Michelle Ayn Tessensohn
Michelle Ayn Tessensohn is a hugely experienced Master Coach and meditation teacher, who works with women who want to deepen their personal and spiritual journey. She found her way to the worlds of coaching and meditation via a circuitous route, that included a breakdown, yoga, reiki, shiatsu, shamanism, counselling training, aromatherapy and life coach training with Martha Beck.
Based in Singapore, she has lived and studied all over the world and is one of the most open-minded and non-judgemental people I’ve ever met. She did a writing mentorship with me in 2017, in which the focus was on getting her writing regularly for her coaching blog.
You can find out more about Michelle and her coaching at her website.
The Before
Before signing up for the Mentorship, Michelle had been struggling to write much, despite (or perhaps because of) really wanting to express herself creatively through writing.
“I was feeling very frustrated because for eight years I’d been trying to write the blog for my business and it just always felt like such a big deal. It felt very daunting to me, the idea of writing really regularly. And I also had the idea for the memoir that I wanted to write but I didn’t feel like I could get anywhere with my writing, even though I really wanted to do it.”
The Offer
Before taking up the mentorship, Michelle had been trying to write without any external support beyond attending a local writers’ group.
“When I saw Sophy’s bio, I thought, wow! The length and depth and breadth of her experience working with writers was so impressive. I thought it would be a great opportunity to work with her and that she could help.
I also felt like we had a connection, and for me, I always go with the person and the connection. Writing is quite vulnerable and I felt like she’d be encouraging and I wouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes with her – I felt I’d be able just to try things out without her judging me. Also, I know how powerful coaching is and I knew I would need the accountability, having someone there, it’s so key. I think I was just ready to try.”
How the Mentorship worked:
· It ran for 12 weeks
· 4 hour-long coaching sessions via Zoom video
· Weekly email check-ins for accountability and coaching
· Weekly ‘homework’ (to do a certain number of writing sessions in the next week)
· Editorial feedback on 5,000 words
The Transformation
Michelle’s ‘homework’ at the beginning of the Mentorship was to write for ten minutes, five times a week. We worked on ways to integrate this new habit into her life and work, but initially she was extremely resistant to the idea that starting so small would actually work.
“I was surprised that we started so small – I really didn’t think it would work to start so simply. I didn’t think I’d get anything written in that time. I was really doubtful. I didn’t expect it to work and I thought it needed to be harder. But in fact, it just built on the small foundations so that after a while I was writing regularly for longer sessions, and in the end it was really effective.”
The Bottom Line
“I got the writing done!
I started the Mentorship writing what I thought was drivel, but no matter how bad I thought it was, Sophy always found a way to be encouraging about it. That really helped. It was also effective to separate the writing and the editing.
Before the Mentorship, I would start writing and would then get stuck because I felt it wasn’t good enough. Working with Sophy, I didn’t get stuck and kept writing through my doubts. Before, I would write and stop – sometimes I’d get so stuck, I’d stop before I’d actually written down a word. I also started to make it a practice to write down all my ideas – I hadn’t taken that seriously enough before.
By the end of the Mentorship, not only had I written lots of blog posts, I could also see the memoir as being more possible. It started to feel like something that I could get going with, instead of being this big tangled ball of ideas that I didn’t know where to start with – it started to unravel and get clearer for me.”