Product Frequently Asked Questions
Questions About the Journey - the Self-Guided Life Coaching Program
- What is life coaching?
Life coaching is a powerful process of transformation that can empower, shift, and change your life. It helps you examine how you act, think, and feel, and helps you shift your energy, mind, and heart toward a direction that leads to achieving your life’s goals. The Coaching Sanctuary is working together with renowned executive coach Wendy Wallbridge of On Your Mark Coaching & Consulting to create the Journey. Wendy is the creator of the dynamic Spiral Up Process, a founding member of the Coaching Sanctuary and a pioneer in the coaching field. For over two decades she has coached individuals to gain clarity of purpose and vision, unlock their power and creativity, and make their mark in the world. Her clients include executives from Fortune 500 companies such as Oracle, Apple, Wells Fargo, Disney, Intel, McAfee, and many others.
- What happens in life coaching?
In life coaching, you are shown how to adopt techniques and practices that help you close the gap between where you are now and what you want to achieve. You learn how to deal with negative thoughts and mental blocks and refocus your energy on achieving positive results. By making choices for yourself that are more purposeful and fulfilling, you begin to take your life to the next level.
- How do I know this will work for me?
In two words: experience and science. The Coaching Sanctuary was developed by a team of professionals with years of experience working with women of all ages. The team has researched what works and what doesn’t when it comes to motivating people to make positive changes in their lives. In addition, we integrate the findings of numerous authors, psychologists, and researchers who study the science of change and the perception of happiness from a variety of perspectives. The Coaching Sanctuary brings these findings into practice, guiding you toward creating a life filled with purpose and meaning.
- What happens in the Journey?
- In the Journey, you learn a step-by-step transformative process to transition from living a Life by Default, to living an Inspired Life. Transformation is different from change. Change is a function of altering what you are doing to improve something that is already possible in your life. Transformation happens when you shift who you are being, and allows you to create something that is currently not possible in your life. When you embark on this Journey you learn how to shape your mood, thoughts, feelings, words, and actions so that your life becomes a reflection of your truest intentions, deepest desires, and authentic self.
- What does it mean to Spiral Up?
It’s a process that is used in the Journey. The process of "Spiraling Up" represents the curlicue way that life teaches us and awakens us to our potential. When you think about which experiences most helped you grow into the person you are today, it probably wasn't when life was gliding along as smooth as silk. Quite the contrary, its life’s challenges that evolve us. When something interrupts our lives—whether it’s divine discontent or a full-blown crisis—we have a choice. We can resist the interruption or we can learn from the experience and transform. By learning to 'Spiral Up™', we go through the tough stuff, not around it. We learn to open and release what no longer fits, allowing our authentic selves to be revealed. Even if you have gone through the Journey once, you'll find that it’s like a spiral—you want to come back to it to keep growing. This Spiral Up Process is a trademark from Wendy Wallbridge, the founding advisor of Coaching Sanctuary.
- What is the community board and how does it work?
- The community board is a private place within Coaching Sanctuary where members can share thoughts about their experience, ask questions, seek the help and advice of others, and inspire other like-minded members toward personal growth.
Members can post questions or inspirations to the community board, reply to other members’ posts, get inspiration from the Journey, and add hyperlinks or images to their own posts and replies. Members can also follow other members or particular posts that they find of interest.
To follow another member, open a post from the member you find interesting and click the pin next to their name. To follow a particular post, open the post you find interesting and click on the pin at the top center of that posting. You can also quickly view your own postings, or receive inspiration from one of the chapters of the Journey, by clicking on the appropriate post.
To keep you in the loop, you will receive an email notification every week that includes all new or updated posts and replies from the members you have chosen to follow.
Questions About the Journal - Your Secure Online Journal
- What is the Journal?
The Journal is a secure, online diary that can be used anytime, anywhere, either alone or in conjunction with the other tools, to capture your responses, feelings, and reactions as you advance through the Coaching Sanctuary.
The Journal is used extensively as part of the Journey to record your answers to the exercises and practices. It can also be used as a private place to jot down experiences, dreams, ideas, desires, thoughts and more.
- How do I upload pictures to the Journal?
You can upload up to three pictures to each Journal entry to make them more personal or to rouse a certain feeling or memory associated with each entry. These can either be from your personal collection, or stock photos or images from Punchstock, a royalty-free website that pulls photos and images from other sites including Getty Images and Jupiter Images.
