This week’s article draws inspiration from an issue that often perplexes our trainee life coaches.
Helping clients to set inspiring, challenging, yet achievable goals is all part and parcel of the life coaching process.
Some clients present with a rather hazy dream or aspiration that they want to crystallise and bring to fruition.
Other clients may be encumbered with one or more problems that they need help overcoming in their quest to lead a more desirable life.
Since most problems are really just opportunities in disguise, both cases are similar, in that goal setting becomes a natural progression in a solution focused coaching process.
However, there are a growing number of clients who don’t fit into either category. When pressed on what they want to achieve with coaching they will respond: “I simply don’t know!”
Clear as Mud
This ‘hands-in-the-air’ type response can easily throw the inexperienced coach.
After all, how do you bring to bear the many tried and trusted tools and techniques that you have learnt to help clients achieve what they want from life, when what they want from life is as clear as a rich butternut soup?
Our New Insights support team is increasingly fielding a common question from trainee life coaches:
“How do I help my client set an inspiring goal for the future if the client has no idea of the kind of future that he or she wants to create?”
No lack of ambition
The first thing we will tell trainees is never to make the mistake of assuming that their client lacks purpose, passion or ambition.
All of that is there, it is simply being suppressed and needs to be released.
A state of confusion
Not knowing what you want, or which direction to follow is, more often than not, symptomatic of a state of confusion caused by a raging tug of war on the inside.
You feel drawn by a strong obligation to satisfy the exhausting and rather raucous demands and expectations of the external world (represented in your thoughts by “I should…” type language).
At the same time you feel pulled in a very different direction, as prescribed by the subtler, quieter, yet equally insistent voice of your heart or inner being (represented in your thoughts by “I really want…” type language).
Sadly, the materialistic, fast paced world we live in today, is demanding of our attention in so many ways, that we are left with little time or energy for matters of the heart, soul or inner voice, whichever terminology you prefer.
Self inflicted
We have brought this upon ourselves.
Our education system teaches mechanisms for reacting to life and its many challenges, but is lacking when it comes to preparing us to take a proactive role in creating the lives we truly desire.
Growing up, we are conditioned to prepare for the many ‘speed bumps’, ‘potholes’ and ‘cul de sacs’ that we are likely to face on our journeys through life.
With the best of intentions, our loved ones and educators equip us with coping strategies for dealing with the inevitable twists, turns and undulations in the road that life maps out for us.
However, few of us are ever properly educated or equipped to map out and create our own unique and distinct life paths.
To survive … or to thrive?
As a result, we become conditioned to believe that life is something ‘done to us’ rather than something we can design and have control over.
The upshot is that most of us live to survive rather than to thrive.
The ‘heart voice’ and the ‘head voice’
Whereas our ‘heart voices’ try valiantly to pull us in the direction of our purposes and our desires, our ‘head voices’ drown out this beautiful music with a constant jarring reminder of all the ‘ought tos’ and ‘should dos’ that we need to prioritise.
Is it any wonder that so many of us experience inner conflict and a feeling of confusion about the best way forward?
When asked what we want, the honest answer is simply:
“I just don’t know!”
The coach’s role
So what is the coach’s role when dealing with a client that “just doesn’t know” what he or she wants?
An experienced and well trained life coach knows that the best approach is to employ techniques that will help the client develop a stronger, more trusting and more resilient connection with his or her all-knowing inner being.
This takes time. But a small step in the right direction can be the key that unlocks a powerful virtuous cycle.
Acting decisively on the voice of the inner being brings rewards, which, in turn, help you to develop trust in your ability to manifest that which you truly desire from life.
Belief brings confidence and clarity
And, once you have belief and confidence that the life you desire is within your power and readily attainable, then what you want will soon become as crystal clear as the water from a melting glacier.
Then it’s just a matter of setting a goal or goals to achieve it.
Ah … now that’s where a good life coach can come in seriously handy!
The key to this discovery on the part of the client, is for the coach to ask keep asking probing questions. It is by making the client feel at ease and establishing trust in a non-critical, non-judgemental environment, that the client will most likely be willing to dig deep to reach the solution to what he or she REALLY wants from life.
Wise words, thank you Karen!