Coaching is a solution focused intervention. It is about moving from where you are to where you want to be. The steps include, figuring out where you already are, where do you want to go, and how are you going to get from one to the other. A key aspect of this is to understand how you will know when you are where you want to be. What will that look, sound, and feel like. Or to put that another way, how will you know you’ve changed? If you feel negative emotions, like anger, sadness, fear, guilt, hurt, or anxiety in certain situations then it seems easy enough to answer this question. You just won’t feel those emotions in those situations in the future. If you have a specific goal to achieve, like writing a book, getting a promotion, or a new job, again it seems easy enough, because you will have achieved that specific goal. In NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) we say that in all situations you must, ‘Calibrate on behaviour’. What this means is always pay attention to your own and other people’s behaviour. It is not what someone says that is important, it is what they do. Someone can say they have changed, but if their behaviour hasn’t changed, then they haven’t changed. Someone can think they haven’t changed, but if their behaviour has changed, then they have. The thing about this is in the future, once you have changed, you are going to feel that you are still the same person. You might not be doing those old behaviours or feeling the same way in certain situations, but you will always still feel like you are you.
This means we need to take this idea of, how will you know you have got to where you wanted a little deeper. The first thing to realise is that there is not really an end state to achieve, you are not trying to get anywhere. Instead, what you are doing in your life is expressing the unique version of humanness that is you, all the time. The unique you will have ups and downs, successes and failures, or should I say, learning opportunities. That is all part of expressing who you are. You are not trying to become someone else; you are continually expressing who you are. If that has a trajectory to it, then it is about making the you that you are expressing more, and more like the person you feel you really are. Being in everyday the best version of you.
What I think is important to appreciate about that is that deep down inside you already know who that person is. The idea then is to strip away everything that is not that person. All the beliefs about yourself and your capabilities that you unconsciously acquired from other people. Strip them away, let them go, and let the real you shine through. The real you is the one who doesn’t feel those negative emotions in those situations, the real you is the one who achieves those goals. In fact, if you can imagine doing these things, that already means you have the capacity and the capability to do them. Let yourself do it.
It can all sound really easy – just be yourself – but that’s actually what life is about. It is that simple, it is just us humans who like to complicate things. Your dog or your cat do not try to be your dog or your cat, they just are. Plants and trees do not make a big song and dance out of growing towards the sun, they just do it. So be you, be the fullest, best you that you can imagine being. And what if other people object to this you. Aside from children, the old, and the infirm, you only have responsibility to other people not for them. Give other people the space to fully be themselves, whilst you be you. And if other people don’t like the new you, that’s okay, because it means that they were never really in a relationship with the real you in the first place anyway.
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Winston Churchill
