Monthly Archives: October 2010

Want to be a guest poster?

 in Guest Post / site news  tagged guest posts

I’ve been delighted at the quality of the Friday guest posts that have already appeared on the site. (There’s also some exciting ones to come 🙂 ) If you have missed any then visit here for a full list of previous guest posts.

Every Friday I include a post from a “guest”, ideally having a real mix of posts with different opinions, approaches and topics.

It’s one of my coaching beliefs that the coaches who have exposed themselves to a range of approaches etc have the most flexibility when working with clients. So I’d love to reflect that with the posts on the blog.

As we approach the end of 2010 I do have some Friday’s that have not yet been claimed by a guest poster.

Interested? Then here’s what else you’ll need to know:

The only thing that I ask is that any posts are of interest to the audience of coaches/ those interested in coaching and is respectful of others views.

I’m very happy for guest posters to include a bio, in fact I think that would be a great bonus for any readers who want to find out more.

Also, if there is a particular week you’d prefer a post to run because it helps to promote an event you are running, I’ll do my best to accommodate that request. In the event I have two people wanting the same date I think the fairest thing to do is schedule them on a first come first served basis. 🙂 If that does happen I will make sure that I’ll communicate this with you and offer alternative available Fridays.

If you want to be one of the guest posters then contact me and let me know.

The last time I made an open invite for guest posters dates were claimed quickly so if there is a specific Friday you would like to be featured on then I recommend you contact me sooner, rather than later.

Once upon a time
! 2

 in Guest Post  tagged attitudes / awareness / behaviours / beliefs / business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / decisions / executive coach / Frederique Murphy / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / metaphor / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / states / stories

In this weeks Friday guest post, Frederique Murphy would like to tell us a story and discusses metaphors.

Once upon a time…!

By Frederique Murphy

I’ve been very much looking forward to writing this blog post and as I could see the date, fast approaching, I had decided to be open and only decide on what I was going to write about this week! I knew (that is a decision made on faith) that something would inspire me 😉

And, of course, here I am, I believe I have found the perfect topic to write about and I am delighted to share this post with you as I know that these words “Once upon a time…!” are key when working with your clients.

You see, earlier on this week, I participated in my first ever marathon. And, while I could write a post (which, by the way, I will more than likely do!) about running a marathon and the dozens of business parallels that exist, I’d like to look at the bigger picture and write about how you, as a coach or a coach-to-be, can use stories and metaphors during your sessions with your clients.

Stories and metaphors are phenomenally powerful and when used appropriately and with a clear outcome in mind, there are simply brilliant to help your client with whatever it is you are helping them with.

So, Once upon a time…!

And then, what, why and how, you may ask!

Let’s start at the beginning and define what we are looking at:

Story is a common term for a description of a sequence of events, or a statement regarding the facts pertinent to a situation in question. (Wikipedia)

A metaphor is a figure of speech that constructs an analogy between two things or ideas; the analogy is conveyed by the use of a metaphorical word in place of some other word. (Wikipedia)

The reason why I love using stories and metaphors with my clients is 2-fold.

On one hand, using stories and metaphors, during your sessions can help you, help your clients change, shift, transform, facilitate, expand, take action; all of these impacting their states, awareness, attitudes, beliefs, decisions, and behaviours; so, VERY powerful, right?

On the other hand, it makes you unique 😉 Now, what I mean by that, is while telling stories and metaphors will not make you unique in itself, by you telling your own stories and your own metaphors is unique. You and only you can draw from your own real-life stories and leverage these in your coaching practice and no one out there can utilise these events, and situations with the same power. Your past experiences make you unique and as a coach, you can leverage these events and situations and use them when working with your clients.

Personally, I like to create my metaphors on real-life stories. While there are books given you stories and metaphors you can use, I prefer to use my own stories and create my own metaphors as I feel that it creates a stronger experience for both the coach and the client.