To add a personal picture to your Journal entry, just click on the blank picture icon in the top left-hand corner of the Journal page and follow the prompts. The picture you wish to upload will need to be saved somewhere on your computer, either on your desktop or in one of your local file directories.
To add a stock picture from one of the royalty-free websites, you must first copy it from the website to your computer. To do this, simply browse from the royalty-free collections, or type a descriptive word, such as 'inspiration,' in the search field at the top left-hand corner of the website. To select a picture, just right-click on it, and then select 'Save Image As' from the options that appear in the pop-up window. Next, browse your computer for the location where you want to save the picture, name it and click 'Save.' Now, from the Journal, click on the blank photo icon in the top left-hand corner and follow the prompts to upload the picture (same as you did for entering a personal photo).
Once you have uploaded a total of four pictures to your Journal, they will be displayed in a filmstrip that you can refer to from time to time for inspiration. If you upload more than four pictures, you can use the scroll up/down arrows to view them all. Your uploads will also be displayed in the Journal for that selected entry.
Or send a photo from your smart phone e.g. iPhone to your picture album and import it from there to your journal entry.
Questions About the Vision and On Goals - Visualize Your Goals
- How does the Coaching Sanctuary help me set and achieve goals?
We all have visions and goals. Sometimes we’ll tell a friend about a goal we have, or daydream wistfully about it, but never come any closer to achieving it. The Coaching Sanctuary makes your goals more solid and achievable by giving you a concrete set of steps you can follow to move steadily forward. Each time you set a new goal, you will also define it.
These definitive details of a goal describe exactly what you want to achieve, the obstacles in your way, what it will feel like to achieve your goal, and how you will reward yourself at the end. At this point in the process, you will also set regular practices and actions that are associated with each goal to divide your larger goal into smaller, bite-size steps.
Sometimes focusing on the larger goal can seem overwhelming, but tackling a single step is quite achievable and surprisingly rewarding. Friends can also be great supporters in helping you reach your goals. Plus, working together is much more fun.
- What is the Vision Board?
This part is really fun. When you first begin to set your goals, you get to create a Vision Board: a collection of pictures that you can customize to represent the personal goals you have set for yourself. These can be picture, magazine clippings, inspirational words, or whatever encouraging and motivational images you choose to bring your goal to life. The more goals you customize—and the more you customize your goals—the greater the personal inspiration your Vision Board will provide you toward achieving them.
- How do I add pictures to my Goals & Vision Board?
The idea of adding pictures (photos and images) to your Goals & Vision Board is to provide you with a vision of what your life would look like once you have achieved all your goals. The pictures can inspire, motivate and encourage you to achieve your goals. These can either be from your personal collection, or stock photos or images from Punchstock, a royalty-free website that pulls photos and images from other sites including Getty Images and Jupiter Images.
To add a personal picture to your goal, simply click on the blank photo icon to the right of the Goal Details. The picture you wish to upload will need to be saved somewhere on your computer—either on the desktop or in one of your local file directories.
To add a stock picture from one of the royalty-free websites, you must first copy the picture from the website to your computer. To do this, simply browse from the royalty-free collections or type a descriptive word, such as 'weight loss,' in the search field at the top left-hand corner of the website. To select a picture, just right click on it, and then select 'Save Image As' from the options that appear in the pop-up window. Next, browse your computer for the location where you want to save the picture, name it and click 'Save.' Now, from Goal Details, click on the blank photo icon to the right and follow the prompts to upload the picture (same as you did for entering a personal photo). The pictures that you upload for each goal will be displayed on the Vision Board and in the Goal Details section for that goal.
You can also send a photo from your favorite photo application, such as Photoshop, Photoshop Express, Elements, or Picasa, by sharing the photo with the email address photos@csvisionboard.com. Your photo will automatically find it's way to your private Coaching Sanctuary album. From there you can add it to your goals or your journal, and it will show up in your vision board. The photos that you upload are only used for your personal Coaching Sanctuary album and cannot be used anywhere else.
The process of defining your goals—by looking at what you want to achieve, how you want to achieve it, what prevents you from achieving it and how you want to be rewarded when you achieve it—is enhanced with the addition of pictures. This allows you to visualize the goal, where you want to be and what your life will look like when you get there.
- How to send a photo from my cell or smart phone (e.g. iPhone) to the Goal & Vision Board?
