In this weeks C101 Reframing Perspectives Class we talked about the ‘Fallacy of Fairness’, and how the way we look at the world can be shaped by our beliefs.
If you believe that the world is fair or unfair, then this is going to be like a frame or set of glasses that you are looking through and every experience you see will be interpreted by this framework. But, it is possible to change those glasses and change the way you view the world. This is where the coaching skill of being able to reframe a perspective is so valuable.
So the way we look at the world, or our perspective is really the result of the beliefs that we hold. So if for example you believe that the world is fair or unfair or if you believe in luck, then this is going to be like a frame or set of glasses or lens that you are looking through and every experience you have will be interpreted within this framework.
So for example if you believe in luck, as a core belief – you believe that people are either lucky or unlucky and someone with a great big beautiful house and a brand-new car is lucky and someone who doesn’t have those things, is unlucky. Now, we are not saying that this is true or not true, we are just saying that this is a belief – it is a way of thinking. And that can then colour the way you see the world, and colour the way you interpret the things that happen to you.
So how does this work? Well if you are viewing the world this way and something bad happens to you then your interpretation is that you are unlucky. And that life is unfair. So what’s wrong with that? Once you decided that you are unlucky and that life is unfair, you’re more in a victim mode. You have no control of how these events occur because it was just like you have nothing to do with it and there’s nothing that you could have done to prevent it, which then of course means, that there’s nothing you can do to change. And that’s the problem. It’s not empowering.
Once again we are not saying that it’s true or untrue, we’re just saying that the lens in those glasses the luck lens, if you like, is not a very empowering lens to look thru because it leads you to nowhere to go and its not giving you the power to change.
Question and Answer Session
What you do with a client that won’t change?
So not the you can’t change but won’t change and you wouldn’t think that this happens actually, you would assume that most clients who pay money to a coach, actually do want to change but it’s not always the case. So we talked about what to do in that situation and people shared examples of situations that were quite similar. It was great actually and it was a really good example of how learning happens at ICA and how the learning that happens isn’t always directly from the facilitator or the coach leading the training, but often the learning happens through the exchange between really amazing professional coaches. The sort of coaches we have in our program are very experienced and all bring a different flavor to class.
