Seek First to Understand

Many years ago, when I was being trained for counseling there was an impetus to spend the first few sessions to understand where a client was coming from to establish a baseline, then came along Stephen Covey with his 5th Habit: Seek First to Understand, and this concept of understanding has evolved in my practice as I have as well.

Initially, “understanding” was basically an assessment tool, after which one would prepare a series of successive programs to guide a client from where they were at the initial consultation to where one’s training had determined was the proper destination for the client.

Only after years of practice did I begin to see that no manner of training was suitable for guiding each client to his or her highest and best. This could only be determined by challenging the client to reach deep inside and discover his or her own path and destination. In doing so, it became clear that there was no one size fits all solution, and every client was different. After a time, this increasingly made more sense to me.

If you are in the counseling or “help” business in any manner, shape, or form, it is easy to have preconceived ideas about what is generally, if not specifically, the best path that anyone should follow. Your drive might be to “fix” someone. That is to assert your perspective over that of the person you are trying to help. Instead, consider a deeper level of empathetic understanding.

Time and experience have humbled me and taught me that my opinions may not be the best for an individual, for if any given person is truly individual then the path they travel will be just as unique and individual as he or she is.

This really changes the emphasis on understanding and takes it to a new, empathetically deeper level, because now you have to take an entire life into consideration, and while your training may have equipped you to look for clues and probable suggestions for solutions, you should be ready for anything.

One thing that has helped me in this structural reframe is to allow the client to be right in all things and allow them to adjust their sense of rightness as we progress in a supportive coaching arrangement. I really try to get a sense of what it is like to walk in their shoes as they live through their life.

In retrospect, I am somewhat ashamed of the sense of superiority that I exercised with clients in the past, when I approached my work with clients as more structured and rigid. I have a much higher success rate based on the increased connection due to this increased understanding of a client.

Honoring where they are at any given moment, without judgment, standard recommendations, or preconceived outcomes.

My motivation is highly love-inspired because that is who I am. I sincerely and lovingly regard my clients and support them through whatever their process may be. To encourage and walk alongside the clients to discover where this journey leads.

I am not likely to tell a client what to do these days but am probably going to make many suggestions, giving them many options to choose for themselves what is the best door to open along the way.

This means allowing the individuals to be comfortable in their world whatever it might look like and work from there.

This has allowed me to have the most entertaining and expansive experiences and has enabled me to have access to their innermost thoughts and data provided by the people that I work with that I would never have had access to otherwise.

All from truly seeking to first understand, allowing them to be or believe anything they want, and genuinely accepting and loving them through their process, supporting them as they find their way to new levels of personal and spiritual growth.

In the end, the client is blessed. Still, I feel that I am even more blessed because I was able to be there in those most precious of moments when perceptions shifted, epiphanies were experienced, and a new life metamorphosis happened before my very eyes.

Coaches Trained Born and Made

Training and certifying coaches for years, I hear two distinct references about great coaches and their ability to coach

You can train to be a great coach

Great coaches are born, not trained

Both are true, you can train to be a great coach and the best coaches are born to be coaches. And I would add another,

Life can call and make you the best coach

Let’s take a look at these ideas, digging a little deeper

You can train to be a great coach

Coaching, like any other trained profession, can be learned. The skills can be taught and learned in a classroom setting. In this respect, any good student could learn to be a great coach, technically.

Trained coaches are advised to discover and find a specialty, an area to focus their particular expertise, to specialize in a particular type of coaching.

You are born a great coach

In my practice, I see many people who are “born coaches.” What does it mean to be born a coach? It simply means that you may not have trained to be a coach but it is something you’ve done your whole life. And if you’ve come to this planet to be a coach, you’ve been coaching as long as you can remember and usually have a specialty.

If you came to this planet to be a coach, a quick review of the types of people who have been attracted to you for a particular type of advice, indicates your pre-destined target audience. For instance, if people have been drawn to you for advice on their love lives, then it’s pretty plain to see, you came here with the divine assignment of being a relationship coach.

Life made you the best coach

This type of coach is highly specialized and trained by life, sometimes the most tragic training and learnings from life have qualified you to be one of the few people with such unique terrestrial training, that most likely could never be taught in the classroom.

The training has likely taken place along a hard, treacherous road travelled by others, but you, though beaten and bruised (either physically or emotionally) have come out on the other side of this episode of life, successfully, with a positive perspective.

In this scenario, life has given you qualifications to help others navigate circumstances and challenges which you have first-hand experience with.
In most cases the life-trained best coaches are the most reluctant because it is understandable that their self-confidence might be somewhat lacking following their life’s struggle, and they are haunted by negative self-talk, such as not being worthy or well-educated in their imposed field of study.

Why else do you think life would have selected you to endure this harrowing experience?

Could it be that you have been hand-picked to be the lighthouse, beaming your message of hope and support to others who may be experiencing the same traumatic experiences, right now?

It was no accident that you were chosen to weather this storm, because no one is more qualified to offer hope to others going through what you went through.

These people are looking for you, right now.

Will they be able to find you?

They may not be able to make it without you…

The longer you put off answering the call, the more they will suffer. Wouldn’t you have wanted someone, like you, to offer hope and support?

What time is now for you to accept your divine assignment?

It’s time for you to “Coach Up,” and answer the call.

All and Nothing Therapy

Having studied and taught a variety of therapeutic modalities and working in the field of therapeutic science for years it is not uncommon for counselors, coaches and consultants to maintain a tool box full of these methodologies. While we may have been trained in a particular method, you might find the resulting techniques practiced by each individual varies in their method of delivering the specific techniques, as each practitioner develops their own unique style, based on their own prowess of all the therapeutic tools.

