Linear, Circular, Spiral

In my first Spiritual Coaching Community of Practice teleclass there was a discussion around a role play coaching session in class where the coach was using more of a linear process and the client was using more of a spiral process. They were not connecting well at first.

This was new to me and very interesting. The coach was trying to help support the client to move forward lineraly from A to B regarding the external event that was presented. The client wasn’t interested in moving forward linearly from A to B.

The external situation the client was presenting was not her main concern. She knew she did all the prep she could and things would work out okay. Her real concern was how she felt internally. She wanted clarity around her feelings and what learning would come from the external event, and how it would help her in the future.

This took awhile to emerge as the real issue for the client. She even said at one point that she saw her life as more of a spiral, and that sometimes she had to move backward to move forward, or just stand still for awhile and get clear.

The facilitator for the class said that sometimes, especially with spiritual coaching issues, supporting a client in moving forward is not about going from point A to B. Instead , it is more about gaining inner clarity around how the client feels about an issue in this moment. Moving forward in this situation is about gaining inner clarity.

He then suggested that to help a client get in touch with how they feel about an issue and start to gain clarity around it, ask the client to take a deep breath from their heart and then describe what they see, hear and feel. Very cool.

He then suggested that a way to take this further is to ask the client to describe where they feel an issue in their body. What does it look, sound and feel like. Where is it located in their body.

The place in their body an issue is located will usually correspond to one of the main chakra energy points. Each chakra energy point has a different meaning associated with it and this will help you better understand what the underlying factors are that the issue is connected with. Very cool, and you never have to even mention the concept of chakra energy points with the client. Just know what they mean and ask the client where in their body they experience an issue.

I want to study the concept of linear, circular and spiral coaching much more. If they are of value in spiritual coaching, then how can they benefit business, executive and life coaching as well?

Celebrating

In a recent coaching teleclass on Celebrating, I discussed my experiences of celebrating only the big events in life and not even realizing the small events were just as important and valuable to celebrate, maybe even more so.

It just never occurred to me growing up or as an adult to celebrate all the little events as well, and not just the positive ones. The learning that can come from an event that would normally be considered negative, unsuccesful is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate.

I worked with my ICA Peer Coach on learning to recognize the small events to celebrate and taking the time to actually celebrate them. This was an extraordinary process for me. As a result of consciously looking for the small events and then making an effort to find a way to celebrate them, I found myself slowing down from, as I termed it in our teleclass, “going gung ho – 100 miles an hour, non-stop to the next goal, to taking the time to celebrate the little things and the bigger things with family, friends and myself.

This caused a shift in me. I found myself becoming more appreciative and grateful for what I have, and who I have it with. It helped me slow down and be able to create a space and time to do things I never believed I had time or space for; and most amazing of all, it opened up more time and space to get the things done that I was feeling pressed, overwhelmed and unable to complete.

In this process, I also noticed that I shifted from being mostly in my head about charging forward to complete my goals; to moving down into my heart area and becoming more grateful and appreciative for what I have.

Celebrating the little events, both the positive and the negative, the successes as well as the new learnings, enabled me to begin to live more in my heart than just in my head regarding my goals, and helped me become more appreciative and grateful. This, in turn, has helped me gain more time and space to enjoy my life as I continue to move forward.

Celebrating the little events has helped me gain more without having to give up anything.

What if you are Perfect?

Some questions:

What would you do when you know you are perfect?

What would you do when you know the journey of your life is perfect?

What would you do when you know the perfect solution always exists?

What would you do when you know all the good/bads, either/ors, doubts/judgments are imaginary?

What would you do when you know all fear is imaginary?

What would you do when you know you can not fail?

How often do you ask?

Who am I?

What do I want?

What is my intention?

What stops me now, I am already Perfect?

How do babies celebrate?

I was going over how wonderful it would be if we could celebrate life all the time the way babies do.

Other than when they are hungry, tired, frightened, messy etc., they are simply and purely happy, without any need for any intellectual, emotional or physical reason or event to tie it to. They are just happy in the moment and celebrate each moment of life.