Remember, feelings are powerful, and whatever state you want your client to be in, the faster way to induce that state is to be in it yourself; i.e., when I’ll explain that amazing feeling of crossing that finish line, after I ran, jogged and walked for 26.2 miles / 42 kilometres, I can guarantee you that I know I will be in that state, and my client will be there with me.

So, when you are with a client, and you suddenly feel that this is what you need, you can draw, very naturally, from your own experiences and help your clients get where they want to be.

Here are a couple of things to consider when creating your metaphors:

  • what are the states you want to induce in your client?
  • what are the themes you want to leverage with your client?
  • what are the key messages you want your client to take onboard?
  • what is it that you want your client to feel and then do as a result?

And, while telling your stories and metaphors:

  • use a variety of tones,
  • use sensory language (hear, feel, see, touch, taste, smell),
  • use humour (where appropriate!),

and, enjoy!

So, there you have it 😉

Most importantly, have fun and enjoy the process. Think back of your stories, think of the states, themes, key messages and go for it, trust your gut-feeling, you will know which story, which metaphor to use to help your client.

…And they lived happily ever after!

About the Author/Further Resources

Frederique Murphy

Combining her business expertise, having been a business consultant for over 10 years, working on multi-millions programmes around the world and running a successful 6-figure business (she hit that figure within 9-months in business and then doubled it within the following 6 months!) and her mind expertise, being an international licensed NLP Master Practitioner & NLP Mind Coach, Frederique has developed the “Mountain Moving Mindset” programme, where she empowers business owners, entrepreneurs and solo-preneurs to master their mindset, so that they can move mountains and bring their businesses to the next level!

She shares her M3 programme through her mentoring & coaching packages, published articles, blog, newsletters, and live events, where she passionately teaches and uniquely transfers the same skills, attitudes and systems that work for her to the business owners ready to reach new heights!

Coaching “real people” 2

 in Coaching  tagged business coach / business coaching / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching "real people" / coaching content / coaching courses / coaching preparation / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / coaching welcome pack / executive coach / Free resource / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / starting coaching

I’ve had several conversations recently with individuals that have revolved around coaching “real people.”

Now if you, like me, have been known to take someone’s language literally that can conjure all sorts of mental images appropriate for the run up to Halloween of coaching seasons with zombies! However, what they actually mean is coaching someone outside of a coaching training season.

For some reason many seem to have equated any coaching conversations that they have had in a training season as being a “role play” Apparently, the person that they were coaching was not using a real situation and giving fake answers.

When asked if they were given the brief to do a role-play, I’ve not had one person tell me that yes that was what they were told to do. When I also check if they had also been a coachee, the answer is normally yes and they had used a real life situation.

If you have found yourself in a similar situation, possibly feeling some fear and apprehension, I have a question for you. What if, you had already coached real people? What would you do differently if that was the case?

Sometimes what individuals tell themselves is that it will be different if the client doesn’t have an existing knowledge of the coaching model you have been taught to use. (Presuming that you are using a model.)

It’s true that someone without any knowledge of the coaching model may be confused if you use “jargon” or “terminology”. So you can either explain what any terminology means or just phrase it using language that they do understand.

In my experience the main difference is that someone without an interest in the skills of coaching is that they are not focusing at all upon how you are working, the questions you are asking etc. Their interest is about the outcome of your conversation not the techniques you’ve used.

Other people think that when they work with “real people” that they have to prove that coaching works. Personally I find that focusing on proving coaching works generally adds extra pressure and shifts the focus away from the individual in front of you and being of assistance to them. I find that the more I focus on being of service to my clients the more of a positive impact that conversation can have and, if they want it, provides more proof that coaching works.

This is often connected to using free sessions as part of your marketing strategy. I’m not advising not to use that as part of your approach – If that works for you then, of course, by all means keep using it. I will offer the suggestion that you can demonstrate and see if you and your potential client are a good match without focusing on proving coaching works.