Lately, in a round table session with many therapists, I was able to query over a dozen practitioners who all admitted they had created their own version of strict methods they studied. Only two of them insisted they felt compelled to follow the exact modality as trained, in order to be authorized to add them by name to their menu of services offered.

In this group setting, I referred to this idea as, “All and Nothing Therapy,” as a contrast to the phrase commonly used as, “All or nothing.” It seemed to be an adequate title, at least for the conversation at hand, to describe the idea that most of us had created our own methods based on our specific training which honored the specific therapeutic model but had evolved in individual practice to only be closely related to the original version. And in most cases, the consensus seemed to be, that the evolved version was a combination of other previously learned therapeutic modalities.

So, if you’re going to see me, or any of my contemporaries, be forewarned, you’re going to have a life-changing experience unlike you will get anywhere else. That said, what are some of the things that we deal with on a regular basis? Well, we all agree that we’re in the paradigm shifting business, which is the broad stroke definition of what we do, while we all specialize. My specialty has evolved through many different focus groups from love, marriage, relationships and spiritual growth to business, with my current client list looking mostly like enlightened businesspeople at the moment.

It’s not that they are enlightened about their businesses so much, as they are entrepreneurs on a spiritual journey of enlightenment, while they are pursuing their businesses as an outlet of their spiritual growth, and supporting their (metaphoric) travel expenses along their journey. And there is a growing trend as I am seeing more and more spiritually inclined entrepreneurs expressing their message, skills and gifts, as an outpouring through their businesses or ministries.

One of the common issues they need to overcome include eliminating empowering others to slow their roll, or to get them worked up and over-reactive to series of words spoken by people who appear to be determined to pull them to lower energetic vibrations.

Think about it, if someone can say words to you that cause you to be offended, hurt your feelings or make you want to either fight or flee, this is not a reflection of the state of the person speaking the words. This is a clear indication that you have been predictably programmed by society to respond to those words in a specific manner and you fall for it every time. The mere fact that you respond to those words negatively, qualifies you to be a predictably manageable member of our society.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

With a little help of my friends, you can listen to someone’s litany of disrespecting or vile words and not be affected negatively. While we all may approach this challenge differently, with a little intervention, and a bit of skill, you can be emotionally bullet proof.

So, if you’re finding yourself being sensitive to what other people think or say about you, get some help. Seek out a counselor, coach or consultant who can take you through a metamorphic process that will have you thinking differently about the things that other people say, because the truth is,

People who judge others, are only expressing their own inner struggle and pain

There is no reason to take it personally, when someone is acting out because they are amidst so much inner turmoil or pain. This might be the only way they know how to relieve some of the pressure of their life. You might even think about how you are blessed to be the method for them to relieve some of this pent up frustration of pressure. Someone else may have really been deeply hurt by this person’s outburst.

You can take charge of this area of your life and/or any other part(s) of your life by embarking on your journey of empowering self improvement by learning how to be successful with personal development, if you’re so inclined.

Seek out a counselor, coach or consultant to be your accountability partner you resonate with and start kicking ass and taking names. Get in touch with who you really are, in tune with your life’s purpose and sharing your unique message, skills and gifts, because a better life is waiting for you.

If your life has been going on… and it seems pretty much the same ol’ same ol’, maybe it’s time to embrace your uniqueness and live a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

 

Aren’t All Life Coaches the Same?

It’s not uncommon for people to have misconceptions about the types of coaches and mentors that I work with, especially if they have met one. After meeting someone who introduces them as a “Life Coach” and you get to know a little about them and what they do, you might come to the conclusion that this is what life coaches are like. Like most assumptive generalizations, nothing could be further from the truth.

That would be like saying that all government employees are the same. While they may share some similar characteristics, each coach, counselor or consultant is more like an individual work or art and no two are the same.

Out of nearly a hundred different types of coaches I’ve worked with, the most popular include the general life coach as well as coaches in specialized areas of business, career, communication, financial, leadership, mentoring, performance, relationship, and spiritual to note a few.

Each individual coach, counselor or consultant brings their own mix of varying degrees of innate skills, life experiences and professional training to become the ever-evolving version of themselves which they offer to others as a support system, and every one has his or her own unique style of coaching.

For instance, here are just some attributes of coaching styles that you might find in a potential coach:

  • Accountability partner
  • Acts as a guide and confidant
  • Assist individuals in breaking out of their comfort zone and expand their thinking
  • Assist others in seeing the superpowers shrouded by infirmity or disability
  • Assists in trying new things or a new ways of doing something
  • Challenge the person’s assumptions
  • Cognitive shift enabling clients to achieve their goals
  • Competition coaching in any field from sports to professional
  • Focus on experimentation, creativity and innovation
  • Goals setting and achievement
  • Help others turn bad experiences into treasure leading to a bright future
  • Helping people live in the now
  • Helps make a considerable break from the past
  • Helps remove blocks that may be the result of a hidden fear or limiting beliefs
  • Identifies with how the client is feeling
  • Identify personal or professional symptoms, find out the source of those symptoms, and help them find solutions
  • Increasing performance, personal and/or professional
  • Motivation and inspirational
  • Reflective consideration, overcoming the past to effectively move forward
  • Uncovering expansion of truth and belief systems
  • Work with a person resistant to growth
  • Work on personal standards and boundaries
  • Work with people on who they are, what they want and how to achieve their desires

There are so many different kinds of coaches with so many styles and specialties that it is nothing short of impossible a task to try to lump them all into a particular set of characteristics, even if based on their particular field of expertise.

So, if you’re looking for a coach, keep in mind that one size does not fit all. Find the right coach for you, one whose style resonates with you.

And if you’re interested in becoming a coach or mentor (or already are one) celebrate your individuality and be yourself. Embrace a style of coaching that suits you well and helps your clients achieve their highest and best.