If you’ve ever wondered how coaching works there is one question you can expect to hear from a coach and it is, “What is it that you want?” A simple enough question but for so many they will struggle to answer it. Often the reply is ’I don’t know.’ The person answering may be referring to their relationship, their career, or their future. They will know they want something to change but for a variety of reasons may feel unable to name what it is.
So why is it so difficult to know what it is we want?
Sometimes it’s the busyness of life that leaves us dulled even a little punch-drunk and it takes a major event before we wake up and recognise that something about our life has to change. For others, the impact to the lives of colleagues, or family might seem like a good reason to suppress any desire for change. Some examples are the mother, seeing her children growing up and moving away and she begins to feel she no longer has a role in life. She might ask, “How did I get here? I’m forty-six, my kids are at college, and my husband and I rattle around in the house together with nothing left to talk about. What can I do?” Or what about the man, who has worked over thirty years, managing people and departments, who now finds himself at home with no one to direct or manage but himself, he might say, “I don’t know what to do with my time, the days just stretch out endlessly and I’m feeling low most of the time. What can I do?” For the entrepreneur, whose passion brought his company to where it is today, he might say, “I’ve lost interest; it’s no longer the fun start-up I created. I want something else but I just don’t know what.”
Yes ...but what is it that you want?
This is not an idle question posed by your coach. It’s part of the discovery process that sets out to help you gain self-awareness and fresh perspective about you and what you want from life. It’s about exploring what it is that makes you tick. For some it will mean tapping into distant memories to answer that. For so many, life has become such a serious endeavour that even the unrestrained laughter remembered from youth is rarely heard or experienced. For others the passion that once drove them to build a company culminated in a secure role that now feels hopelessly mundane and mind numbing. So this journey you set out on with your coach is about rediscovering what makes you laugh, brings tears to your eyes, gives you joy or has you break out in a sweat and your heart pulsate faster. It’s about uncovering your passion, your purpose in life and exploring if it has evolved into something different to what it once was.
Powerful Questions
Whether it is your relationship or your career your coach will work with you by asking powerful but simple questions that will help you discover what it is you want from life now. Examples are:
Q:What was good about your relationship at the beginning?
Q:What was it about setting up your own business that drove your passion?
Q:To have that again, what would need to happen?
Q:What steps do you have to take that are your responsibility?
Q:What do you need from others to support you in achieving your goal?
Q:What are the wider implications to you/your family/your employees if you choose a different path?
So it is Simple then?
In a way it is, however coaching works because you are not talking with someone who has a personal agenda about the outcome of any decision you make. That allows you the freedom to explore in confidence, with a professional trained to ask the right questions, the rationale, the logistics, the emotional impact of any change you might want to implement.
What do you get out it?
For the most part, it’s clarity of mind. And when there is clarity, we are better equipped to make the right decision. Surely, that alone makes the investment in coaching all the more worthwhile.
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