Life Coach Training

Lesson 28

The Big Picture

      One of the most important aspects of our course is the recognition that the coaching process runs far broader and deeper than meets the eye.  If you believe that you are simply two egos or personalities coming together to try to figure things out, you will feel small and powerless, and your sense of safety, surety, and success will bob up and down and be tossed around like a cork on the waves of an ocean.  You will have performance anxiety, and constantly wonder if you are doing enough or you are enough.  You will be struggling to figure out how to save the client, and your own issues will loom as large as the clients’.

     Contrast the above coaching model with this one:  Both you and your client have access to the wisdom, strength, and peace of  a Higher Power. Your mind and heart are connected to the truth and well-being of God, and so is your client’s. By your invitation, Spirit is guiding your coaching session, and that selfsame Spirit is eager and willing to work through you or your client to create the success you both seek. You and your client are in partnership with Higher Power (even if the client does not recognize this ― all the better if she does), and together you all have the resources to make significant, rewarding progress in the coaching journey.

      There are many ways that Spirit can help you and your client during a coaching session. It may send you an idea, intuition, or even one simple word that the client needs to hear that can be an aha! for him.  It may send that idea or intuition directly into the mind and heart of the client during your conversation.  It might also plant a seed in the client’s mind that sprouts later on, after you meet. Or It may stir something in the client that gets her churning on an issue that eventually leads to greater clarity or a breakthrough.

      When I taught yoga, one night I taught a lesson on my understanding of reincarnation. After the class one student asked me some more detailed questions on the topic. I gave her a random example beginning with the phrase, “Let’s just say that in this life you chose to come with  Andrew and Jessica as your learning partners. . . “ Suddenly she blanched, and I asked her if she was okay. “Andrew is my father and Jessica is my sister,” she told me.

      I had no way to know that specific information, but I believe that since the student and I were both open and willing to learn about the subject, some  guide channeled that information to me, perhaps to give the student (and me) inspiration about the reality of worlds beyond the obvious one.

      When you are in the role of client, the same dynamic applies. Consider that your coach or therapist is not the source of healing, but God is. If you are open to learn and grow, God can easily drop a word or idea into the coach’s mind, and when she speaks it, something clicks for you, and you have what you need to make your next step.  This process can happen through anyone, anytime, not just in a formal coaching or therapy situation.  You may get a soul nudge during a conversation with a friend, or as you peruse a magazine ad, or while watching a movie, or while chatting with a shuttle van driver.

      The ecstatic poet Rumi called God “the Beloved,” or “the Friend” and related to everyone as an aspect of the Beloved, or as a channel through which the Friend may speak.  In coaching, both you and the client are the Beloved/Friend to each other, and in that space of receptivity, great good can come.  In the Big Picture, you are coaching and being coached everywhere you turn. What a great adventure!

Exercise:

1.  The next time you are in a coaching situation s coach or client, notice when you sense that Higher Power is speaking to you or through you. Become acquainted with the energy or vibration of this form of guidance.  How do you personally experience it in your mind, body, or emotions?

2.  Do the same process during your daily life, especially during casual, unexpected moments. Notice how guidance comes when you most need it and sometimes least expect it.

3. Experiment with this process by taking a specific question in mind and watching for the clever ways the answer arrives.

Affirm:

I and my coaching client are open to guidance from Higher Power,

and I delight in the way that inspiration and answers come in easy, natural ways.