What is Coaching to Me?

When I first started out—researching and figuring out my interest in life coaching as a career alternative, I believed that coaching was going to give me a chance to apply my life experience and my knowledge to help someone. That made me feel that my audience would be very restricted as I’m not a traditionalist and if people with traditional goals came to me for advice—what could I really tell them? And was I sorted enough in my own life to advice anyone on theirs? This conflicted with the real evidence that people generally confided in me and came to me for advice. Everyone found me very open minded and non-judgemental. That was largely true but mostly because I believe my values are for me and not to judge others by.

Curious and determined, I signed on for a course with GrowMore. During my workshop, I realized that who I was in terms of personality, ideas and opinions—needed to be kept far away from my coaching technique as it would only hamper and not help. Giving answers did not make me a ‘star coach’ but it was about my asking the right questions and enabling the client to self-explore and self-discover—that is what made me a good coach. That immediately solved my first fear of a restricted audience. It also solved a related problem which I didn’t know I had (most of us don’t), that I was constantly judging myself. At a deeper level I was not non-judgmental. Now I have learnt to live judgement free and be neutral during a coaching session whether I am self-coaching or client-coaching.

And now I have a new definition of what ‘coaching means to me’.

Coaching is a systematic inquiry into any area of your life. It can be a very simple-minded issue or a complex one, but ultimately through a series of interconnected whole-brain provoking questions, you can figure out the real problem eating at your bedrock. It has happened with me several times through self and buddy coaching sessions. It keeps coming back to the same unresolved issue for me: a deficit in self-knowledge. So coaching is a process to me, and not a solution. There is no solution really but continual evolution. I would not even call it self-improvement because it’s a zero sum game. As you improve one area you lose track of another. So, in one coaching session, you can only focus on what you want to work on or ‘improve’ for now.

As a coach, I feel that coaching lets a person/the client become the star of their world. In regular life, a person is constantly surrounded by opinions that there is no space to air yourself without fear of being judged or gossiped about. People in your close circle either put you down, disagree with you, sometimes agree with you, or simply pamper you to shut you up. You don’t really explore what you are feeling at any great depth. Though you may do that sometimes in a quiet personal moment, but mostly all these avenues will cut you short. Because there is a fear of going to our internal dark place alone. We want someone to be with us when we make the more cruel self-discoveries.

But in a coaching session, I am able to create a space for the client where they are not interrupted or bombarded by other’s opinions; where they can air their thoughts freely. Only their thoughts matter and the universe is listening patiently. Not just the coach. As a coach I am an enabler. I bring a listening universe to the feet of the client in which they can step, dance, prance and unravel themselves. The environment is safe, confidential and supportive. There is a vacuum of external opinion because the only thoughts that count are that of the client. In this type of free-thinking environment, a client can see themselves transparently and self-discover boldly.

So, what I originally thought coaching was and what it has turned out to be in my evolved opinion—are quite different. On a personal level, being a neutral listener was a struggle for me because my loud, exaggerated, opinionated personality has never been switched off. I’m never shy or at a loss for words. And now after learning to be deeply non-judgemental and neutral, I actually get a break from my own personality when I am in coach mode and it’s refreshing. It allows me to be a better friend to my client. It allows me to grow and see a different side of myself. It also helps me chop down my superego, which has always found a sense of achievement in knowing it all and telling people what to do. Now I realize that being a heroine is not about knowing the answers but enabling others to find answers.

I am now the queen of questioning—an enabler and a friend and not an advisor with fixed solutions in mind. In fact, the field that I currently work in (instructional design) deals with such close-ended content for which objectives and answers are very clear cut, that coaching is a new opportunity for me to work with dynamic content. It makes it so much more interesting for me from a sociological and psychological perspective—dealing with new issues and real time, bespoke solutions rather than mass-customized, pre-decided outcomes. Coaching is not training and that is important. Though both have their uses and cannot replace each other—they very much complement each other.

Coaching resonates with me at another level too. I’ve always believed in the ‘power of one’ and not the ‘power of all’. I think united we stand is just propaganda. And interestingly, the coaching process also focuses on individual potential and self-discovery by helping a client understanding her/his unique path and unique combination of SWOTs. And I think it helps to work with a coach from time to time, not to become dependent on a coach but to work with a coach and push your self-discovery an inch further, like you would work with a yoga teacher to keep progressing to more difficult asanas. Similarly, with a coach you can work to tackle more and more complex issues that come to you in your dreams or nightmares, or won’t leave your home or office.

They follow us like shadows, right? Questions of all sorts, not just problems or issues. Curiosity, intuition, observations—all this makes us question who we are. In fact, the questions we ask ourselves form more of our identity than the answers we find. To get to an answer, you need at least 50,000 questions that lead up to it. Anything short of that and you will achieve a half-answer that you are never going to implement. Through the coaching process and through systematic inquiry, you can ask all the necessary questions and self-discover a new level of understanding. You can enjoy a self-dialog in the presence of the coach/universe.

In my 10-July coaching workshop session, a thought came to me:

What we learn from each other’s subconscious minds during a coaching session, is so much more powerful than when you connect to another human being’s conscious mind. The conscious mind in each one of us is so vary, filtered and fragmented. It plays a dual role of gatekeeper and thinker, well mostly gatekeeper, which stops you from deriving at true knowledge or enjoying a true Socratic dialectic. But a subconscious unravelling is a joyful and earthy dialectic that allows for tremendous self-growth for both—the unraveller and her/his audience (that is, the client and the coach). 

So through connecting with each other’s subconscious minds there is true evolution in knowledge via non-layered ‘aha moments’ or breakthroughs. It is in the presence of this type of knowledge that I feel most strengthened. And the coaching process helps create many such moments for both the client and the coach. So, coaching to me, thus far is a guided unravelling. At first, the coach is the enabling light for the client’s ‘guided unraveling’. For other parts, s/he is just a witness—an audience that is hanging on your every word, with no identity of their own. And for the last bit, s/he is the darkness that allows the client to glow as the only light. I believe this is the note that the client needs to end each session on.

Is there a universal right path? Or is the ‘universal right’ to enable individual self-discovery and to find individual paths, which are unique to each one of us? Do we believe as individual’s that everyone must choose their own path? Do we create a space or opportunity for everyone to do that? I believe coaching allows this space to be created. It enables individualism. It does not preach universal right or wrong but excites unique viewpoints and healing. The dialogs I have had with myself in complete privacy have been more honest once I started using the coaching process. This is what I want to bring to all my clients: honest, bold dialog.

To me, coaching allows us to exercise our intuition and perspectives. There are other spiritual and logical paths in life too that act as a mental bench press, and perhaps coaching is just one of them. I truly believe that self-knowledge is the only knowledge we all need and any path that helps us access our pool of self-knowledge is a true path for us. You might not need a coach on your path with you every step of the way because obviously there is no space for two people on one person’s unique path, but at a crossroad, a coach can be a good partner and help you decide which direction your next step should be in—in your words, through your introspection and in your best interest.

For me, a coach provokes and evokes but does not propel.

What’s in it for me to become a life coach?

I’m actually very excited about practicing as a certified GrowMore life coach and then adding an ICF credential to that title. Over the years I’ve had many such mentoring conversations with people but it’s been loaded with judgement and personality, but I always wondered how I could turn that skill to reach a wider audience. Coaching has given me that avenue by honing my existing skills and helping me develop new ones.

So, what is coaching to me? It is a fresh start as a career, as a perception and as a process!