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!
