Three-Step Self-Coaching Process

A.W.E. Three Steps to Self-Coaching 

From my Self-Coaching Workbook

Awareness of your unique patterns of motivation and behavior. 

If you'd been hypnotized in a nightclub act to do something silly afterward at the hypnotist's command, would you then ask, "Why am I clucking like a chicken?" No. You volunteered to let someone make strong suggestions about your behavior. As a child you were even more suggestible. Read more. . . 


Watching, without judgment, how those patterns operate. 

Instead of backing away from an aspect of yourself you don't like, get to know that troubling part and see what there is to learn. ReLad more. . . 

Experimenting to interrupt patterns and invite transpersonal change. 

When you allow yourself to fully experience your typical reactions, you'll discover a new meaning for the baseball phrase, sweet spot. Read more. . .

 

Let yourself be in AWE!

More in my Self-Coaching Workbook

Lovin' the Spin I'm In

A phenomenon known as frame dragging predicts that a rotating mass will drag space around it, like a bowling ball spinning in molasses.

This is an apt metaphor for how stuck our worldviews become when we operate in the same old way instead of broadening our perspective.

We continue spinning in the molasses of our patterns, no matter how much we want to do something different, because that particular spin has so much momentum.

Sometimes we wake up to a bigger game because our bowling scores are down. Sometimes it takes a complete "miss" to energize change.

Remember these lyrics to a Frank Sinatra song?

"In a spin, lovin' the spin I'm in..." 

Paradox is essential to change. When you see the spin you're in and love yourself anyway you will, paradoxically, unstick yourself from the molasses that's been dragging you around.  

Seeing with New Eyes

Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs define leadership agility as a process of reflective action or ongoing learning from your own actions — the ability to focus, step back, gain a broader and deeper perspective, and re-engage from that new perspective.

Though addressed to organizational leadership, the four key areas of agility are applicable with anyone or group of any size, from individuals to partners to families to organizations to communities to nations:

Self-leadership agility — stepping back to become more aware of your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and experimenting with new, more effective approaches.

Creative agility — stepping back from your habitual assumptions and developing optimal solutions to the issues you face.

Stakeholder agility — stepping back from your own views and objectives to consider the needs and perspectives of stakeholders.

Context-setting agility — stepping back to determine the best initiatives, given changes taking place in the larger environment within which you operate. 

As noted by these authors, we all need greater agility to adapt to our turbulent world economy's accelerating change, growing complexity, and interdependence.

We enrich our lives and the lives of those we impact when we step back from our habitual views to broaden and deepen our perspective.

Don't Run, Make it a Home Run!

It's normal and human, when difficult feelings arise, to want to run from the discomfort or to strike out and blame someone else. Either of these responses only reinforces the pattern that caused the distress in the first place.

When you allow yourself to fully experience your typical reactions, you'll discover a new meaning for the baseball phrase, sweet spot ("When you hit a ball just right, you've hit it on one of the three 'sweet spots' of the bat").

Years ago I learned from Arnold Mindell that we receive signals about unconscious patterns through one of three channels: physical, auditory, or visual. These are our sweet spots. Stop right now, think of a recent situation where you felt upset, and ask yourself, "Was my first clue...

a) a physical sensation such as a headache, backache, or tense shoulders?"

b) an auditory conversation (self-talk) such as 'OK, now I've really gotten myself into something'?"

c) a visual image (could be literally 'seeing red' or another image)?"

Whether your recent experience was predominantly physical, auditory, or visual, now switch to another channel by asking one of these questions:

a) "If I could sense this [problem] physically, where would it be?"
b) "If this [problem] could speak to me, what would it say?"
c) "If I could see this [problem], what would it look like?"

The first time I tried this, I was having severe neck pain, so I asked the pain, "If you could speak to me, what would you say?" To my astonishment, I heard the phrase "Yoke of oppression." Not surprisingly, when I then asked to "see" the pain, I saw two yoked oxen being driven with a whip. 

It's also not surprising that my unconscious responded in metaphor. When logic doesn't work ("I think I'll just have my neck quit hurting"), that's an invitation to involve your more holistic, creative, spontaneous, nonverbal self. 

I hadn't realized how much I felt pushed around, yoked by something I didn't want for myself. I eventually became familiar with a deeply programmed pattern of allowing others to influence the direction of my life, and learned to clarify what I wanted for myself.

Working with the yoke metaphor was life-changing for me. Find the sweet spot that changes your game. 

More in my Self-Coaching Workbook.