TLJ Coaching & Consulting, LLC

Hello Dear Community!

It is a rare opportunity to slow down and give our hearts and minds some space to be more fully present with our inner lives and the natural world. 🌿

Time on retreat can help us reconnect with the sources of meaning in our lives and find steadiness in the midst of difficulty. ✨

Please join me and my dear colleagues, Bob Gillespie and Heather Sorensen, this May for a 5-day silent mindfulness residential retreat. It's a great opportunity to deepen one's practice for those who have taken a mindfulness class or have a foundation of some meditation practice. We'll share practices drawn from the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program as well as compassion and loving-kindness practices. 💖

It would be an honor to be in community and in practice with you! 🙏🏽

For INFORMATION & REGISTRATION visit uwhealth.org/mindfulness

Hello dear community ~ Please join me for an 8-week online Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for BIPOC class beginning on July 13. ✨
There are just a few spots remaining!

The class is designed to introduce mindfulness meditation techniques as a way of developing greater balance, ease, and fuller participation in your life.

This session is specifically offered for those who identify as people of color/multiracial/racial minority and who are willing to engage in the practice of mindfulness. This class is offered as part of the Mindfulness for All Project, and generously funded by the Kataly Foundation.

Our intention is to explore and deepen mindfulness practices in a community where our full selves are invited to be present. While the subject of race may spontaneously arise during periods of participant sharing, this course is not intended to be a forum for the discussion of racial issues as a primary focus. Rather, the course is being offered to the BIPOC community as a way to learn the practice of mindfulness meditation in a
supportive and welcoming environment.

For INFORMATION & REGISTRATION visit uwhealth.org/mindfulness



PC Ueda Photography

Holy Bananas!…We’re two weeks away from the fall equinox and I’m still catching my breath from the summer! Time flies when you’re having fun…and rebuilding a website!

I've been exploring “why me, why now?” and how do I convey a genuine sense of what it’s like to partner with me. I needed to acknowledge and develop a new relationship with a lifetime of learned code switching, assimilation, and playing it safe.

Ultimately, I’m still in process - gently accepting and allowing my fears and excitement to all be true. Through it all, Holistic Business Growth with Jess Parvin and I created a site that feels like me! It represents me through color, language, images, artifacts, and so much more!

✨What do you think? How does it resonate or not resonate with you?

I’m so thankful for my clients, colleagues, friends, and family who have helped shape the site. I’m also so grateful to Ueda Photography for capturing my energy, passion, and care through his sweet portrait photography.

Here’s to new beginnings, transformation, and abundant joy! Let’s make magic together!

I recently hired an awesome business coach and made the very clear decision to create more space for nature and loved ones. 🌸 I ended my day doing exactly that... walking through wetlands, woods and an arboretum with my dear friend . You can clearly see I am in my element! ✨😁

Where do you feel most in your element? Who/what surrounds you?

Do you ever notice those threads that weave through and bind together different moments of your life? 💫

When I was a little girl we planted a small magnolia bush in the front of our house. Each year there are buds in April and beautiful blossoms by May.

✨Recently, I haven’t been able to see the blossoms at my childhood home. So, I’ve created a new tradition - going to visit the flowering magnolia trees near me!

This weekend my family and I made the annual pilgrimage to our local arboretum to witness their beauty.

🌸We noticed the different shades of pink, white, and yellow.
🌸We noticed how the blue sky made a beautiful backdrop.
🌸We saw there were trees in different stages of growth - some with buds, some with withered blooms, and others in their prime.
🌸We heard birds and squirrels navigating their way through the leaves and branches and heard other families express their joy and awe in the presence of the trees.

And it all made me realize what an absolute gift that small magnolia bush has been in my life. My connection to its rhythm keeps me connected to the rhythm of life around me now. What a gift to simply notice what’s here, what’s alive, what is present!

I'd love to know...What is a thread that weaves through your life? What does it invite into your life today?

“I don’t know what my employee/partner/teammate needs.”
“I wish I knew how to be a more supportive manager.”
“I’m not sure how this new partnership is going to go.”
“I’ve tried everything I can think of, but nothing seems to work.”

Do these thoughts sound familiar? I often hear clients wonder what others need or how they should lead in certain situations. Through our exploration we usually arrive at the solution of ✨‘ask and co-create.’ ✨

Why leave the dynamic or relationship to hope and chance when you can design it on purpose? Of course, there are many complexities present in new and existing relationships. We can navigate these by inviting the other person to design the relationship or interaction with us.

In the coaching world we call this practice 'designing an alliance' (similar to setting norms or agreements in other professional contexts). What is most unique about designing an alliance is that it can be done at any time and is explored as a partnership rather than one party telling the other how the relationship is going to work (or, as is often the case, leaving it to hope and chance filled with assumptions and unspoken expectations). Designing an alliance is a way to lead - ourselves and others - through inquiry and co-creation.

Check out my latest post (link in bio) to learn more about designing an alliance including some sample questions and examples of where to apply this powerful coach approach!

