How I use Mindfulness to evolve as a Coach
When I created my power tool being vs. Doing for using it in my coaching I struggled a lot. I knew I had to create one and I kept postponing waiting for the right moment or the opportune time to do it. Finally I realized I had to have the space to do it as my family was big at that time and I was not finding the time or the ambience at home .So I set out for a walk to the nearby park which has a beautiful, big, natural lake and where I had the ambience to be with myself and think. It just took me a couple of hours and since I had carried a book and a pen I just relaxed and penned down my thoughts and there was my power tool being vs. Doing. In my power tool I describe both the states of Being and Doing where Being is a state of total acceptance of everything about you, all the parts of you whether you like it or not, acknowledging yourself and your existence at a deeper level, being ready to see your fears, observing them closely, allowing them to be there, even seeing your resistance, doing nothing about it in the moment you are seeing. So it is with your other emotions like anger, jealousy, guilt, regret, resentment or sadness. It is accepting your feelings at a core level, not resisting them but acknowledging them and then choosing to let go of them if you want. So being also brings about accepting and acknowledging your feelings of joy, peace, happiness and love. Being is openness to life experience, allowing things to unfold being curious, being like a child playful, excited and open to possibility and having fun in the moment. So positive emotions like joy, mirth and merriment are natural in this state of being.
Now lets look at Doing.
It is a state of activity where you are more involved in tasks, reaching goals you have set or want to set and taking some strategic actions being in a state of flux, you may redesign, reinvent, improvise, and think on the feet. In doing you keep yourself busy all the time. In this state you have agendas, plans to follow or bring these in alignment with your goals. So Doing is a complementary to being, it comes out of the state of being and cannot sustain on its own. That is why we call ourselves Human Beings and not Human Doings. Doing becomes easy when we are in a state of acceptance of the present state of our life. If we are in a space of gratitude we will be in the flow and do things without resistance.
My Coaching Model ”FOCUS” talks about importance of the focus on the work and not the results ,which is applicable in Mindfulness where we focus on the moment and do the action and keep our focus to moment to moment to moment. In Mindfulness practice we do a Raisin meditation where we focus on eating only one raisin by looking at it from all angles, smelling it, touching it and finally putting it on the tongue but not eating all at a time but slowly rolling it in the mouth and then taking tiny bites .The joy and the heightened sensations we experience is totally awesome as we realize what being in the moment can do to us. We realize to get a new fresh perspective we need to be in the moment like this and savour each moment. Understanding your inner work, and then taking it up is the next step in the Being state where there is acceptance of the reality. Each one of us experiences resistance to our goals, to taking actions and this is when the coach supports the client to do the inner work by dancing in the moment and letting the client lead and support the client in finding the solutions for the challenges experienced on the way. The client decides what and how much inner work they want to do. The coach holds the space and acknowledges the client’s needs and wins. This acknowledgement happens in a space of a cantered roundedness. The shift in perspective is a natural outcome of the coaching process when both the client and the coach trust the coaching process and are present to the possibilities and opportunities that open up with every shift in perspective.
My Mindful Meditations
Meditation helps cultivate a deep and compassionate awareness that allows you to assess your goals and find the optimum path towards realizing your deepest values. Mark Williams
Some of my observations during the Mindfulness meditation were :
I felt overwhelmed while observing my breath, my body sensations, my thoughts and my feelings. I learnt to be gentle with myself and realized I can choose my thoughts which will change the way I feel. But it is not easy to let go of the thoughts and of course the feelings which are associated with the thoughts. The mind is so habituated to hold on to a thought which leads to another and so on till we would be lost in our own thoughts and operate on auto-pilot as the author Mark William and Danny Penman call it. So to release this habit of holding on and not letting go is what the whole practice of Mindfulness is all about. I started being conscious of my habit and also realized in the process how critical and judgemental I was of myself and others. My greatest realization was my mind was always in an anxiety mode fleeting to the next moment, the next thing on my agenda or to do list, to the goals I had set, and would also experience irritability at times. I started wondering why I got irritable. I realized my desire to reach the goal was so strong that I would put all my energies into performing the actions required to reach the goal and instead of focusing on my actions, I was focusing on my goal or the result and many a time on my next goal or the big results. The big picture appealed to me a lot but I resisted to see the small picture, the present moment, the NOW. My mind had become habituated to holding the big vision, dream and resisted to be in the moment though I internally knew all about it and the importance of being in the gap the gap between two breaths or the gap between two thoughts. My minds was flying from one idea to another and always visualize the wonderful future I wanted to create and forgot to watch my tiny steps in the process.
