Putting Balance Back In Your Life

Putting Balance Back In Your Life

Lifestyle coach and boutique owner explains how life coaching works and offers some sound advice on how to de-stress after the holidays.

By Kaylee Duff

Some spa essentials available at Artful Living.

Karen Masters and her sister, Judy Sepko, opened Artful Living, a boutique that aims to inspire and uplift people’s lives and homes. In addition to offering lifestyle coaching and interior design services, Artful Living offers all-natural products such as spa essentials, teas and aromatherapies that help people lead a balanced and healthy life.

Motivated by the influence that art has on our humanity, Karen took to lifestyle coaching to help bring balance back to our busy schedules. True Q’s editor talked to her about what that means and how we can apply her advice to our everyday lives:

Kaylee: What does your style of life coaching involve?

Karen: I’m a life coach that specializes in lifestyle coaching. I help people organize and improve their surroundings, either in their home environment or work environment. Aesthetics are important to my clients, so much so that their emotions, mood, productivity and more can be affected by a lack of organized and/or pleasing surroundings. I, along with interior designers that I work with, incorporate some design rules of feng shui to make environments more functional and appealing. Our clients ultimately make all the decisions. As a life coach, we function more as guides. We help people discover what it is that they want. Then we help them set goals.

A lot of people, when they come to a life coach, are looking to change their life somehow. They’re unhappy with what’s going on, going through a transition, or maybe just stagnant. We ask questions and help them discover how they want to move forward. I can’t tell somebody where they want to go. But if you dig deep enough, they usually can find it.

Then, we set goals to help them get there. A lot of people, surprisingly (to me, anyway), don’t set goals and don’t know how to set goals. Often, they just let life happen to them, instead of directing their own lives. That’s what I try to help with.

Karen in front of her shop, Artful Living.

Kaylee: How did you first get involved in lifestyle coaching?

Karen: I actually was a marketing manager for years. I was in Silicon Valley; I went out there to work on my Master’s at San Jose State University, and ended up staying there for about 26 years. California is very forward-thinking. Being a manager, I was sent to seminars and workshops to be trained to become a manager of people — a manager that asks their staff where they want to be in one year? Where do they see themselves in five years? What are the goals they have career-wise? That paved the way for eventually looking at life coaching as a possible career for myself. It seemed to come naturally to me.

I grew up in Cleveland, surrounded by the arts. My parents took us to see the Cleveland Orchestra; my dad played trumpet. We were all encouraged to find something that we enjoyed. I tried piano, and I ended up in dance and gymnastics. So I thank [my parents] for starting me on the path to having a well-balanced life, and for giving me an appreciation for the arts. My thesis was in marketing the arts, because, to me, the arts were so important. And then everything was validated, when I started reading and studying how the arts affect people. Generally, they are a great stress reliever and people find them uplifting.

At the end of my career, when I got out of marketing, I decided to bring both parts of me together. I opened up the arts boutique, with my sister, who has the same mindset. We believe that the arts are very important, because they develop a gentler, kinder part of humanity.

When I was living in California, they didn’t really have the terminology for “life coaching” yet, but I’d say that many Californians are into some form of life coaching. They try to balance work and their social life... and their creative life. When I started hearing the term “life coach,” I said, “That’s it. That’s what I need to bring to Ohio.” I came back about ten years ago. My impression coming back was that there was this traditional Midwest mindset that life is hard, and we have to work all the time, and we feel guilty if we enjoy life. I get it… I had all the same feelings. More importantly, my impression has been that people would not allow themselves to be happy, to be optimistic.

But over the past 10 years, Ohioans have been transforming… We’re eating organic, smoking is no longer allowed in office buildings. Now, we even have essential oils at CVS and Heinen’s. Essential oils are aromatherapy, holistic, natural plant, herbal and floral oils. So I got my aromatherapy certification, and I sell it out of the boutique. That, to me, is a big part of my lifestyle coaching. I bring the arts, aromatherapy and lifestyle coaching all together at the boutique.

Lavender promotes calmness and reduces stress.

Kaylee: What does a normal session with you look like? How would you explain that process of setting goals to a potential client who’s completely unfamiliar with it?

Karen: It’s actually simpler than you think. I have a questionnaire to get to know you a little bit: where you’re at, background and resume information, general information. Moving from there into specific questions like, you know, what are the issues? What’s bothering you? Are you moving through a transition? Have there been any stressful life events?

Sometimes, they’re not quite sure. Maybe they’ve gone through a death in the family or are feeling a little lost. There are standard questions that help pull information out of people. Then what happens is that person will start thinking a little deeper. Because we’re so busy with our everyday life, we don’t always take the time to figure out why we’re getting sick all the time or why we’re always tired. First, we’ll find out if there are symptoms like that; then we’ll dig a little deeper, to find out what we can do. Ultimately we start setting goals, to move forward.

We set very specific goals. That’s an issue that most people have. A lot of people will say, “I need to spend more time with my kids.” That’s a goal. It’s not a good one, because you haven’t gotten specific enough. You need to say, “I need to spend an hour reading to little Johnny on Saturdays before bedtime.” It needs to be that specific, and it needs to be a realistic goal, something attainable. We need to “lower our bar” and just keep it simple, in order to hit that one goal.

There have been studies done that have proven that goal setting needs to happen this way. You need to start out small, set a realistic goal, and hit that. Then, all of a sudden, you’re feeling good about goal setting. So you set another goal, and you hit that one. It does synergize and helps you move forward. It’s the sort of thing I do as a life coach to help people be successful.

Kaylee: Do you have any other extra advice or tidbits for our readers?

The big thing, after the holidays, is that stress levels are up. We know all the things to do, like exercise, or go to a yoga class, or get a massage. We know to put the phone down, get off the computer, go low-tech. Put lavender essential oil in your diffuser! Those are in every book and every article. So I can give you a few fun examples of how to de-stress and add balance to your life:

1. Learn something new. Take a class. When you’re under stress, it’s good to refocus your mind and disrupt your old patterns. You get the positivity from learning something new, plus you’re focusing your mind.

2. Volunteer. You’re helping somebody else. You’re focusing on their problems and not on your own worries.

3. Go to the movies or a performance. Go to an art museum. The arts are very uplifting, and they take your mind off your concerns for a while, and that’s a good thing. Take a risk. You wonder why people zip-line or snowboard or rock climb? Those are all stress relievers.

4. Enjoy nature. If you’re not a risk taker, you can go fishing or hiking. Nature is a natural stress reliever.

These won’t solve problems, but they will keep you from “boiling over.” They refocus your mind and they can de-stress you!

Visit Artful Living Boutique at 1364 West 67th Street in Cleveland. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram for updates and more!