Select your photo, click on "Email photo", then enter the email address photos@csvisionboard.com. That's it. Your photo will automatically find it's way to your private Coaching Sanctuary album. From there you can add it to your goals or your journal, and it will show up in your vision board. The photos that you upload are only used for your personal Coaching Sanctuary album and cannot be used anywhere else.
A few tips:
- Make sure the email address you send it from is the same as the email address you use to log in to Coaching Sanctuary account.
- Add this email address photos@csvisionboard.com to your address book for faster uploads.
- There is no need to add a subject line.
- You can also send a photo from your favorite photo application, such as Photoshop, Photoshop Express, Elements, or Picasa, by sharing the photo with the email address photos@csvisionboard.com.
- You can upload one or more photos at a time with just one email.
- What are the Activities, and why are they so important?
There are two types of Activities that you will schedule as part of goal setting—Practices and Actions. This is where you begin see real change. It’s also where you need to remain steadfast in your commitment to yourself and the life you want to live. Because here, you’ll be scheduling Practices and Actions that get you closer to achieving your goal and you will also begin replacing your old habits with new, positive, healthy ones that you perform on a consistent basis. You will create some Practices as part of the Journey, and create others specific to the goals that you set for yourself.
A Practice is something that you do more frequently and may also be specific to your goal, such as spending 25 minutes per day on the treadmill, working on a software tutorial, or attending a series of lectures on a subject of interest.
An Action is an activity that you do once, such as purchasing that treadmill you have always been thinking about.
Successful completion of your Practices and Actions helps you to achieve your goals and moves your closer to the life you were destined for.
Questions About Progress - It's Progress, not Perfection!
- What is Progress and why is it important?
In order to transform, we must evolve, and the best way to measure how successful we are at something is to measure our Progress every step of the way. This can be as simple as standing on the scale every week to see how much weight we have lost, depositing money into a savings account each month to build for retirement, or checking things off our daily to-do list. Each activity gets us closer to our goal and every time we check a Practice or Action off the list, we Progress.
In Coaching Sanctuary, Progress is where you measure your success—your personal growth. Are you moving forward with your goals? Are you completing an Action by the due date or doing your Practices as frequently as you set out to do? You measure your Progress as often as you like. It is as simple as checking something off the list!
- How does Coaching Sanctuary measure my Progress?
The Progress tool in Coaching Sanctuary is designed to look like a personal notebook. The first two pages list your most recent accomplishments and current goals. The next two pages show all of your Practices and Actions—the ones you created when defining your goals. This allows you to visualize and manage all your activities in one place. You can even print out a copy to keep with you at all times. You can also hang it on the refrigerator as a daily reminder of what needs to be done.
Each Practice and Action includes the frequency or due date. When something is completed, you simply check it off the list to earn reward points. If you need to update an activity, such as extend a due date or change the frequency of a practice, just click on that activity in your notebook and update the date or frequency in your goal detail. Changes that are made will automatically update in your notebook so you can be assured that your to-do list is always current.
We at Coaching Sanctuary want you to succeed, so we designed the Progress tool to be fun and easy to use. What better way to jump-start your day and get motivated to stay on track than to see your last seven accomplishments listed on the first page of your notebook. Each time you visit your Progress tool and update your activities, you gain greater inspiration and motivation to Progress toward a more fulfilled life.
- What is the Assessment why is it so important?
Located on the home screen, the Assessment tool is a visual barometer that captures how you feel about the work you are doing in Coaching Sanctuary.
While Progress measures how you are advancing with the tools, the Assessment measures how you are feeling with your Journey, Journal writing, Goals and scheduled Activities. It will help you to tap into your emotions, highlight areas where you might be procrastinating, and pinpoint where you need to focus more of your energy.
The Assessment works on a sliding scale basis. For each activity, whether it is the Journey, Journal writing, Goals, Practices or Actions, the Assessment tool will measure your emotional state—are you exhilarated, excited, satisfied, unsatisfied or frustrated with yourself?
This self-assessment is an important part of your personal growth in Coaching Sanctuary. By taking an honest emotional inventory, every step of the way, you will learn to become more in tune with yourself and more adept at creating real change.
Questions About the Community Board - Share Your Experience
- Does the Coaching Sanctuary provide any networking tools?
While it is not a social networking site, the Coaching Sanctuary does provide programs that allow you to engage friends in your Journey, and even extend a helping hand out to complete strangers. And unlike social networking sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook, ours is a community of friends, one that stresses the quality, not quantity, of relationships. It’s more about the depth of your relationships and how well you and your friends support one another, as well as other women in transformation.
