Life Coach Training
Lesson 11
Work with the Willing
One of the most crucial elements in the success of your coaching practice is willingness. This applies to your willingness in your practice and your clients’ willingness in the results they attain.
Several years ago a friend cited to me a maxim that has become one of the foundations of my business and my life:
Work with the willing.
I have used this motto many, many times to make crucial decisions, and it has served every time. The principle applies on several levels:
1. Work with willing clients.
Establish your intention to attract only clients who are sincerely interested in showing up, making progress, gaining benefit from your sessions, and attaining their goals. You can speak or write affirmations to that effect, and you can also print this intention on your brochure or website. You can say something like, “I work with clients who are eager and ready to change their lives for the better,” or a similar declaration. In so doing, whether you affirm your intention privately or you publicize it, you are sending out a hailing frequency that will screen clients for you and uplevel the integrity and effectiveness of your practice before your clients even show up.
2. Work with the part of yourself that is willing.
There are aspects of your practice that you want to do, and other aspects that you are not willing to do. If you can identify where your willingness lives, as well as your unwillingness, tell the truth about both, and act true to your willingness, you will save lots of time and difficulties. For example, you may be willing to do only so many coaching sessions a week; or work with a certain population of clients; or accept a certain minimum fee; or spend just so much time with any one client. Be very honest about what you are willing to do and what you are not.
3. Work with the part of your clients that is willing.
While you may have clients that are generally willing, there may be parts of them that are willing and parts that are not willing. If you can help them recognize where their passion and willingness live, and not try to force their way through resistance, the resistance will dissipate. A Course in Miracles tells us that “All that is required for a miracle is a little willingness.” This means that you or your client do not have to be 100% gung ho to accomplish a particular goal. If you or your client are the least bit open, if your resistance is not total, Spirit can wedge a result in the crack.
4. Work with the part of the universe that is willing.
If you step back from an expected agenda and watch for signs of what course wants to happen in your life and in your clients’ lives, you will see patterns. If you or your client can go with that flow rather than trying to superimpose an ego-driven goal over it, your work will be so easy that it doesn’t feel at all like work.
There is a story about a butcher in a small village whose knife never needed sharpening. When people asked him why, he explained, “I never try to force the knife through gristle or bone. When I start to feel resistance I move my knife slightly to the side and cut around it. Thus my knife always stays sharp.”
The best book I know on moving with the willingness of the universe is the Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tsu, translation by Gia Fu Feng, Jane English, and Jacob Needleman. It is one of the few books that have been on my shelf for many years, and I expect always will be.
Exercise:
1. Write in your own words an affirmation declaring that you intend to work only with willing clients:
2. Considering your coaching practice, what parts of yourself are willing?
What parts are unwilling?
3. If you are already working with clients, what parts of your clients are willing?
What parts are unwilling?
(If you are not already coaching, apply this question to friends, relatives or colleagues.)
4. Where do you see the flow of universal willingness moving in your coaching practice?
Where do you see that flow moving in your life?