What comes to mind when you hear the word “luxury”?
Delight, decadence, rare, special…?

What do you notice with the word “productive”?
Work, tasks, accomplishment, value…?

How we relate to these words is informed by our life experiences, values, current context, and so much more. For much of my life these two words and their meaning were mutually exclusive. I valued both but saw them as something I had to toggle between. And usually productive won.

Many moons ago, during a session with one of my amazing coaches (I’m looking at you, ), I realized that I wanted to invite more luxury and delight into my life. I also noticed that as soon as I would consider how to do that thoughts of guilt, embarrassment, and fear would show up because I would have to sacrifice being productive. And then something interesting happened - we considered what if I didn’t have to stay stuck in the false binary of choosing one or the other but could find a way to live into both at the same time. A way to be luxuriously productive! ✨YES! ✨

This mindset shift of bringing both luxury and productivity into my life everyday has been a game changer! With this mindset in place I relate to my work differently. And as a result I’m more creative in how I approach the day. It has become a daily mantra and a foundational company value for my business.

Over the years many of my clients have also resonated with the idea of inviting ways to be luxuriously productive. I’ve started a list - here’s a snapshot:

✨Starting each meeting with a mindful minute
✨Listening to music from a dream vacation while brainstorming ideas
✨Inviting colleagues/clients to have a walking meeting
✨Playing a board game during weekly team meetings/huddles
✨Wearing a favorite article of clothing while working a long shift
✨Sipping on a soothing, warm beverage while responding to difficult emails

What are ways you live into being luxuriously productive? How does this impact your life, work, and how you lead?

Post about it + tag + !

I recently did something new. And kind of huge. My stomach hurt, I was nervous, and I found myself second guessing whether I should have done it all….I updated my LinkedIn profile to include a recording of how to pronounce my name. My name is, તોરલ.

Read more in my recent blog (link in bio) about my journey with my name, identity and why I invite you to say my name. ❤️

At some point in my professional career I received the signal that taking a lunch break was not necessary. Some of my colleagues would work while eating and others would simply keep working with no time to eat. There was this sense that taking a break at lunch was a luxury or that if you’re really important you shouldn’t have “time” for a break. 😬Eventually, I started accepting meeting invitations that were scheduled over the lunch hour, telling myself that I would either sneak in bites during the meeting or find time afterwards. But, of course, it would feel awkward to eat during the meeting and my calendar would inevitably become consumed by back-to-back meetings the rest of the day. I started coming home with a lunch bag that was still packed. My body and my mind were exhausted and undernourished; and the demands of my job never ended.

Sound familiar??

When I started working for myself without any colleagues or managers setting the tone for how to care for myself during the day I defaulted to what I knew. I started working long hours, rarely taking breaks, and felt miserable. I was so confused why I was unhappy even though I was living my dream of working from home and for myself. I explored this with my coach and realized that while my context had changed I hadn’t intentionally updated my values or how I wanted to live into them.

🙏 The first step was honoring the values, or guiding principles, that got me here - credibility, availability, and persistence. Those are still important to me but they are no longer the priority. My success and growth are no longer based on indexing on them alone. Instead, I want to live into

✨rest, connection, and productivity. ✨

I want to experience joy and abundance in my work and be present with myself and my clients. To do that, I had to change how I was showing up.

Check out my latest blog post (see link in bio) to read about the steps I take to show up fully (hint: they include taking a lunch break every #$%& day!)

What are your guiding values? How do they impact how you lead yourself/others? What needs adjustment? Who/what supports you?

Well, it’s been a minute… I haven’t posted for some time. Like so many others I have been in a bit of a cocoon. I’ve been healing and reimagining everything from my body to my relationships to my business and it has been a journey!! 😊

At some point I came across this photo of three-year-old me (cutie pie, right?!). When I see her, I see a little girl standing (or in this case riding) at the intersection of so many identities and values. Her nicely pressed dress made her feel beautiful, her gym shoes made her feel strong and capable, her bracelets connected her to the traditions of her family in India, and her car helped her move around the world (or apartment) and feel adventurous. 💫

Throughout my life I’ve often felt stuck or torn between these different ways of relating to myself and the world around me. If I leaned too far into one identity I was sometimes met with disappointment or confusion by others. I was told I was too “American” or too “Indian” or too “adventurous/risky” or too…well you get the idea. When I was (and let’s be real, sometimes still am) deeply entrenched in my 'stuckness' I would sometimes feel like I was not enough and was an imposter - never quite enough of any one thing.

Over the years, through a lot of inner work in my meditation practice as well as with the support of therapists and coaches, I have learned to befriend and value the sum of all of my identities. Not one of them defines me and all of them are a part of me. I also have learned to allow those identities to flow in and out of my life as I and the world around me evolve. Of course, this is a lifelong process and practice...every day and every moment an opportunity to begin again and recommit to loving that sweet, full of possibility three-year-old (and today-year-old) me! 🥰

What do you notice when you connect with your three-year-old self? Post a pic and tag

What is unfolding within you?