In his book, Wake Up Your Dreams, Walt Kallestad encourages every person who wants to live out one of their goals to get a dream mate. Kallestad shares the following acronym for Dream mate: (Kallestad, 1996)
D Dares to focus on your significance, not simply your success.
R Responds to your ideas with respect.
E Expects the best.
A Affirms your talents and abilities.
M Maximizes learning and growth opportunities to improve the dream.
M Makes the most of mistakes and failures.
A Accepts only excellence
T Takes time to give honest feedback.
E Encourages you unconditionally and non-judgmentally to help you persevere.
In essence, coaching is like being a dream mate. Dreaming is not about putting your head in the clouds, but partnering with the client’s vision, imagination, creativity, and action into a catapult for the client’s potential. Robert Schuller wrote a book, “Tough Times Never Last-Tough People Do” (1993). In that book, Schuller explains that “every great dream involves tough climbing, but every great dream outlasts the tough climb.” As with personal introspection, the climber must study the terrain, routes, footholds, and weather conditions before jumping onto the trail. Coaching helps a client map out alternative routes, incorporate rest stops to contemplate the journey, motivate a person during less-than-ideal traveling conditions, and celebrate each successful mile marker.
Coaching helps to focus a client’s energy on achieving what they have set out to dream, do, and be. We encourage a client to reflect often, to dream with enthusiasm. Life is created to be more than a dress rehearsal and each day presents an encore presentation opportunity. People are a garden of human beings, not human doings. The coaching process allows the farmer in all of us to be manifested as we plant and harvest by use of reflection and action.
References
Leo Buscaglia, Love (New York: Random House, 1982), p. 185-186.
Sebastian DeGrazia, Of Time, Work, and Leisure (New York, Random House, 1994), p. 44
Walt Kallestad, Wake Up Your Dreams (Grand Rapids, ZondervanPublishingHouse, 1996), p. 42.
Jeremy Rikfin, Time Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 71.
Robert Schuller, Tough Times Never Last-Tough People Do. (New York, Harper-Collins, 1993), p. 203-4
James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful God (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press 2009), p. 128-130; 174-177.