Christine O’Brien Horstman is a life and career coach and a professional development instructor. Her specialty is emotional intelligence and communication skills. She is an expert in the DISC model of human behavior and personality strengths. As a mother and a chronic illness warrior, she knows how hard it can be to take care of yourself and your family when life gets tough. Coping with cancer and one health crisis after another equipped her with a toolbox that she shares with others facing their own times of stress. The self-advocacy skills she learned as a patient enabled her to be the advocate her son needed when he was diagnosed with learning differences and experienced his own health issues.
FWM- You may be going along swimmingly in life and out of nowhere face your own crisis. Share your experiences and what led you to write Deal with it, Doll! Coaching Yourself Through Crisis.
The book was really born out of the pandemic. I met my publisher, Carrie Severson, several years before and had stayed connected with her on social media. A few months into the pandemic she put a call out for writers who wanted to explore several topics, one of which was coping.
I live with multiple chronic illnesses and had become somewhat of an expert on coping and dealing with unwanted change. As a life and career coach, I had found myself sharing a lot of the lessons I had learned about dealing with crisis with my family, friends, and clients. When you are chronically ill, you know all about sheltering-in-place! And a health crisis forces us to focus on what is essential, to face ourselves, and redefine ourselves.
FWM: Share your specialties as a life coach and career coach.
Most of my coaching begins with career changes and then moves into life coaching – work/life balance, working through old messaging, feeling like yourself again. My specialties are communication, soft skills, emotional intelligence, and resilience. I work with both adults and teenagers. I love helping teens name their strengths and gain clarity about who they are and help them explore careers and college majors. When I am not working with coaching clients I am a professional development instructor.
FWM: Tell us about the DISC Model of human behavior.
DISC is a personality assessment and a framework for understanding ourselves and others. It’s a great tool for increasing self-awareness and understanding communication styles. It’s my go-to tool. It is so helpful for both our professional and personal relationships. It’s easier to understand and remember when compared to some other models and assessments which makes it’s easier to apply in our interactions.
FWM: Why are people coming to you today?
The pandemic has caused a lot of shifts. Many people are coming to me because they need a job or are dissatisfied in their current one. But more and more, people are realizing how important it is to invest in yourself. They want to communicate with greater confidence and navigate the tough transitions in life with greater ease. Many clients are finally making the changes they’ve known they’ve needed for some time.
FWM: What is your philosophy in life?
You can’t change other people; you can only change yourself. That is foundational to emotional intelligence and communication skills. I say that all the time to clients and it ties into my other saying, that soft skills are the key to success. No matter what you do in life, how you interact with others is critical. The other guiding principal, or, really, a mantra that I repeat to myself is: “Everything is changing from one moment to the next.” Embracing this wisdom has freed me from holding on to expectations of what should be versus what is and reminds me that the hard moments will shift eventually.
FWM: Deal with it, Doll! Is your book a “girlfriend’s guide to life challenges?”
Well, that is what one reviewer said and I love that description! I hope it feels like a heart-to-heart with your friend sprinkled with a little tough love and a lot of “ah-ha” moments. It was written with a female audience in mind, as the majority of my clients are women, but lots of guys have enjoyed it, too. My goal was to write in a friendly conversational voice and to keep it authentic. I open up about my personal struggles and prompt the reader to be open and honest with herself as well.
FWM: What are some of the takeaways from your book?
Clarity can be the gift of crisis and I want the reader to gain greater clarity about what is essential to her in order to live her best life and be empowered to do so. In the book we explore the major areas of our lives personally and professionally – our relationship with our self, our relationships in general, parenting, our health, education choices, careers, leadership, and our finances. The book tackles how to face a crisis, but also how to deal with change. Sometimes we are dealing with expected transitions in life, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t challenging or stressful. My hope is that Deal with It, Doll! offers the reader reinforcement and new tools for moving through life.
FWM: Tell us about your poem, “The Long Haul.”
When I was very close to finishing the book, I got Covid and I was hit pretty hard. I wasn’t hospitalized, thankfully, but my immune system had a hard time fighting it off and I fell into the long Covid category. I had very little energy and struggled to get back to writing, so I decided to challenge myself creatively when I learned about a poetry contest. What poured out was a poem processing my Covid experience. It was a great creative outlet and ended up being very cathartic. It was a thrill that my poem was selected to be published in an anthology.
FWM: What is the greatest lesson learned in your life?
That it all comes down to you. Support and tools are important, but it’s your life and you have to make the best of it. When life gets hard, you have to dig deep into yourself.
FWM: What is next for you?
I’ve been so delighted by the response to the book that I am still taking all of it in. I’m honored to be a part of the Women’s History Month programming at the Dallas Public Library and Whose Books, and look forward to more author talks and readings that are in the works.
I hope to have my own podcast in the future. Right now, I am looking for more opportunities to be a podcast guest and for speaking engagements. My group coaching program based around the chapters of the book will be launching in the fall and I’d like to do more writing. Hopefully, there’s another book in the near future.
https://paperdollcommunication.com/