- How does the community board differ from other social networking sites?
Content in the community board is specific to the elements of the personal journey in Coaching Sanctuary. It doesn’t matter if you are reading through a chapter of the Journey and have an insight about "The Power of Gratitude", need some encouragement on a goal you want to achieve, or are looking for a boost in starting a certain activity that you committed to doing, you can make a post to the community board from every element of application.
This means when you are in Chapter "The Power of Gratitude", you can see all the posts from other members who have commented on the chapter. This unique benefit adds a new dimension to your personal transformation and is an invaluable tool for support and encouragement from the like-minded and vibrant women of Coaching Sanctuary.
Another thing that sets the community board apart from other sites is that only members of Coaching Sanctuary can access it so it is an exclusive, secure network. Starting end of June members pay an annual subscription to use the community board in conjunction with the other tools in Coaching Sanctuary. This allows us to weed out those who use networking sites for exposure and personal gain, and to discourage the posting of information that is irrelevant or unnecessary.Members also have the choice of posting to the community board anonymously or with one’s identity revealed. If a member wants to remain anonymous, they can create a separate profile and upload a different photo from the one on their personal Coaching Sanctuary account.
- How to use categories to filter topics fast?
- The community is designed to that you'll find topics fast and easy. It's organizes posts by various categories that are related to the elements you will encounter as you advance through Coaching Sanctuary. Use these categories to filter.
The categories include Aspects of Your Life, the Five Creative Powers of the Journey, and Inspirations. To quickly browse through postings from a particular category, just select from the list on the community board and all the posts under that category will be displayed.
In "Aspects of Your Life", you will find categories that represent the most significant areas of your life. These include: Business/Career, Finances/Money, Health/Well-being, Friends/Family, Partner/Romance, Personal Growth, Fun/Recreation and Physical Environment. Coaching Sanctuary also displays these "Aspects of Your Life" on your home screen (coming in July) represented in the form of flower petals, which, together, form the flower of your life.
In the "Five Creative Powers", the categories include Energy, Mind, Feelings, Speech and Actions—the same themes that you will encounter in the Spiral Up Process of the Journey.
Inspirations refer to the Coaching Sanctuary elements that are interwoven throughout the application, such as Getting Started, Staying Motivated, Stories, Exercises, Vision/Goals, Inner Vow, Activities, and Gifts/Rewards.
You choose which categories are the most important to you at any given time.
- Who monitors the community board for content?
- We want you to feel comfortable sharing your experience with other members, and encourage you to post to the community board as part of your daily practice.
If a member comes across a posting that they feel is inappropriate, they can report it by clicking on the report button at the bottom of the post.
Coaching Sanctuary staff may choose to monitor or not monitor posts.
Repeated posting of inappropriate content could result in a member being asked to leave Coaching Sanctuary and forfeit their account. We reserve the right to delete any posts that we deem derogatory, inappropriate or that do not serve and support our members.
- What are the community board guidelines?
- First and foremost, respect each other. We all come from different backgrounds and have different life experiences. Being respectful of one another and treating each other with dignity and respect will enrich the culture, liveliness and purpose of the community board.
We encourage you to express yourself, share your experience, and offer your opinion when it feels right. Please do so in a respectful, loving, caring, supportive and positive way.
Each experience resonates differently with different people. There is no right or wrong way to post, nor is there one opinion that is the right one. We strongly believe that every member of Coaching Sanctuary is a resourceful, smart and loving individual who knows what’s best for her.
Coaching Sanctuary is a place for all origins, religions, abilities and sexual orientations. By participating in the community board, you agree to respect this variety and embrace the different views and beliefs of each member.
Please do not upload photos or any other material to our public areas (for example, our community board) unless you possess the right to do so (the copyrights). And while we don't monitor your private postings and uploads, please follow our Guidelines and Terms of Use in all areas of the Coaching Sanctuary.
- Can I set a screen name?
We want your experience in the community board to be a positive one. In order for you to feel safe confiding your inner most thoughts, feelings and experiences with the other members, we give you the option of participating in the community board anonymously.
The profile that you create for the community board can differ from the one that you use for your Coaching Sanctuary account, so if you want to remain anonymous when you post to the community board, you can. If you want to reveal your identify, that is fine too.
