Life Coach Training

Lesson 24

Unfreeze Your Clients

      When you name or label someone or something, you create or affirm its reality. Since all labels exist in the world of form, or opposites, and we are spiritual by nature ― one with God ― no name or label you utter within the world of form truly does a person or thing justice, because there is always more to the person or thing than its labeled attribute(s). (Title of book: Love it, Don’t Label it.) Everything can be traced back to Spirit only, and Spirit is the ultimate truth you could tell about anyone or anything. That’s why when Moses asked God on Mt. Sinai, “What shall I tell people is your name?”  God answered simply, “I AM.”  God did not add one worldly attribute. God is pure being, and, as a child or expression of God, so are you and every client you meet.

      When a client comes to you with a negatively-labeled identity, one of the greatest gifts you can give her is to release her from that identity by not agreeing with it. It’s as if she is someone from prehistoric time who is trapped in a big block of ice. You can either pick the ice away, as some intense therapies do, or you can melt the ice with love. Either way, when you release your client from the bondage of his label/ice block, she is free to be who she was before he was encased, and become who she is now, and can ultimately be.

      At the beginning of a weekend retreat a man came to me with his 19-year-old son. “This is Tom,” the father told me. “He is manic depressive. He has no self-esteem and he cries every day.”  The father went on to describe a half-dozen other diagnoses and negative traits about the young man, and told me, “Maybe this seminar can help him.”

      I looked at the young man and he seemed like a pleasant guy. I did not recognize any of the negative labels his father had laid over him. (I wondered if the father needed the seminar more than the son.) “Let’s see if we can give him some new names this weekend,” I told the father.

      As the weekend went on, Tom really came forth. He participated, shared his feelings, and ended up as the “star” of the program. Everyone fell in love with him, and by the time the last session came, he was shining so brightly that we practically needed sunglasses to look at him.

      Not once during the weekend did I or Tom mention anything to the group about any of the dire labels or diagnoses his father had described. We let him be fresh and new and free. If you would have told the group about any of his father’s labels, they would have wondered who you were talking about. Sure, Tom had his ups and downs in life, but in the presence of our group he was not confined to any of the smallnesses with which others had regarded him. At the end of the program he offered one of the most eloquent sharings I have ever heard, and practically everyone was in tears. Tom had been unfrozen.

      You have the capacity to effect the same transformation with your clients by refusing to name, see, or treat them in the limiting way that others have named, seen, and treated them.  Instead, see them as they would like to be seen, or as the unlimited person you know they can be.  Dale Carnegie advised, “Give the person a positive reputation to live up to!”

      A woman named Linda came to my teacher/healer Hilda’s class with a cast on her arm. “This cast has been on for months now because the broken bone has not healed.”  Linda went on to give various names of problems with the arm, along with doctors’ explanations of why the bone did not heal. Hilda told her, “Then let’s give you a new name. Your new name is ‘Perfect Arm Linda.’ Hilda turned to the class and told us, “Every time you talk to Linda, address her as ‘Perfect Arm Linda.’  Of course we all complied. Several weeks later Linda came to the class without her cast.  Her doctor could not explain why the arm healed all of a sudden, but it did.

      Coaching or healing is more about undoing than doing. Letting the original nature of people be, rather than the false nature that has been laid over them. Guiding your client from fear to love, from worldly identity to spiritual identity, from labels to freedom.

Exercise:

1.      What limiting labels have been laid over you?

Consider nicknames, gender/racial/cultural associations, intelligence or school performance judgments,  looks, athletic performance, medical/psychological diagnoses, sexual acts or preferences, harping on past errors, etc.)

2.      How have you been able to see yourself beyond those labels, and what have been the results of your shift in vision?

        What positive labels have you received or chosen?

3.      What client or friend suffers under self-labeled limits or labels imposed by others?

4.       How might you see this person as free of the ascribed labels?

                What positive labels can you give to him or her?

Affirm:

I am a spiritual being, and so are my clients.

I see myself and them not as the world sees us, but as God created us.