Moving forward coaching “real people”

If you have found yourself stuck because you have some fear or apprehension about coaching a “real person” here are some possible ways you could move forward:

  • Take a small step to get the momentum going. That will be unique to you but perhaps coaching someone with coaching experience that wasn’t on your coaching training is one option.
  • Take a large leap – “feel the fear and do it anyway.” Do a coaching season with someone who you think is “real”!
  • Recognise you already have been coaching “real people” and choose to invite people who you think it would be fun to coach.
  • Find a coach/mentor you are comfortable with to work with you

There will be other approaches you could take and if none of the above appeals, then the following question may be of use:

What would have to happen for you to coach “real people”?

Or (if you’re feeling particularly daring 😉 )

What would have to happen for you to feel comfortable coaching “real people”?

Feel free to share your answers and thoughts below and click submit comment.

Once upon a time 


 in General life improvement  tagged life improvement

“Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale of all.”
Hans Christian Andersen

I love to read autobiographies to find out how people do what they do. It doesn’t have to be a celebrity to spark my interest. As TV host Phillip Schofield, who has spent the vast proportion of his (to date) 26 year career interviewing people says, “the most inspiring are nearly always the people who aren’t famous and who have an amazing story.”

It’s not at all uncommon to read bits where the individual shares the fact that they had moments of self doubt. Those times when they question if they are good enough or perhaps start “over thinking” a situation. The difference is that these are people that don’t let that stop them from “putting themselves out there”.

How someone goes about doing that will depend upon the individual:

  • Some carry on and “feel the fear and do it anyway,” they take a deep breath and take the next step as necessary.
  • Others may use one of the many ways to keep the situation in perspective – that may be by talking or working with someone else.

Perhaps deliberately stepping out of the situation and finding “evidence” for the opposing thought that is keeping them stuck, taking action to rectify the situation, or perhaps just giving that thought no more weight then any other thought that goes through your head.

  • Another option is to take lots of seemingly small and manageable steps towards what they want.

They find the way that works for them, the thing that will move their story forward.

This week I invite you to play with some questions to find ways to take the next step in your story. Take as long as you want to answer these questions and by all means use a pen and paper to write your answers.

1. Imagine that you are writing your own autobiography – what do you want the next chapter to be about?

2. If you really knew nobody (including you) would judge you on what you write then what goes in your next chapter?

3. How does this chapter start? What is the very first thing that you do?

4. If you had to make that first step easier and more fun how would you do it?

Have a lovely confident week,

Love

Jen

This post was originally posted on www.YourChangingDirection.com

The Evolution of a Coach 5

 in Guest Post  tagged business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / content free / development coach / executive coach / flow / GROW / Kathlyn Hendricks / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / master coach / Michael Neill / Nancy Kline / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / process coach / Richard Nugent / Si John Whitmore / solutions focus / transformational coaching

In this weeks Friday Guest Post Richard Nugent reflects on his coaching journey so far …

The Evolution of a Coach

by Richard Nugent

Over the past year, I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with some of the very best coaches on the planet. As well as raising my coaching game hugely, I have become acutely aware of the journey that I and other coaches travel. The phases in a coach’s development were certainly never mapped out at the beginning of my own journey. At each stage I thought I was there – I had arrived as a coach. How wrong I was.

My aim with this tip is to give you a sense of just what is possible – whether you are a leader, trainer, facilitator or even a professional coach. I want to expand the horizons of what’s possible for you and your clients. While reading, consider which phase you’re in – and whether you could add even more value by developing yourself further.

Even if you are in the fourth stage of evolution – the phase I have called the “transformational coach”, I would like to open up the discussion about what’s next. Let’s begin, as all good stories do, at the beginning.

The Process Coach

I started coaching back in my days as a trainer in a large Call Centre. I was expected to be a great coach and to help staff improve their performance. The trouble was that my experience of coaching had been limited to the sports world – where coaching meant that the coach demonstrated a technique, had the person try it out and then tell them what they did wrong in order to correct it. I was sure that coaching in a business context couldn’t be the same, could it?

