us in these dark and dreich winter days for the next one coming up on Tuesday 25 November, 7 PM. We’ll be looking at resistance to change: what happens when we really do want and intend to change, but something is holding us back?

That’s all the news for now; I hope your gremlins are just as spooky and/or friendly as you want them to be as we approach Hallowe’en!

Caitlin