A Coaching Power Tool Created by Cornelia Guenzel-Dahinten
(Family/Parent/Marriage Coach, SINGAPORE)
Finding the truth within.
Discover if you are following your own inner call true to yourself
Or
If you are trying to follow what you believe to be the expectation, value or priorities of those around you to be.
Our priorities, values and expectations are driving us to behave, feel and respond or react in certain ways to experience, people, and situations. They will be a main driver in how we perform a task, execute a goal or plan and how we react to expectations of others.
In a coaching practice we can help our clients by assisting them to find alignment of their very own internal priorities, values and expectations with their reactions and behaviors and also their emotions. Rather then being driven by those of other people.
Following what we believe other people expect of us can be a huge energy drain and deviate from our life lesson.
Your time is limited do not waste it. Do not let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice!
I feel that this insight pointed out by Steve jobs in the quote above has incredible value to coaching, in fact is part of the essence of it. It is a call to find inner truth to live life to the fullest potential, shifting the perspective inward, away from the thinking and expectations of others. Away from the tiresome practice of figuring out how we may be able to please others.
Often the perceived perspectives, expectations and judgments of others are even only imagined and evolve from our very own fantasy. A fantasy build on information we have interpreted solely on our own perception of the world.
We cannot even be sure whether the values, priorities and expectations we are following is the truth of anyone at all.
Coaching Application
As a coach we will try to explore the location of their priorities, values and expectations.
Asking powerful questions such as:
- What is it that you experience as stressful in this situation?
- How would you describe this goal as successfully achieved?
The wheel of life may serve as a good starting point to put into a nice picture what may have been intuitively felt but not realized fully yet – that areas of the clients life which he give great priority to are not in balance.
Connecting clients with the true location of the priorities, values and expectations they are following, is the first step of this power tool.
Tools we may use to connect the client to their own values, goals, priorities and expectations:
- Please describe to me a person who you admire. What is it you admire this person for? (it can be someone you know or someone famous, anyone really)
- What do you like about yourself?
- What values, goals, priorities and expectations were important when you grew up? It may have been the values etc. of your parents or other influential people?
- What are your own values, priorities and expectations on others and towards yourself?
We can now use those questions/answers to raise awareness on possible clashes between the outside value system and the inner value system.
Next step:
- Which values do you live in your life?
- Looking at your life? Which values have a high priority looking at your actions?
- How do these values match with your inner truth?
Visualization may be a great tool to use at this point:
Close your eyes
Breathe deeply
Connect with your inner self, your soul, your truth
Let go of anything that does not belong to your very own inner truth
(you can now connect to a typical situation in the clients life that was causing stress)
Now, you are at home in your kitchen
You are supposed to cook dinner for your guests arriving in 30 Minutes
What does your soul, your inner truth, your inner self need you to do?
And let evolve what comes out of this experience.
Visualization at this point will help the client to really connect on a deeper level and to stay connected even after the session.
Use the answers of the client (what it is they need to do) and guide them through the experience doing exactly what their inner truth told them they should do.
This will create an experience with the new behavior, thoughts or actions for the client to be more likely to actually put this into practice.
We end with asking: Is there anything else your inner truth will need you to do to be able to be lived fully?
Depending on the answer, you can guide your client through this add-on or slowly bring them back.
Once the real location of the priorities, values and expectations has been found, the client will understand with more clarity if the values, expectations and priorities he is following are actually aligned with his inside values, expectations and priorities.
By now, the client will see if there is a drain from the outside or if he really owns his values, goals, priorities and expectations.
How do I know I can use this tool?
When a client is stressed or has some other negative emotion toward how he is reacting or performing, it is interesting to explore if they are aligned with their very own (inner) priorities, values and expectations, or rather with those that are external to him.
Signs for a focus on external priorities, values and expectations – Signs for an outside drain:
- client is stressed out with a goal
- client is frequently mentioning the values of others / "this is what one does"
- client is very judgmental with others behaving in a way he is trying to avoid
- the client cannot relax on behaving in a way that seem to cause to stress him out
- the client does not seem to be able to keep to the goals he is setting for himself / obstacles seem to come up all the time
- feeling stressed with what we do, feeling chased, overwhelmed or exhausted
If we realize a client is struggling with keeping the promises they are giving to themselves, one of the options of a reason may be that their goals or methods to execute their goals are not in alignment with their own priorities, values and expectations.
They may be used to trying to please.
Many of these patterns of pleasing others start in early childhood with strict regiments on keeping the values of the parent/s or other important figure in a child’s life. We cannot as coaches change those perceptions of the child, but we can help to realize the true location of power and shift it inward. We can guide a client towards their inner truth coaching them to change their actions.
We can help to open up to the possibility of changing the future to live a life aligned with their inner truth, giving less importance or being freed of the outside drain.
Tools used to support this power tool
Visualizations
Breathing Techniques
Wheel of life