Around that time, I experienced (endured?) a 2-day coaching skills programme – teaching me the delights of the GROW model, some listening skills and, of course, the feedback sandwich. Big on theory – and very un-brain friendly. I was released out on to the call centre floor to listen in on calls and provide coaching to those lucky advisors whose customer interactions I had monitored. I tried to follow GROW as my trainer had taught me, and the session often went something like this:

Richard: ”What’s your goal for this session?”

Advisor: ”errr
 for you to tell me how I have done whilst you’ve been listening in”

Richard: ”Hmmmm
 OK. How do you think the call went?”

Advisor: ”Fine, I think”

Richard: ”Good. Good. What are the opportunities for you to improve next time?”

Advisor: ”Look – what the hell are you on about? Just tell me if I did OK or not”

Then I would give them a feedback sandwich


“Well, I thought the opening was really nice – and you closed it well. You gave the customer lots of incorrect information though. However, your voice sounded really professional”

Of course, I wasn’t always this bad – and over time I developed my rapport skills and ability to give feedback in a way that added value for the advisors, and ultimately for the customers.

So, there is a place for really great performance feedback, and for coaching on the intricacies of a specific process. it forms the meat and drink for many people in business today and the chances are that if you started your coaching journey in an organisation, it probably began with process coaching. However, this is just the beginning.

The Developmental Coach

Many years are ditching GROW, I finally saw it applied the way I’m sure it was meant to be. I worked with a coach whose opening question was “How can I help?” They moved elegantly through the stages of the model, jumping back and forth as the client required, drawing from a huge bank of high quality questions.

She created new resources in the clients she worked with, helping them to explore new options before helping them to decide on the most congruent option and then encouraging them towards absolute commitment to action. Most impressive of all was that the coaching was ‘content-free’. She never once advised or led – she simply asked great questions.

Great developmental coaches spend more time focused on what the client is saying (or not saying) than to the coaching model. They are masters at matching and mirroring – and perhaps most important of all – they help their clients to focus on what is possible – not just what the problem is.

In this second phase of evolution, the emphasis is on development. When I discovered that coaching didn’t just have to be remedial – my fire was well and truly lit. I was certain that I wanted to be a coach.

What I didn’t yet appreciate were the possibilities that still lay ahead when I fully developed the new skills I was acquiring.

The Master Coach

You are probably a Master Coach if:

  • you know the single fastest way to build deep rapport with any client
  • you have an extensive bank of great questions to draw from – but more often than not, the most elegant resource-unlocking question just pops into your head intuitively
  • you are a master of your own emotional state and are able to strongly influence the states of your clients
  • you are able to create outstanding breakthroughs with clients even when you don’t know what you’re coaching them about
  • you probably draw on the work of transformational coaches like Nancy Kline, Michael Neill and Sir John Whitmore – and other valuable approaches such as Solutions Focus and Flow
  • you know that you unlock clients’ potential to overcome broad issues in their lives – and to create more joy and possibility than they ever imagined

I was fortunate to serve and help many clients in my ‘Master Coach’ phase. In fact, I still develop coaches to be Master Coaches. I think it’s a highly valuable evolution. Whilst the focus is still firmly on respecting the client’s map of the world – and not suggesting or leading them down any particular route – you can help clients to commit more fully. To get here takes dedication, practice, study and commitment. If you are a Master Coach, I genuinely believe you are already making the world a better place.

The Transformational Coach

Has a coach ever told you a single story that has changed your life forever? If so, you have experienced Transformational Coaching. Michael Neill defines Transformational Coaching as “a pervasive shift in or a way of being in the world. At this level it is not enough for us to help people develop a skill or change a feeling. It’s helping people transform their intangible selves – and in so doing change their experience of everything”. (SuperCoach, Michael Neill, Hay House, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84850-070-9)

A Transformational Coach will do whatever is necessary to help their client create what they want to create. Often this starts by helping them to understand the power of ‘creating’. If you are new to this distinction between ‘reporting’ and ‘creating’ the closest single phrase I’d use to sum it up is the one credited to Kathlyn Hendricks: ”Your life is a reflection of what you are already committed to”.

