Promoting Happiness

The problem with the term ‘life coaching’ is that it’s just not terribly descriptive. The net effect of that is that members of the public tend to hold very different preconceptions of what life coaching is really all about.

In particular, life coaching often gets confused with counselling or mentoring, two disciplines which are, in fact very different.

At New Insights we’ve developed a fairly simple and succinct definition that we use – and ask our trained coaches to use – to promote consistency. But sometimes even that’s not simple enough.

When the situation calls for ‘brass tack’ brevity I like to explain life coaching as ‘promoting happiness’ because when you boil down everything that life coaches do, that is the end result that they seek for their clients.

So what is happiness and why does a consistent state of happiness remain so elusive for so many of us?

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Promoting Happiness (continued)

 

Unconscious versus conscious living

In my opinion the problem is rooted in the interactions between mind and body and the unconscious manner in which we tend to allow that process to take place.

Let me try to explain … and a good way to that is to borrow from my wife, Jenni, who talks about what she calls ‘Unconscious versus Conscious Living’.

You could regard ‘unconscious living’ as living on autopilot where your actions and behaviours are simply learned or ‘programmed’ responses to certain situations or events. More accurately, they are the instinctive responses to the thoughts you have in certain situations or events.

Conscious living implies a more controlled, higher order way of living where you are aware of how you think and aware of the fact that you have choices regarding how you respond to those thoughts.

The thoughts – emotions – reactions feedback loop

The mind is a prolific thought generator. It’s generally accepted that we humans think some 50,000 – 70,000 thoughts each and every day! (And some people still feel insulted when you tell them that they have a voice inside their head!)

Thoughts generate emotions, which, in turn, generate physical bodily reactions. Those reactions give rise to related thoughts, which in turn generate further emotions.

So you can see that there is a powerful ‘feedback loop’ at work here.

Reactions to emotions can manifest as physical behaviours or spoken words or both.

The ‘unconscious living’ scenario

In the ‘unconscious living’ scenario those reactions would be instinctive, based on how our minds have been programmed, in other words what we have been led to accept and believe through our past upbringing, education and experiences.

Let’s take a hypothetical example:

Julie was brought up largely in a single parent home by her mother who was involved in an acrimonious divorce early on in Julie\’s life. Her mother’s resentment for her previous husband had fuelled in her a general distrust of men. “Never trust men” was a piece of advice that Julie, on entering her teenage years, was to hear regularly from her mother.

Julie’s first love was a boy she met at high school. But, about a year into the relationship she was to find out that he had been secretly dating other girls at school. Her mother’s advice suddenly became all too real and she began to believe what she had been taught.

Later in her young adult life, a thoroughly well-intentioned young man from Julie’s work called her up to ask her to go on a date. Julie’s first thought was that, like all men, he should not be trusted. That thought quickly turned to a feeling of anger at how she had been misled by her first boyfriend. Instinctively, she slammed the phone down.

After a few seconds she realised how her reaction might have confused and hurt the young man. This left her feeling guilty, confused … and anything but happy.

The ‘conscious living’ alternative

Conscious living, on the other hand, means living with a clear awareness that how we think determines how we feel and therefore how we react and what we say; that we always have a choice in the matter and that our beliefs can and should always be open to question.

Going back to the example above, the consciously living Julie would have reflected on her first thought after receiving the phone call and been careful not to allow programmed emotions to dictate her actions. She would quickly have realised that she could choose to react on past experience and become unhappy or give this new man the benefit of the doubt and do everything to promote a good outcome.

In such a scenario she may have declined, politely and gracefully or accepted his offer of a date in anticipation of having a good time or at least an interesting experience. Either way this would have left her feeling confident and happy.

Unhappiness as a result of the vicious cycle

The upshot of what I have shared with you today is that the general unhappiness that is felt by so many can be put down to unconscious living and the vicious cycle of negative thought that produces negative emotion that results in negative behaviour that provokes yet more negative thoughts

Towards awareness and greater happiness

Life coaching helps people to understand and become aware of the trap of unconscious, programmed living and the danger of a closed mind with totally fixed beliefs.

It shows people how to retake control of their lives by becoming aware that they have both complete responsibility for their own lives and the freedom of choice.

In doing so, it is promoting happiness – plain and simple 🙂

 

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