Today we’d like to introduce you to Christine Horstman.
Hi Christine, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
I grew up in Lake Highlands and went away for college. When I graduated Boston College, I came back to Big D. We love the community spirit of Oak Cliff and being so close to unique shops and restaurants and beautiful parks. I have one son and soon we’ll be empty nesters. It’s so hard to believe but I am excited to see what this next chapter brings.
I worked as the General Manager for several private companies where I was responsible for strategic planning, hiring, and onboarding, staff development, and training, in addition to my responsibilities for sales and customer service. I hit a point of reassessing what I wanted and needed out of my career. I live with multiple chronic illnesses so I need flexibility. I decided to apply my managerial skills, and, in particular, my love of staff development, to coaching and training. Now as a professional coach and corporate trainer, I work with individuals to help them improve their soft skills and take charge of their careers.
I just published my first book, “Deal with It, Doll! Coaching Yourself Through Crisis.” It was inspired by the pandemic and the collective health crisis we experienced. I had learned many years ago that there’s nothing like a health crisis to bottom-line things. I hope to equip readers with a toolbox to deal with not just crisis but the transitions and changes, both big and small, that we go through in life.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
When my son, who is now 18, was just 18 months I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. That was a big point of crisis and it set off a cascade of autoimmune illnesses. So, yes, it’s definitely been bumpy at times.
Chronic illness impacts every aspect of your life and can take a toll on your self-esteem. I felt like I had to fight to hold onto my sense of self and the confidence that I had much to offer even when I couldn’t find the right avenue for sharing my skills and still be able to take care of myself and my family. I tried working part-time, full-time, I stayed at home. When I finally decided to strike out on my own everything started clicking. The journey brought me to my true calling and makes me a more compassionate person and coach.
My son has learning differences and sensory processing disorder so we went through a lot figuring out what he needed. My experience as an advocate for my health prepared me to be a strong advocate for him. You never know how the things you go through are going to build on each other in powerful ways.
Learning about how people learn and neurological differences has also enhanced my skills as a life and career coach. His journey and my own, has taught me so much about resilience.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a life and career coach and corporate trainer. I focus on soft skills, emotional intelligence, and communication. Soft skills are the key to success whatever you do in life, and our emotional intelligence and communication skills underpin all our other soft skills. I’m an expert in the DISC model of human behavior. It’s my favorite tool to increase our understanding of ourselves and others. As much as we’d like to change other people, we can’t. When we seek to understand and adapt to others it leads to improved relationships and outcomes.
While I do work with men, most of my private coaching practice is focused on working with women and teenagers – helping them learn how to articulate and nurture their unique talents, skills, and passions not just for better professional success but for their own fulfillment. I love helping kids figure out their strengths and communication style so they can make informed choices for careers and college majors. Life isn’t linear, but hopefully, it keeps them from taking quite so many twists and turns.
I love speaking and now my book gives me an avenue to share my story and the lessons learned personally and professionally. I hope that my ability to reinvent myself inspires others to focus on their resilience and self-empowerment.
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
So that’s what inspired my book. When the pandemic began people kept asking me how I felt, but I already felt like an expert at sheltering in place. When you live with chronic illness you spend a lot of time home alone. I understood how hard the transition could be – to be made to stop and to have it all be outside of your control. It’s incredibly frustrating and difficult. But I felt better equipped for it. It’s really what first inspired writing my book. I heard myself sharing some much of what I had learned through my chronic illness journey with clients, family, and friends.
For my family, slowing down was a good thing in many ways and I liked having everyone around. But slowing down meant many people didn’t have their go-to methods of coping. And that’s the lessons I wanted to share. When life gets tough sometimes the old ways of coping don’t work. We have to be building a toolbox and sometimes when it gets really hard, we have to dig deeper into it and try new combinations.
As a career coach, I was seeing the impact of so much job loss. Like the loss of health, job loss can be really devastating to our sense of self. So much of our identity is tied to what we do. We derive so much of our worth from our work that it can be very had to feel valuable and worthy when you are not producing and achieving.
In my book, “Deal with It, Doll! Coaching Yourself Through Crisis” I ask the question that the pandemic had us all asking: what is essential? What is essential to feel like yourself, to live your best life, to feel successful, worthy? What is essential to me is not the same as what is essential to you. Clarity can be the gift of crisis. Knowing what our bottom line is – who we are at our core – when the literal and figurative masks have come off – is what helps us to shift, grow and change, and not just survive but thrive through change.
Pricing:
- 16.99 Deal with It, Doll book
Contact Info:
- Email: Christine@paperdollcommunication.com
- Website: https://paperdollcommunication.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chris.horstman/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paperdollcommunication/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/chronicLYchrisE
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/Deal-Doll-Coaching-Yourself-Through-ebook/dp/B09PYJHFKJ/ref=nodl_
Image Credits
Wayfairist Media
Rosa Poetschke Photography