Transformational Coaches have a deep understanding of just what is possible. They realise that, when you are swimming in the sea, it’s hard to see the water – so often the most transformational work is the most obvious. Another distinction is that they work best when their clients are ready to be coached. They use metaphor, stories and their own life experiences on top of their already-honed master coaching skills to help clients realise their full potential. Oh and they learn just as much from their clients as their clients learn from them.

Beyond Coaching

So, what’s the next stage in our evolution as Coaches? Is it something more business focused or more spiritual? Does it include some of the newer, less understood tools such as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), or is it more scientifically based, supported by the rapid advances in our understanding of neuroscience?

I am not there yet, but I am certain of three things:

1. there is another level

2. it is up to us to create

3. I would love to hear your views!

Time to Reflect

Wherever you are on your journey, what’s the next step, and what will you do to take this?

What will coaches be doing differently in 2015?

This week’s guest post comes to you from Richard Nugent of the Kaizen Team. My aim with this tip is to give you a sense of just what is possible – whether you are a leader, trainer, facilitator or even a professional coach. I want to expand the horizons of what’s possible for you and your clients. While reading, consider which phase you’re in – and whether you could add even more value by developing yourself further. Even if you are in the fourth stage of evolution – the phase I have called the “transformational coach”, I would like to open up the discussion about what’s next.

About the Author/Further Resources

Richard helps successful business leaders to move from being ‘good’ to ‘outstanding’. He challenges clients to change the way they think about work, to focus on what is most important and to stop firefighting for good.

His work is based on three key beliefs:

  • If you can think it, you can do it
  • Leaders must be prepared to go first
  • To perform at the very highest level you must have a passion for what you do

Clients’ return on investment from his energetic and ground breaking work is well into the millions of pounds, dollars and euros. His reputation as one of the UK’s leading transformational leadership coaches has been cemented by outstanding results with an impressive client list including Tesco Bank, EDF Energy, Merlin Entertainments, ASOS and Lego. He also serves as a consultant to a number of colleges, business schools and professional footballers and cricketers.

www.kaizen-training.com

“Every gig is like 100 rehearsals.”

 in Coaching  tagged "The Feeling" / business coach / business coaching / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching content / coaching courses / coaching preparation / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / coaching welcome pack / executive coach / feedback / Free resource / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / rehearse

The above quote is from the band The Feeling. It was a comment said during an interview following a small live show where they had “tried out” some new songs in front of a live audience. They went on to explain that with the live feedback from the audience they can make immediate adjustments to how and what they are playing – feedback that is just not available within the rehearsal room.

So why am I including such a quote on a blog about coaching? To me, there are a couple of similarities with what I have observed successful & skilled coaches do and the sentiments in that 6 word quote.

  • They don’t just “rehearse” they actual go out and coach people.

Yes, I know that, for some, this is a really scary prospect. It may feel safer to just do another course, “rehearse” another batch of questions you could ask or study a new technique. Don’t get me wrong they are all one of a number of fantastic development approaches and things that many successful and skills coaches also do, however none of it is of any use to your potential clients if you don’t actually go and put it into practice!

There is so much value to be got from actually working with an individual, normally you’ll find you get a boost in confidence because it turns out to be far less scary than any story you may tell yourself in advance. (To my knowledge, there have been no reported fatalities because a coach didn’t immediately know “the right” question in a coaching session – if you know different by all means let me know 😉 )

While some may think that they have to be “perfect” before they work with “real clients”, I’d disagree. I have a belief that as a working coach there is so much potential to keep learning, developing skills and creating new approaches.

You’ll also find that you learn a lot from working practically instead of theoretically.

  • They are flexible enough to use feedback and observation to make immediate adjustments to how and what they are doing.

In a coaching training/skills development situation you may well have been asked specifically to use a particular technique or approach for an exercise. This is because the main focus of the experience is developing your skills as a coach.

