The Bigger Picture:I recently picked up a glossy magazine to read the "top tips" from a life coach, only to be reminded of how inaccurate a picture we can get of this work in the media. This may be because there's simply some bad coaching out there, finding its way into magazines.
It is a new industry, after all, with diverse training standards and only few regulations. Or, it may be because media publications have a different agenda: to hook us in and provide a mass market with immediate solutions. Either way, the result is that we develop incorrect expectations and distorted perspectives of what support is and how meaningful changes are really achieved.
Much of the "coaching" we see in the media is about giving answers: "instructions", "top tips" and "fail-proof" directions to achieve whatever it is. It's as though the best coach is one who gives the best answers. Indeed, this notion of "superior people" is common in our society. Nevertheless, it is quite different from what it really takes to create empowerment and support for us all.
Rather than providing "the answers", coaching is meant to be a process of developing the confidence and fulfilment that come when you can see your own values, realise your own answers and uncover your own journey.
In this way, a coach is meant to facilitate you with the structures, encouragement and context you need to make those discoveries.
Human beings are not islands. Our intelligence needs interaction and encouragement to operate at its best. When left to its own devices in isolation, our mind can go off track quite easily (sometimes seriously so). Strange and fearful experiences, having entered our mind once and briefly but also having been left there to get stuck without moving through, gain momentum and begin to masquerade as "reality". We need connection and love - more than answers and instructions - to recover our own internal intelligence.
Ours is a very "individual-oriented" society. Just as the impetus for each action is meant to be individual desire, we get the impression we're supposed to figure everything out by ourselves.
We think that if the answers are meant to come from inside us anyway, we'd be fools to engage with anyone in discovering them. What we forget is that the human mind just doesn't work like that.
We do each have the answers that make most sense for us inside our own hearts. It is ridiculous to think anyone else would play that role for us. That concept in itself is truly disempowering, although common, particularly in the area of healthcare and particularly in mental healthcare. We actually believe some people know and "function" better than us about us.
Indeed, our commonly accepted definitions for "functioning" and "success" are too rigid and empty. "Functioning" tends to be defined as the ability to be at work, and "success" as amassing as much money as possible.
But why should we define ourselves by money? It is an anti-human value and useless unless we are in a society that is operating completely turned on its head - one that stands by while people suffer or die rather than spend its money on them, and where an individual cannot guarantee support or assistance from the community to ensure one's own survival. Well, this is the world we have created and live in.
Because this society's values are so focused on the economy and not on human need, it is hard for us to invest in what nurtures and develops us. What we are encouraged to spend money on is consumption and escape. These things have no real purpose.
However, spending our resources on gaining connection, encouragement and support seems a waste - they are supposed to be free. Well, nothing is free, everything is shared, and we have chosen to measure that sharing with money.
Furthermore, given that this society is one where human values are rarely encouraged and human priorities are even less acted upon, those resources are in short supply. It makes sense, then, to avail of them where we can find them. Doing so allows us move to a whole different plane of living, rather than going around and around the same circles. In this way, their benefit well outweighs their cost.
On the other hand, only making resources available for things to consume and ways to "escape" our lives leaves us empty. Still, in this world, we can understand it. It seems easier to us to find someone who will give us answers.
We can relate to this as "products" for purchase. It is much harder, however, for us to conceive of resources to access a process for strengthening and mobilising our own intelligence.
There is a value in letting go of "quick fixes" and walking our own journeys toward growth and transformation. We do this in partnerships. Whether we can find this resource in our community, or need to actively it seek out, it is worth its weight in gold and requires no explanation to anyone.
[ www.shalinisinha.comOpens in new window ]
Shalini Sinha works as a life coach with clients in Ireland and internationally.