A Coaching Model Created by Cameron Popp
(Life Coaching, UNITED STATES)
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers now, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Rainer Maria Rilke
The Problem
What is my calling? What are my deepest values and needs? How shall I live my life?
These are some of the most profound and important questions we will ever ask ourselves. Answering them can mean the difference between a meaningful life and a life we feel is not our own. But handling these questions is a very delicate process. Many of us already have the answers within us, but when we seek help from others, they can easily cloud our inner truth with their assumptions, judgments, and advice. We can easily end up more alienated to our own inner wisdom by their attempts to help.
Over time, the barrier separating us from our inner guide grows thicker. This barrier is made up of confusion, habits, fears, advice, beliefs, assumptions, expectations, resentment, apathy, and judgments from others and ourselves. It’s no wonder so many of people experience low-grade suffering throughout life! It can be so much easier to ignore this interference than to face it. But when we ignore the interference, we consequently ignore our inner teacher and the guidance it provides. A cycle of suffering begins to form as we live alienated from our inner truth, unable to live out life’s most important questions.
The Process
The beauty of the coaching process is that it provides an opportunity to halt the cycle of suffering by dissolving inner barriers. The coaching experience provides a unique opportunity to explore, uncover, and discover the inner guide in a process described below.
- By asking open and honest questions, using awareness exercises, and learning from past successes, the coach allows the coachee to become aware of their inner blocks that keep them from achieving their dreams and desires.
- As barriers are identified, the coachee can define an intention or action that will help overcome the barrier. The coach supports the client in overcoming the barrier and monitors success along the way
- A space opens up that allows the inner guide to speak once a block has been overcome. The coach provides a quiet, loving space that allows for the coachee to interact with and understand the inner guide. This provides the guidance the coachee needs to move forward with his or her dreams and desires.
- The process continues until the client’s vision of success has been realized.
The Model
Conclusion
Our most important decisions in life cannot be made by anyone but ourselves. Even if we think we know the answers to other’s deepest problems, our answer has very little value—what matters is the answer that arises from our inner guide. Coaching allows us to help others unlock their own inner resources without adding to the interference. We are all the masters of our own reality, and coaching empowers others to live out the unsolved questions in our heart so that we can live our way into a more fulfilling and meaningful life.