I’m really intrigued by this. They don’t have the logical, analytical, decision making capacity yet to attach being happy or celebrating to events or memories, the way we do later in life as adults. They don’t want or need a reason to be happy or celebrate. They just do it.

I’ve also noticed that many of the spiritual masters, of many different disciplines, past and present have this same ability to simply live now in the moment, happy and celebrating life, without wanting or needing any special reason to do it. In many ways, in their demeanor, they even seem to manifest the innocence and wonderment babies have. They don’t want or need a reason to be happy or celebrate. They just do it.

For me, the way I was raised by family, educated and indoctrinated into my society and culture, I have always wanted and needed a reason to celebrate and be happy. And the reason had to be significant, or I would feel I had no right to celebrate. I know I am not alone in this.

As coaches we can really honor and respect our clients and ourselves by making the effort to be happy and celebrate always, the small things and the big things and the nothings. Especially the nothings.

To be happy and celebrate life in the moment without any reason, without any attachment, without any justification, without any judgment, to just do it.

I’m reminded again of the quote, “To live life through the eyes of a child, with the wisdom of an adult”.

Bruce Paye

Coaching & Forging

The process of coaching, especially the peaks and valleys reminds me of the process of forge welding metals.

In the process of forge welding, metal is heated to a very high temperature, to a peak energy point. At this peak energy point the metal actually loses its magnetism and this is where the magic starts! The molecules of the metal lose their bonds and begin to move around freely. With well placed blows of his/her hammer a blacksmith can forge weld pieces of metal together at this peak energy point and the molecules of the different pieces of metal will mix and combine and transform the pieces of metal into a new form.

Once this transformation takes place at the peak energy point, the metal is carefully quenched and prepared for the process of annealing. The annealing process allows the newly transformed metals to quietly and evenly cool down so that the natural magnetism of the metals returns and the molecules of the combined metals integrate and bond in their newly formed positions. At the valley of the cool down and integration process, the newly transformed metal returns to room temperature and the bonding is complete!

A skilled blacksmith can forge weld metal so excellently it is almost impossible for the untrained eye to tell where the forge weld has been made in the piece of metal. This is one part of the process of how Damascus steel is made, one of the strongest steels known to man!

In life, we are constantly rising to peaks of transformation and descending to valleys of integration. The peaks and valleys are a continuum, both are necessary parts of the cycle of growth and transformation.

As coaches we serve our clients well when we help support them to strive and take action, to generate the necessary heat, be able to withstand it and stay on course to reach new peaks of transformation.

We serve our clients well to be there with them and for them at the peak, to help guide them, so they may strike their own hammer blow for lasting change at the precise moment.

Likewise, we serve our clients well when we help support them to descend quietly, without judgment or reaction, to the necessary valley, giving them the time and space needed to cool down and quietly integrate their peak transformation.

A cycle of rising to a peak of positive transformation and then descending to a valley of positive integration can produce a circle of bringing many positive, enduring changes into a client’s life, each one struck by the client’s own hammer of empowerment.

To me, this is a very positive use of coaching as a tool for positive, lasting changes.

Bruce Paye

Confidence & Action vs. Fear & What Stops You

As a coach or as a client, when you show up present; when you choose to live now, in the moment, there is no time or space for lack of confidence, inaction, fear, etc. Seems simple enough.

I came across a concept in a book on emotional intelligence that discussed how researchers are working to identify emotion as the difference between expectation and reality. Their concept is that emotion and its intensity of experience is a direct result of how close or far apart expectation and reality are. If we have an expectation and exceed it on the positive side, we experience primarily positive emotions. If we have an expectation and exceed it on the negative side, we experience primarily negative emotions. The difference equals the intensity of emotion experienced. Seems simple enough.

I’ve been going over the differences for me in living in time vs. living through time and the differences between expectations and reality.

When we live in the moment (in time) there is no room for lack of confidence, inaction, fear, etc. because there is no time or space between the expectation and the reality. They are collapsed into one experience. There are no differences.

When we live in the past, present and future (through time) there is room for lack of confidence, inaction, fear, etc. because there is time and space between the expectation and the reality and the difference affects us.