You choose how you want the community to view you? Who will you be? Select a photo or image that represents who you want to be. Pick a screen name that suits you. It can be a nickname, or a character that calls to you, or the name of someone who inspired you. Have fun with it. The experience is yours to create.
Please do not post personally identifiable information about yourself, others or businesses. Do not upload photos unless you possess the copyright to those photos.
Questions About the Compass - Make Authentic Choices
- What is the compass?
The compass is your personal navigator to an authentic life. It is designed to highlight key reflections from the Journey and guide you toward the right choices to help you achieve your goals.
There are eight points to the compass representing affirmations, gratitude, values, longings, peak experiences, strengths, and energy and joy. The last point on the compass is a scratch pad for you to include other thoughts and ideas that come to mind.As you progress through Coaching Sanctuary, you will develop these points as part of your journey and gain more clarity on these key aspects of your life – you will create your own personal navigator reflecting your true authentic self.
- What is the significance of each point on the Compass?
- Each point of the compass represents a significant area of your life – those areas which define how you think, what matters most to you, what choices you make, and how those choices impact your life and those around you.
The northern most point of the compass is your personal affirmation – or your personal mantra. This can be as broad or as specific as you wish. “There is a plan and you are being led”, “Don’t stop before the miracle”, or “You can do whatever you set your mind to.” These are just a few examples of the affirmations you can choose from - or you can create some of your own.
The next three pointers represent your values, what you are most grateful for, and what you long for most. Your values help guide your decisions toward living an authentic life. Your gratitude list reminds you to focus on the little things in life that bring you joy and fulfillment. Longings help you to identify what you “really” want most for yourself.
Your peak experiences represent your major accomplishments and encourage you to reach out to new opportunities. Your strengths symbolize the characteristics that help you achieve your goals. When you need a pick me up, you can refer to your list for energy and joy – those things that bring you fulfillment and give you energy.
Finally, there is the scratch pad – a place for you to jot down ideas and thoughts on what you want to preserve or areas where you might want new inspiration. - Navigating the Compass
- To select one of the points of the compass, just use your mouse to move the red arrow from north to south or east to west. Click on any of the compass pointers to open the scroll to the left and begin filling in your list.
To add a new thought, idea or reflection, just click in the text box and select from the pre-defined answers or draw from your experience in the journey to create some of your own. You can also click the left and right arrows at the top of the scroll to move to the next pointer topic.
At any time you can use your scratch pad for ideas, inspirations and reflections that have not found a home yet. You can even print out each list to carry with you at all times for guidance, inspiration or reflection.
Questions About Sharing and Giving
- How can I share my experiences with my friends?
How many times have we all turned to friends for encouragement, compassion, and support? That’s why we made a place for your friends on the Coaching Sanctuary site. It’s easy to include them. Just invite them to participate in your Journey of transformation, share a great experience with them by using the community board, scheduling an activity together, telling them about an inspiring Journal entry, or even sharing the same goal and supporting each other along the way. With the participation of friends, the process of achieving your goals gathers a forward momentum that most of us cannot generate alone. Suddenly, instead of trying to push a boulder up a hill, you’re rolling a snowball downhill, watching it start to grow, pick up speed, and mow down any obstacle in its path.
- Can my invited friends become members?
In the Coaching Sanctuary, we not only encourage you to get your friends involved, we make it easy for you to share your experience with them. During beta, your friends can support you for free every step of the way. Once they see how much fun you’re having and how committed you are to creating a life of purpose and meaning, they’ll likely want to begin their own Journey. Friends can convert to an active membership at anytime during beta. The sooner you get them involved in helping you on your journey, the sooner they’ll want to begin on their own.
- What are rewards?
Everyone needs a little applause and appreciation from time to time, so we’ve created a point system to motivate and reward you as you move through your Journey. You earn points every time you accomplish a goal, perform a goal-related action, complete an exercise, write in your Journal, share with a friend, invite a friend, give gifts to yourself or others, or when a Practice became a habit. Points vary for each type of activity you perform depending on the level of involvement or stage of your Journey.
- Can I convert my reward points into cash?
No. Reward points cannot be converted into cash. However, you can give points to a friend, redeem points for gifts for yourself or others, or convert points into donation credits through the Coaching Sanctuary’s Giving Program. For donation credits, members are given an annual limit on how many points can be converted into donations. This amount is set by the Coaching Sanctuary as a percentage of total subscriptions, allocated across current members. There is no limit to how many points can be used for gifts, as long as you do not exceed your current point balance.
