Coaching: Going Bigger, Moving Faster, Finding Transformation - Part I

Our world is not about to change, it already has changed! We can no longer simply presume that what was, still is; and that what we once held to be true can still be relied on to continue to be true. From the more obvious effects in our physical world of global climate change to the more subtle changes in our thoughts - our beliefs about ourselves, our world and our ability to move effectively through that world - we know intuitively that something is moving and we’re right in the middle of it all!

The practice of personal, business, wellness and/or life coaching is one of these more subtle areas to consider. Surrounded by the discoveries of a quantum world, we seem to insist on continuing to engage in the process of coaching as we always have. Our language may have changed so that we talk about coaching instead of counseling/therapy/etc; and we may now include a mindfulness of and references to energy, but our context within which we express this language continues to be the same. That context is one of an unchallenged, familiar, traditional allopathic/Newtonian world.

One way to begin to notice this is to pay attention to how, for example, we talk about energy. We continue to use the language of the allopathic/Newtonian world…the ‘therapy’ world…and speak of good energy and bad energy (judgments along a continuum); we speak of ‘holes in our auras’ (physical experiences attributed to a non-physical domain); we speak of others sending us or infusing us with their ‘negative’ energy (someone ‘out there’ able to do something to me ‘in here’), all of which use the language associated with a quantum perspective to describe a Newtonian world experience. And yet, it never occurs to us that in a quantum world, there is no good/bad, right/wrong; and there is no ‘other’ to be sending us anything. There is only us.

We now understand from today’s science that our physical ‘reality’ is formed long before it appears before us in ways that we can see, touch and engage with. That includes the ‘self’ that each of us is, moving through this same physical world. At much deeper levels of our own being, energy plays a part of shaping who we are, who we become and how we design and engage our lives. Yet, we continue to engage in conversations for change through the coaching process in a context with presuppositions that are no longer valid. What may be true at one level of ‘reality’ (i.e. the physical world) may no longer be true at another level of ‘reality’ (i.e. the energetic world).

The physical world is far less malleable than the energetic. Attempting to create shifts of any kind at the denser levels of physical mass will always require more effort, more struggle and more time. In that world, the requirement is to undo the density that has formed in matter before being able to re-form that density into something different (i.e. in a ‘therapy’ model context, we need to know and understand how it got that way before we can make it different). Energy, on the other hand, can be moved, reshaped, transformed far more easily given its properties of being without physical form and having no mass in a physical reality. Change, at this level of ‘reality’, is effortless, free of struggle and can happen in the blink of an eye. Given that energy shapes matter, transformation then becomes a process of shifts in energy that redefine matter. Change the energetic framework around which matter defines itself, and matter changes to reflect the new framework. Piece of cake!

And yet, as much as we know these things from all that we can now read and listen to about our amazing, incredible quantum universe; and about how we, as human beings, are these amazing, incredible quantum biological beings, we seem to forget it all when it comes to making changes in our own lives. All that quantum stuff is fine for technology, medical evaluations, weird experiments and far-away conferences on impractical things, but not so for our personal lives; for our day-to-day ‘reality’ of feelings, family, wellness and work. For that, we seem to push all aside and turn to what we know: the allopathic/Newtonian ‘truth’ of who we are as human beings. In that choice, and in that moment of having chosen, the struggle begins.

To change our language from counseling/therapy to coaching is not enough to make the difference that so many of us desperately seek. We must also change our own thoughts…our own energetic frameworks…within which we hold our definition of WHAT a human being is. How we define WHAT we are will determine HOW we engage – ourselves and each other – and ultimately, our results.