When working with a “real life” client (as opposed to one on a training exercise) their focus is about getting a result, they don’t care if you adjusted a question or a technique if it made a positive difference for them. It really isn’t important to them that you only did 5 steps of a 6-step technique etc, if they got something out of the session!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with starting with one technique or approach and being flexible enough to alter that approach by the real time feedback your client is giving you. Personally I think it’s actually a sign of a coach who is really listening and paying attention to their client that they are capable and prepared to easily change their approach.

Word of caution: I’m conscious that using this quote may suggest that a coaching session is a performance and that you “play the part” of a coach. While “acting as if” is an approach some may take, personally I would suggest that this does have a potential downside. When you “act as if” you are someone else, rather than yourself, you can feel like a fraud – which makes sense when you consider logically you are playing a part.

If you find yourself in the situation where you are just waiting to 
 before you actually start working with a real life client I invite you to go and do a coaching session anyway. You don’t have to ask for an exchange of money, or even set the expectations high about what a client will get from the session but go and experience what it’s like to work with a “real life” client. Oh and you may want to consider having fun while you do it 😉

Do you agree or disagree with any of the above? Perhaps you want to make a public commitment to do some coaching of your own. Feel free to leave your thoughts below and click submit comment.

“Failure” Does Not Have To Be Soul Destroying!

 in confidence / General life improvement

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”
(Michael Jordan, who is aclaimed as one, if not the, greatest basketball players of all time.)

Many of the reports I saw about the Oscars mentioned the fact that this was Kate Winslet’s 6th nomination. Yet this was only the first time that she won. Watching her acceptance speech, talking about imagining this moment as a child, it did not appear that her previous “failures” were detracting from her success this time around.

I also recently came across a story of a Korean who has, so far, failed their driving test over 700 times. What struck me the most when I read this was the focus and determination to reach the end goal of passing the test and driving.
(more…)

The source of personal power? 2

 in Guest Post  tagged Andy Lucas / business coach / business coaching / charging / choice / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / consciousness / empowering clients / empowerment / executive coach / Huna / hypnotherapy / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / NLP / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / unconsciousnes / yoga and tantra

In this weeks Friday Guest Post Andy Lucas, who assists clients to empower themselves, discusses the topic of empowerment in more detail.

The source of personal power?

by Andy Lucas

I was recently chatting with my friend Karen, also a coach, and we were discussing empowerment. The conversation arose because I mentioned my strong desire to help clients do things for themselves. I like to help them develop an understanding of their mental processes and an ability to manage and steer those processes with ease. In a nutshell I aim to help clients “empower” themselves.

In various fields of mind therapy we hear talk about the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious minds. And I often wonder if and how we can use that idea to empower people.

Many forms of conventional counselling and psychotherapy endorse sustained intervention over weeks, months and often years in order to restore unconscious patterns to conscious awareness. Maybe that work has a place, but it doesn’t appeal to many of us coaches especially if we want our clients to avoid depending on us, and if we want them to be self sufficient in their change and development. I guess most of us are hoping to achieve change in a relatively short length of time without engaging our client in prolonged soul searching.

Various schools of hypnotherapy encourage us to bypass a client’s conscious mind, and its apparently limited understandings. And instead they tell us to speak directly to the client’s unconscious mind. They say the problem is being performed by the unconscious, so we might as well get this unconscious mind to produce the solution too. Supposedly there is no need to get the conscious mind involved, because it might get in the way.

Western style hypnotherapy is not alone in working with the so-called unconscious mind. Many shamanic traditions have a long colourful history of using trance states, such as journeying to the underworld, to uncover the source of problems and to seek solutions in an altered state. Some even use plants to induce the states chemically. The purpose of these trances is to draw things out of unconsciousness and restore them to some level of awareness, consciousness.