When we are living now, in the moment, we are living in reality. When we are living in the past or future, and this is sometimes difficult to grasp, we are living in imagination. Whatever thoughts, feelings, actions we experience in our mind regarding the past or future may be real in our mind, but are not reality now.

Imagination is the realm of the sub conscious and the sub conscious does not discern between real and imagined. Other than controlling our automatic functioning, its main job is to protect us. It does this in a number of ways and fear is one of the strongest mechanisms it employs to protect us from harm, whether imagined or real.

So whenever we step out of the moment (choose to be not in time) and live in past memories or future expectations (choose to be through time), we are choosing to live in imagination. We are giving permission to our sub conscious mind to use fear to protect us from any negative consequences, real or imagined, that might result from the difference between expectations and reality. In this sense we are choosing to live in our imaginary fears and in their effort to protect us they effectively shut us down from moving forward to achieving our dreams, desires, visions & goals.

So here’s a challenging concept: Anytime we are not living now, in the moment, we are living in imagination, in a state of fear.

This state of fear, which can be so mild as to hardly be noticeable, or so powerful as to be phobic and shut us down completely, interferes in our ability to fully realize our maximum potential. It interferes at some level in our ability to create magnificent dreams and visions and to continue to work on ourselves to move forward towards achieving those dreams and visions, manifesting them into reality, now!

One of my teachers was always reminding us that to truly take possession of oneself it was necessary to live in our fears.

I understand this better now. By focusing our attention and intention on living in our fears, we are choosing to bring the reality of living now into the place we are afraid. In doing so we collapse past memories and future expectations into now. This results in there being no time or space for differences between reality vs. expectations, between reality and our imaginary fears, between reality and the negative emotions that stop us from moving forward towards achieving our goals. We stop living in a state of fear and start living in a state of actualizing.

Imagination is a powerful tool. As portrayed in the the movie “The Secret”, we need to respect the power of our sub conscious mind and learn how to consciously command our imagination to do the work we require of it.

Angela Bird made an interesting statement that fits here: She said that the thing we are the most afraid of is the reason we are here, what we do best, where our greatest strength is. Fear is just the journey the universe creates for us.

Bruce Paye

Which Foot Do You Want to Use?

In a role play in a teleclass where the client was describing wanting to move forward in the building of their coaching business and being stuck feeling ill prepared to do the marketing and selling, the coach made an analogy to driving a car with one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake and asked the client, “If you could only use one foot, which one would you choose to use now?”

This was such a powerful analogy that the client was able to immediately visualize what they were doing internally regarding the issue they were stuck in and how much energy it was costing them in trying to move forward with the brake on. They also immediately saw that what they were doing was their choice and they could choose now to do something different in order to move forward to their goal.

Beliefs vs. Knowns

There was an interesting discussion on beliefs and knowns in a recent teleclass. What was most powerful for me was the concept that we generalize beliefs as knowns in our minds, and this is not accurate.

As described in the class, a belief is something we generally accept as true, and we constantly gather evidence to support and verify a belief as being true. A known is simply known, it requires no evidence to support and verify it in our mind. We may not be able to define what our evidence is as to why we accept it as known, and it is unimportant for us to do that.

Since we are constantly gathering evidence to support our beliefs, we end up living in a state of doubt and uncertainty regarding these beliefs which are being generalized as true and known.

I find it ironic that many of us identify ourselves based on our belief systems, yet these very same belief systems create in us a state of doubt and uncertainty that requires a constant expenditure of energy to find evidence to support and verify.

So the very things we believe in and identify who we are by keep us in a state of doubt and require us to gather evidence to support and verify them; and worse, to sometimes filter and block out the truth and get stuck in order to maintain them.

This is very interesting to me as a concept, especially since I work with Hypnosis and NLP to help identify and change belief systems that keep a client stuck in a place that they consider undesirable.

I see a synergy in combining Coaching, Hypnosis and NLP techniques to help a client let go of belief systems that are dis-empowering them, keeping them stuck in one place, in a state of doubt; and then replacing those beliefs with new beliefs and behaviors that will empower them to move forward to their goals, and eliminate doubt by converting those beliefs to knowns through anchoring, with strong positive emotions, to a personal truth and a universal truth unique for the client.

