We are pleased to share an article entitled “Coaching With Certainty Through Climate’s Uncertainty ~ A four-step process to build climate resilience“ written by Tamara Yakaboski.
When warnings for Hurricane Milton started, my client thought, “This doesn’t happen here. Hurricanes don’t come here.” Nature always felt like her safe place, untouched by chaos. Yet the storm swept through, leaving destruction behind, both literal and emotional.
Climate crisis is not distant. It is reshaping places we once considered safe, forcing all of us – coaches and clients alike – to confront the impact of living in a climate-changed world.
My client, aware of my work with climate resilience, asked to talk about it during our session. She shared, “It feels like the safe spaces I’ve always turned to in nature are shifting, and that brings up a lot of grief and guilt.” The grief response called solastalgia – a form of homesickness for a home that no longer exists – explains the struggles processing these complex eco-emotions.
Navigating climate grief means holding space for both sorrow and love, without succumbing to despair, doom or denial. Since that session, my client and I have continued with the intersection of grief and embodied action, integrating climate more directly into our coaching on career and resilience.
The experience of eco-distress arises from the emotional, mental and physical strain of witnessing environmental destruction, rooted in the tension of being both the problem and the solution.
Climate-conscious coaches recognize that these responses are not pathological, but a natural reaction to caring about and living in this world.
As global temperatures rise, with 2024 marking the first year surpassing the 1.5°C threshold set by the Paris Agreement, it is clear that our climate crisis will impact all aspects of our personal and professional lives. It can be a pathway to deeper resilience and connection, with ourselves, our clients and the world.
Coaches are uniquely positioned to guide individuals through the weight of these changes and crises. Our response can help foster resilience and adaptability in the face of uncertainty, not just how to cope with extreme weather or eco-distress.
To coach effectively in this era, we must cultivate our own climate resilience, grounded in climate consciousness and action. This prepares us to meet clients where they are, whether grieving a loss from a climate weather event, wrestling with eco-anxiety, or seeking purpose and career pivots amid climate crisis.
Now is the time to develop confident climate-conscious coaching frameworks and practices. How prepared are you to coach through the uncertainty of a climate-changed world?
CLIMATE RESILIENCE PROCESS
Climate resilience refers to our ability to adapt, respond and transform in a climate-changed world. It goes beyond physical or structural resilience found in climate mitigation, adaption, or disaster planning. Instead, climate resilience integrates emotional, psychological, physical, and mindset capacities to grow climate-forward leadership.
At its core, climate resilience involves holding space for grief, love and uncertainty while guiding individuals to reconnect to themselves and nature. It is about finding doable, value-aligned climate actions that avoid triggering overwhelm or paralysis.
My model for climate resilience coaching helps clients slow down, untangle the overwhelm, and take embodied action that partners with climate distress and grief. It follows a four-step process: Access, Assess, Align and Action.
STEP 1: ACCESS
Identify physical and emotional responses to climate distress
The Access step helps clients tune into the body’s sensations and emotions during eco-distress. Coaches can validate and normalize these as natural reactions to living in a world shaped by interconnected crises.
Using somatic techniques and nature-based interventions, you can guide clients toward staying present and grounded (e.g., deep breathing, body scans, walking barefoot outside). Visuals like the Climate Emotions Wheel from the Climate Mental Health Network offer clients a handy way to name and process complex emotions.
In the post-hurricane coaching session, I guided my client to connect with her body’s cues to slow the racing thoughts. I offered options of how to shake off the emotional charge stuck in her body. Bridging the gap between head and heart, I saw how these practices grounded her, much as they can ground us in moments of crisis.
STEP 2: ASSESS
Shift mindset toward adaptability and hope
The Assess step helps clients embrace the mindset shifts that are essential in building flexibility for a climate-changed world. As rising temperatures challenge cognitive clarity, coaches will play an even more pivotal role in rewriting limiting narratives in order to create more positive forward-thinking futures. Yet humans’ natural desire for control to create safety and stability comes head-to-head with excess heat’s impact on mental clarity, increased aggression and exacerbated physical dangers.
For coaches, this step helps clients shift from denial or doom to actionable hope, an essential mindset for fostering creative resilience. In my client’s session, we reframed the initial sense of helplessness and despair into a recognition of her capacity for meaningful action. By processing climate grief, she could shift from a defeatist outlook to a visionary mindset, ready to explore solutions aligned with her values and work.
STEP 3 : ALIGN
Bridge the gap between current reactions and climate values
The Align step focuses on syncing clients’ somatic responses, emotions, thoughts, and values with the climate challenges they face. Coaches can guide clients in aligning their responses to stressors with their deeper climate-connected values, integrating these into daily choices, routines, relationships, and professional goals. Coaches can encourage small, intentional actions, such as seeking roles or projects aligned with eco-values, building connections with eco-organizations, or advocating for climate resilience within their current workplace.
For my client, we identified ways to support local cleanup efforts, refine sustainability goals, and stay emotionally attuned without burnout. For her, integrating climate action into her career was about aligning work with what truly mattered, creating long-term change. Coaches can help clients adjust boundaries by stepping back from overwhelming information, learning to include positive climate news, and setting intentional goals that reflect their growing climate-conscious values.
STEP 4: ACTION
Take embodied, values-aligned climate action
The Action step brings intentional, embodied choices to life. Coaches help clients choose actions that are achievable and aligned with their growing capacities. These can range from significant steps, like transitioning to a more climate-forward career, or smaller steps, such as supporting local initiatives or joining climate support groups like Good Grief Network.
For my client, this meant greater advocacy for local climate policies, integrating climate more explicitly in her work, and reconnecting with nature. Revisiting these goals regularly supports the process that we need to rebuild resilience in regenerative and empowered ways. True climate resilience emerges when actions are rooted in personal values embedded within broader environment, creating a purposeful path forward.
CONCLUSION
Climate resilience is not a one-time solution, but an ongoing, cyclical process of assessing, accessing, aligning and acting to address the certainty of new challenges amidst continued uncertainty. This layered approach integrates body, emotion, mindset and purposeful action, allowing meaningful transformation within ourselves and our environment.
By cultivating our own resilience, coaches can model hope and create solutions together with clients as we all navigate the complexities of a climate-changed world together.
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