Eastern teachings adopt other approaches, often giving even greater value to consciousness and discouraging “sleep walking through life” in a state of illusion and unconsciousness. These teachings, such as Tibetan Dream Yoga, implore us to operate sustained awareness of our subtler trance states – our habitual thoughts and perceptions. They encourage us to undertake a discipline of self-awareness, noticing the full extent of our dreaming, not just the dreams at night but the ones in the daytime too. This reminds me of the NLP presupposition: “The map is not the territory”, emphasising the distinction between the “real world” and our internal representations of the world. I guess Tibetan teachers are urging us to do whatever it takes to retain awareness of this distinction. Maybe we can benefit from observing our dreaming more often and even becoming more active in the authoring of the dreams. It is this active involvement that characterises the teachings of Tibetan Dream Yoga.

Other traditions offer further contributions to the consciousness debate. Hawaiian Huna, teaches three aspects of the mind – consciousness, unconsciousness and superconsciousness. It regards the unconscious mind as a route to the superconscious, which in turn operates as a kind of inner wisdom and source of solutions. Huna, like NLP, tells us we can reprogramme ourselves, we can design our mental templates.

Meanwhile schools of yoga and tantra teach about “pure consciousness”, a steady, still level of consciousness undisrupted by habitual thinking (samskaras) and inner chatter. Yoga teaches body awareness leading to mind awareness and/or breath awareness leading to mind awareness. I have even read of prisons successfully adopting yoga therapy to rehabilitate offenders. During deep meditation aspirants of Yoga Nidra are encouraged, among other things, to imagine a golden egg in the centre of the mind and to say to themselves something like: “I am not my body. I am not my thoughts. I am not my emotions. I am that golden egg. I am pure consciousness in itself witnessing all of this.”

Even within western approaches we discover more nuanced ideas about consciousness. Transformational Grammar and NLP help us recognise the words “consciousness/unconsciousness” as nominalisations, nouns describing actions. Is consciousness just a construction, a way of giving form to the processes we observe? Maybe consciousness is just being aware and unconsciousness is being unaware. Perhaps it’s as simple as that.

Meanwhile the distinction between two minds, the unconscious and the conscious, is often used as a metaphor for the difference between the functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. If I ask you to let the conscious mind do X while the unconscious mind does Y you probably accept it as a useful suggestion, an opportunity to think about something in two different ways, laterally versus linearly or creatively versus logically.

So why does it matter whether consciousness is an actual thing or just a way of describing what we do? I think it probably does matter (rather than being matter), because as coaches we value action, we encourage clients to be the cause of their effects, maybe even the conscious cause of their effects. And none of us wants our clients to become dependent upon us. I mean do we really want our clients to believe their behaviour is so unconscious they have to keep seeing us every time they want to change their life? Do we think everybody is so incapable of dealing with stuff seemingly outside of awareness that they have to get professional help on a regular and permanent basis? I don’t imagine many coaches believe that. I would rather enable my clients to develop greater levels of awareness so they feel more able to help themselves.

I’m not sure how easy it is to fuse all these different notions of consciousness. Yet I am convinced they each offer something useful to help our clients empower themselves. The acid test for me in how I treat consciousness or unconsciousness with a specific client is: “Will my client have more choices?”

As long as we acknowledge that “consciousness” and “unconsciousness” can be a variety of different imprecise notions, rather than rigid facts, we have tremendous opportunities to take our clients on great adventures in their amazing minds. Or, to put it another way, if we have more choices so do our clients. And if they have more choices perhaps they empower themselves. I hope so.

About the Author/Further Resources

Andy lives and works in Brighton. He is an NLP trainer (Society of NLP), coach, hypnotherapist and meditation instructor with a particular interest in Hawaiian Huna and Yoga Nidra.

Visit www.springtomind.co.uk for more details about Andy’s work.

Books that Andy likes:

Trances People Live – Stephen Wolinsky

Yoga and Psychotherapy – Swami Rama et al

Mastering Your Hidden Self , A Guide to the Huna Way – Serge Kahili King

The Tibetan Yoga of Dream and Sleep – Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

The Structure of Magic – Richard Bandler & John Grinder

The World of Shamanism – Roger Walsh

Yoga Nidra – Swami Satyananda Saraswati