Levels of Listening

In an article I read by Dr. Bruce Schneider of IPEC Coaching, I came across his concept of 5 levels of listening.

1. No response – The other person simply ignores or walks away.

2. Disconnect – Person’s response has nothing at all to do with what was said to them.

3. Subjective – Person listens based on their agenda or needs.

4. Objective – Listener is completely focused on the person who is listening.

5. Intuitive – Listener is listening to all the sensory components and is intuitively connecting to the speaker’s true message. Listening to what is being said and not being said. Listening between the lines for the truth.

For me, the first three are dis-empowering and have no place in coaching. Number 4 is a good coach and number 5 is what great coaching is about. At ICA, all the coaches teach to strive for number 5, Intuitive Listening.

Angela Bird has a term I really like – “Listen until you don’t exist!”. By listening until you don’t exist, you will hear the gaps in the client’s story. Their truth is buried in their stories. The gaps give the coach an invitation to ask questions to bring the truth to the surface for the client to look at.

As a coach, some questions to ask yourself:

“Am I listening to respond or am I listening to understand?”

“Am I listening for the gaps in the client’s story?”

“Am I listening for the client’s agenda and what they are deeply committed to?

“Am I listening for the client’s willingness to take action to move forward to their goal?”

“Am I tuning in to what is not being said?”

“Am I listening at a deeper, internal level for the emotional dimension of the conversation?”

“Am I listening between/between the words?”

“Am I listening to the silences and the spaces and what they communicate?”

“Am I listening for repeating patterns of behaviors?”

“Am I listening for the reward structure beneath repeating patterns?”

“Am I allowing my questions to form naturally from my intuition or am I forcing them from ego?”

“Am I reflecting the client’s words, phrases back to them to obtain clarity for both of us and avoid interpretation?”

“What prevents me from deeply listening?”

I really like Laurene Vaughan’s description of trees as among the most powerful listeners on the earth. It’s definitely been my experience. Whether a tree or some other inanimate object, this creates a safe, impartial space and time to speak our truth and work it out in a manner appropriate for us.

Laurene also stated that listening becomes easier if you just relax in to it. Sometimes we listen too hard, we are too focused on the words, on what is being said at the surface and so miss the rest.

In going over this, I realize that for me, many times I let the conversation go out of focus and become fuzzy, and I just listen for what jumps out and grabs my attention, peaks my interest and curiosity, points out a discrepancy between what the other person is saying vs. doing, thinking vs. feeling. In listening this way, I sometimes hear a small inner voice in myself asking a question which is dead on when I allow myself to vocalize it in the moment it comes up. The process feels like it gets my ego out of the way and allows my intuitive, subconscious voice to speak, and it is amazing what comes out as an observation or question. It’s like I’m hearing it for the first time as I’m saying it.

So I’m going to rephrase Angela’s saying to “Listen until your ego doesn’t exist!”

Rapport in Coaching

The more I study coaching, the more I listen to instructors and students in teleclasses, the more convinced I am that building rapport with your clients is the single most powerful factor in creating a truly positive, beneficial coaching relationship with your client.

The ability to mirror, match, and pace your client’s mental, emotional, physical and spiritual states creates enormous potential to enter into their world for a while and earn their trust.

It allows our client to experience being and feeling validated by someone who is like minded, who understands and appreciates them for who they are, with no criticisms or judgments.

This helps us as coaches to gain their participation and cooperation in then helping to support and lead them to take the actions they desire to move forwards to achieving their goals.

In a sense, building rapport creates a separate field of like-minded energy outside of both coach and client, a safe space where they can come together as one mind for a while and freely exchange their unique gifts, the unique views and meanings they place on the patterns of experiences that shape their lives, their knowledge and understandings.

To me, rapport seems to create the possibility of dropping our ego filters for a while so that we can merge into a higher awareness and understanding and share this with one another safely. Both parties are able to give and receive and come away with more.