While I was practising Mindfulness I realized how I do not remember to be aware of each step I take, every action I take .So this realization that the journey was as important as the destination led me to enjoy every moment and I started practising lots of small things but which left a profound impression on me like I would enjoy washing the dishes taking each dish, feeling the water, feeling the soap and experiencing the whole thing as if it was for the first time. This opened a fresh perspective of looking at things. I started being Mindful in my coaching because of these subtle changes I found in me. In fact Mindfulness started spreading in all areas of my life and I felt it became very natural for me to sip a glass of water than to gulp it as I would do, or eat my food by relishing it with taste, flavour, touch and sight. My senses sharpened and I became more alert and present. This was very helpful to me while coaching. When I was coaching face to face I became sharper to observe the body language of my clients and when it was telephonically I became aware of their voice modulation and their tone and also listened actively for example it could be laughter, silence, deep breathing.
I tried being creative by having a mindfulness bell after every hour to shift my thoughts and my feelings and thus my energy. I am also exploring using singing bowls which are very healing and produce great energy shifts.
How is Mindfulness useful in Coaching?
But the mind is also aware. We do not just think about things, we are also aware that we are thinking. Mark Williams
The state of Being is Mindfulness in the true sense.
Wikepedia says Mindfulness (Pali: sati, Sanskrit: smṛti; also translated as awareness) is a spiritual or psychological faculty (indriya). In coaching the coach is reflecting back what the client (coachee) is sharing and if the coach is practising mindfulness he/she is using his/her faculty of awareness. This awareness is what brings you in the present moment of Being which I described in my power tool Being vs. Doing .So the coach may get judgemental thoughts about what the client is sharing or about the situation but if the coach practises Mindfulness it is possible to live in the moment and drop this judgement. Similarly the coach being human can come to the coaching session with a past baggage or with something that happened a little time ago that is troubling the mind so practising Mindfulness can relax the coach’s mind by releasing these thoughts in the moment.
The mind has its tendencies to fritter back and forth bringing events of the past or taking you into a future possibility. So to be grounded you need to focus all the energies in the present moment by being Mindful and bringing your mind back again and again from where it goes. You can’t stop the triggering of unhappy memories, negative self-talk and judgmental ways of thinking—but what you can stop is how you react to it by observing how you perceive it. Changing your perspective can change your experience of your life. You can stop the vicious circle of thoughts by letting it not trigger the next spiral of negative thoughts. And you can do this by relating to yourself and the world in a totally different way.
The mind can do so much more than simply use its Doing mode and try to fix things. The problem is that we use the Doing mode so much, that we are not ready to accept things the way they are gracefully and let things and people just be the way they are. We always want to rationalize, use the logic and struggle to change people and things only to find resistance. The same story applies to us, the more we try to change the more resistance we encounter and wonder why? Yet there is another way. If you stop and reflect for a moment, the mind doesn’t just think. It can also be aware that it is thinking. This form of pure awareness allows you to experience the world directly. It’s bigger than thinking. It’s unclouded by your thoughts, feelings and emotions. It is this awareness which can in the moment provide us with the life transforming solutions and which is wisdom .Happiness is achieved when we go with the flow and drop our resistance of what is and accept the present reality instead of analyzing why it is the way it is. The moment you accept the present the whole possibility shows up and you can effortlessly take actions and feel peaceful as you are in sync with yourself, your values, beliefs and true purpose in life for which you are born. You start living from your highest plane of existence by connecting to your deep inner core self which is far beyond the superficial surface. Doing mode is just the auto pilot mode. You tend to get caught up with your goals and focus only on achieving them at the cost of your Self care and Being mode is, connecting to your source ,it is energizing and provides you nourishment and nurtures you which gives you happiness and empowerment.
Mindfulness can help the client in various ways :
Mindful acceptance is not resignation. Mindfulness is a “coming to your senses” that moves closer and closer to the fore, quite spontaneously, when you regularly set aside the time to practice. It allows you to experience the world—calmly and non judgmentally—directly through your senses. It gives you a tremendous sense of perspective. You can sense what is important and what is not. In the long run, Mindfulness encourages you to treat yourself and others with compassion. This sense of compassion liberates you from pain and worry, and in their place arises a true sense of happiness and gratitude that spills over into daily life.
