A Coaching Power Tool created by Judith Kovács
(Life Coaching, GERMANY)
A life lived of choice is a life of conscious action. A life lived of chance is a life of unconscious creation.[1]
We all have talents. When we live these talents consciously they can become our strengths. When living our talents unconsciously they have the possibility of actually becoming our weaknesses.
From my perspective, to be conscious means to be aware, to be very present …. in the moment … in other words to know and understand what is happening around us and within us. In such moments, we are conscious of which talents we are living, which needs are being met and what feelings are being triggered.
In fact when we are 100% conscious we can step back and give ourselves the space to reflect on our observations and can even choose not to go into those jungles of assumptions and interpretations. In the big picture, this means that we find ourselves in a position to make conscious decisions about our lives based on our strengths, needs and passions.
To be conscious means to know who we are, what we are doing and to know ourselves.
So now what could it mean to be unconsious?
From my perspective, to be unconscious means to be unaware of what is happening around us and within us. Consequently we are not in a position to respond, i.e. we are not in a position to take conscious responsibility for our actions, and instead find ourselves in a reactive mode: blind to our talents, to our needs and indeed to the talents and needs of those around us.
Let´s look at the following example:
Fran works as a project manager in an international company. One of her natural talents is “input.“ In Fran´s case this means that she has a high need to read everything that she can possibly find on all topics which are of interest to her. Fran feels happy and satisfied when she is convinced that she has covered everything. Not only does Fran have a need to gather information, furthermore she also has a need to be reliable.
Fran has just been entrusted with a very important project by her boss. If this project is a success, the company will not only make a lot of money but more importantly secure a lot of jobs. Due to financial losses recently, the company has been forced to seriously consider letting go of staff. Doing a good job and delivering on this project will be crucial for Fran.
Driven by her high need for “input“ and reliabiliy, Fran goes off meeting stakeholders, collecting data, turning over every stone that appears to need turning. She knows what´s at stake. But at some point Fran is not able to move on to the next stage: putting the data together, preparing the presentation and finally delivering it. Fran has literally gotten lost and indeed trapped in “input.“
While Fran is very much aware of what is at stake, she is also apparently totally oblivious … completely unconscious … of the fact that she is not living her talent “input“ but indeed being lived by “input.“ In other words, Fran´s talent has become her weakness. Fran believes that if she does not have all the data there is on the topic, the presentation will not be complete, and thus decisions likely to be be made based on the presentation might not be 100% reliable.