About Ginny Cutler
“When you get right down to the root meaning of the word succeed, you find that it simply means to follow through.”
– F.W. Nichol
If there is a common thread, a principle, that runs through all my work, it’s the simple practice of following through.
A coach once asked me this perfect question:
“What is the one thing in your life, that if you could be, do or have, would change everything?”
My answer…
To consistently follow through with my Word, to BE my word, particularly to myself. No excuses. That would change everything for me.” And it has.
As I behave my way into being the person that follows through, holding my vision in mind, that consistent movement is what creates my life. That’s how we do it. One follow through at a time.
Professional Life
“I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as ‘making a life’.”
-Maya Angelou
It has been quite a journey of more than 30 years in the behavioral health profession as a licensed psychotherapist. Over that time I have worked with thousands of people whose lives were interrupted by the consequences of substance misuse and addiction, and many more dealing with a mind and emotional system that threatened to take away their ability to live a connected and meaningful life.
I ultimately specialized in working with people dealing with both at the same time. They have been of widely diverse ages, backgrounds, cultures, and all kinds of life experiences, perspectives, and worldviews. I innately focused on helping people learn to find their relief and recovery through understanding and integrating the whole of themselves in connection with their unique circumstances.
I am grateful for everything they taught me about hope and resilience, the human condition, and the human spirit.
As a way to find a weird kind of balance in an intense career, I started racing motorcycles when I turned 40. I became an instructor for a riding school during that time, honestly, to get more coveted track time. Yet it was while I was coaching people to ride on the racetrack, that I made a life-changing discovery; the coaching profession. I recognized it as an approach that would intentionally focus on the entirety of who people are. Instead of the problem, the label, and a more limited menu of outcomes, I could focus on the vision and capability that emerged once a person could integrate and leverage all of their life experience and who they had become.
I dove in and became a certified professional coach in 2010. After discovering what had been missing in my career, I gradually stepped out of traditional psychology and its particular frame and tools. And into what has been even more powerful and fulfilling work I am eternally grateful for those decades of experience that I can bring to my life’s work now. It has been invaluable.
Now I get to focus on the courage, tenacity, capacity for resilience and growth and the ability to create that is the very nature of the beings that we are.
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Fitness and Play
“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” -Jim Rohn
I love the life force that grows from physical labor and how it keeps you strong. I live on a ranch in Northern California and I think of myself as living a little bit of a chop wood-carry water lifestyle.
As an ex-motorcycle road racer (a 10- year gig), I am ecstatic about what those years taught me. It took me a few years after I retired from it to fully appreciate what it did for me. It made me a different person. After all those years of doing this 'hard thing', I became the person that 'could.' I learned a new level of a lot of things: of self-discipline and self-responsibility, the power of preparation to create, what real teamwork is, a new depth of connection, friendship and community I hadn’t experienced before, what a competitive sport pulls out of us, what courage really is, that attitude and perspective is the first creator, how and why to trust in self and others, what actually builds confidence, the necessary interplay of failure and triumph, the creative power of consistency, that focus is a skill we can learn and that growth happens only within a learner’s mindset, and the return on the willingness to venture out on my ‘edge.’
Needless to say, it re-invented me. It taught me so much more about myself; my capacity for resilience, my 'at cause' role in my own injury, healing, and wellness, how to get back up after a crash, and the importance of an unfailingly supportive and inspirational community of like-minded individuals. My next adventure into a sport is not quite clear yet, but it’s definitely brewing.
Health
“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.”
-Gautama Buddha
After 20+ years of a chronic illness, I became one of many that took their health into their own hands to transform a diagnosis, a set of symptoms, and a prescribed daily medication regime into something that no longer exists.
We are all an ‘n of 1.’ Completely unique. It takes some time and perseverance in self-experimentation and observation to figure out what works and what doesn’t. And to eventually find your own ‘optimal’. No one can find it for us. We must be our own best general practitioner!
I learned to grow clean food, and make my own probiotic drink (Jun, a type of Kombucha). I learned to make sourdough bread, growing my own ’starter'. I discovered I function best by practicing a combination of intermittent and longer-term Fasting. I continue to experiment with food to find my optimal. We learn every day more truth about the body and health, so I listen and learn, experiment, and stay tuned in. It comes down to me taking responsibility to learn about this physical body I’m in, how it really works, and to know how to give it what it needs to thrive.
I am a practitioner of maximizing conditions in my environment that help me thrive; like movement and play, creating and building things, getting lots of natural light, learning about the magic of breath, the microorganisms that work for me, and everything else powerful in nature that supports us.
Including surrounding myself with wonderful, purposeful human beings.
Philosophy
“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”
-Paulo Coelho
Life reflects what we believe, and what we believe is created by the persistent thoughts we allow and the perspective we hold.
I understand I am the sum of all the choices I have ever made. And I will become the sum of the choices I continue to make. Starting now. All my experience is the result of my repeated thoughts and repetitive behaviors. If I want a different experience, I experiment with different thinking, speaking, and action. That’s all I need to do.
That’s great news. That is how we are creators of our experience. Our life trajectory can be shifted by us, in a new direction by a new choice, at any time. We can reinvent ourselves and our lives at any moment, on any day. We just need to see this, test it out, then get busy playing it out.
This is why I coach, and why I will always want to BE coached. Because we are often unable to see what is right there in front of us, yours truly included. 🙂
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Head Coach, AZ