Julie Helen: 'Having a clean kitchen is more about being able to control the small controllables'

From time to time, I dip in and out of coaching psychology to help me find direction or problem-solve where I want to be or what I want to do next.

When I graduated from my psychology degree, coaching psychology as an approach was in its infancy, and I was in a state of loathing over the previous few years.

My degree had been a big mountain and I often think that if it was today, with the prolific use of messaging tools and online recording and the like, the whole experience might have at least felt a bit easier, a bit more connected, but there’s no going back. I got here with all the twists and turns.

One of the greatest gifts that I got from psychology is that I know it is valuable to interrogate life, to understand why we do things, why we don’t do certain things, and why all the pieces of the jigsaw sometimes click and sometimes scatter.

Coaching has always appealed to me because it focuses on where the individual wants to get to and the goals and steps it takes to get there rather than a more retrospective and sometimes more negative lens that counselling can take. Please understand, counselling absolutely has a very important place and my first encounter with it was at the young age of 10, to help me cope with bullying at school. With an adult perspective, my feelings at the time were a very normal response to ordinary issues many kids face.

During my degree, I avoided every element of coursework that involved any sort of counselling. I didn’t want my disability to be a case study, and I still stand by that assertion today. I wasn’t coping well with disability in college, and I didn’t want it to become a public fiasco. I was muddling through, navigating challenging access and wondering at every turn if I would make the cut and, honestly, I don’t even know what cut I mean; I was just floundering a bit.

I hadn’t it all figured out in my early twenties, just as I don’t have it all figured out at 41 either, but now, I am alright with it, I roll with it, literally, in my wheelchair!

I had the great fortune to reconnect with one of my favourite lecturers last year, and in the intervening years since I graduated, he has become an accredited coach of coaching psychology and offered past students a couple of sessions in case we wanted to pursue the discipline ourselves. I would love to delve into coaching and respect him hugely, so I jumped at the chance.

One of the first tasks he gave me was to think about how things could look better in a week, a month, and a few months. My immediate answer was ‘a clean kitchen’ - It has stuck in my head ever since. I couldn’t believe I had spurted such a mundane thing at a man I admired so much. I think of it so often. Why did I say that? What is it about the kitchen?

I love my kitchen; it is very satisfying when it is clean. It is also where I sit if I am relaxing, so if it is messy, it doesn’t feel comfortable.

I think having a clean kitchen is more about me being able to control the small controllables rather than it being about the actual place or tasks. It’s about keeping things simple, stripping things back, and basking in the small things I can do. I’m off to clean my kitchen, but I’ll have a cup of tea first, of course!