A Coaching Power Tool By Ioan-Andrei Chirila, Young Professionals Coach, SWITZERLAND
The Aimlessness vs. Joy Power Tool
In many coaching sessions, I had the chance to empower clients to change their perspective from aimlessness to joy, using this power tool. There aren’t people who have at some point in their lives experienced aimlessness, in one form or another, myself included, and recognizing and enabling a perspective shift helped the clients better align with themselves and better reach their goals.
What Is the Difference Between Aimlessness vs. Joy?
Aimlessness, defined as being without clear intentions, purpose, or direction[1], can affect any aspect of one’s life, be it in a work setting, feeling that one’s work has no purpose, or in personal situations, feeling that there’s no clear way forward, being stuck in thinking less about oneself. There’s no particular trigger to aimlessness – and the way it manifests depends from person to person, starting from things as easy to identify as restlessness or fidgeting and manifesting deeper within the individual as internal unrest, an invisible itch that one can’t directly scratch or even a feeling of unwell. In work-related settings, I’ve seen it triggered by losing one’s leader, canceling or reprioritizing projects, receiving feedback, or finishing a project. In personal settings this showed up in my practice with clients facing multiple challenges and changes happening at the same time, making the client feel overwhelmed on what and how to move next and losing the internal compass.
Aimlessness stems from choosing a disempowering perspective that focuses on aspects over which one has no direct control and an internal belief that, no matter what actions one takes, nothing is going to change. This choice of perspective is not always intentional or conscious and can be just the way a person sees things through the lens of their personal experience, potentially as a manifestation of the person’s pessimism.
Moving past aimlessness, especially when the choice of perspective is not conscious, requires going deep into what’s important for the client and grounding the client into aspects that they can control, with a focus on the particular actions or activities that bring them joy.
Joy, as the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires[2], focuses on the positive aspects of a situation, enabling an awareness within regarding aspects which the client can directly influence and change. One of these aspects is how the client is looking at situations and how the client feels about particular situations.
A coachee experiencing joy can better identify their values, what is important to them regarding a particular situation, what they can change, and how to define their purpose and plan of action. The effect of choosing this perspective is felt immediately by the clients in the sessions. A successful shift has the client describe themselves as feeling lighter, having more clarity, and being more at peace with themselves. Reaching this point in the session the coach can then partner with the client to work towards concrete actions which would enable the client to move towards their proposed goals.
Aimlessness vs. Joy Case study
A client of mine was demonstrating an aimlessness perspective regarding their desire to obtain a certain certification. They started the session by describing many changes happening around them, resting finally on the importance of obtaining this certification. They were unsure if they wanted the certification, if they had what’s needed to obtain it and overall were fidgeting and showing signs of unrest. The expressed goal was finding clarity around obtaining this certification, measured as having either a clear no, this is not needed, or an action plan of what needs to happen to get the certification.
During the session, we focused on what is driving the desire to obtain the certification, what makes it important for them to have the certification, how is tied to the client’s internal values, and how those values are lived by obtaining the certification. The client recognized that what was missing was initially clarity on what’s internally driving that need and ended up resting on the idea that the certification would be a nice conclusion for more than one year of invested effort into learning and practicing for the skills the certification would attest to. They were telling untruths to themselves, diminishing their abilities and effort, and looking at obtaining the certification as a big hurdle. Changing the lens to joy – to the acknowledgment of the work that already went into learning and practicing the skills, to an acknowledgment of the progress and growth, to the visible changes all the work brought into their lives enabled the client to lighten up and see obtaining the certification as just another thing to check from a list.
With the changed perspective, celebrating the work, progress, skills, and growth, the client was able to devise a clear action plan that they were able to follow up on and obtain later the desired certification.
In the case above, the perspective change occurred while linking the client’s goal to their values – the aimlessness was rooted in a lack of confidence in self, missing information, and a view of the world that was lacking and perceived as “I’m not good enough”. Asking questions about what could one see as positive around the situation, how all the work for the skills the certification would confirm already had effects on the client’s world, and what other visible changes the client can point out around themselves allowed the client to elevate the awareness of the joy and the power of change they were brought into situations. They experienced a feeling of well-being and of being successful, independent of having an external confirmation.
This tool is particularly handy when the coach is aware of the client’s values (found during e.g. previous sessions or through the discovery session) and can take a broader view of the client’s situation and pinpoint the conflict between the aimlessness perspective and the client’s inner strength. There are cases in which other power tools are better suited to enable the client to shift their perspective from a disempowering one to an empowering one.
References
[1] https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/aimlessness
[2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/aimlessness