By Allison Iantosca, PCC
It is January first. In some ways, my favorite day of the year. I feel birthed into a fresh start. The slate of past transgressions erased, and I get to write new intentions with a long and sturdy stick of white chalk. Fresh from the new box. Fragile if you press too hard but full of potential.
I want to coach more this year. To find myself surrounded by the work. So deeply entrenched that I am like a fish not knowing there is anything other than this water.
“I am always beginning,” said the Buddha. And I too want to grasp this concept. Permission to let go? Start over? Or, at least, permission to sort through all past experiences, separating them into piles like laundry. Run a few loads and restock my closet with only my favorites; the rest lofted into a big yellow bin in the library parking lot.
This could just be another Buddha truism. One that comes with the tenderness of beginning again. The idea of dukkha –that insidious gap between reality and what I hope to achieve or have. I used to call it ambition, drive, desire. I followed it like a beam of a lighthouse flashing across the horizon with a promise of directional fortitude, with no real sense of direction.
On this day of “beginning”, as its seconds tick by, I seek communion with my dukkha. I study its longing and try to belly laugh at the hilarity of this ridiculously backward approach to my endless desire to simply do what I love to do. That in fact the very essence of the renewal offered by this perfect 24-hour period is to recognize that it is all made up. By me. December 31st into January 1st means nothing. It is an artificial determination I have made to create resolution. Something I have manufactured to empower personal insight instead of just doing it.
And I wonder if this resonates.
Because here’s the thing coaching clients need to know: we too, as coaches, are in the work. In our own work. Traveling our own creative journeys so that we can better serve yours. We don’t have the answers to your desired outcome, and you wouldn’t want our solutions anyway. That’s not the point.
You are the point. Supporting your convergence, the meeting of your truest self and your circumstance in a place of ego-less awareness so that you can choose what is next. The fact that we as coaches know the messy and discomfort of this journey only places us in a better position to admire yours.
It is hard work. It is deep diving. It is finding parts of yourself you lost. It is realizing the depth of your resistance to the very thing you may need in order to shift, to quiet, the power of your own dukkha.
As a CEO I want a solutions-based path. As a human being I want a purpose. Dukkha is a terrible inconvenience.
But we are all works in progress. And I like to think that my work, my job, my responsibility as someone who is going to coach you is to do my own deep dive so you can trust that I am there with you when you do yours.
You can trust that I am always studying and trying out new ideas. I am experimenting with and seeking out what the other experts are suggesting. I am reading the articles and the papers and the chapters, weeding through the language to get to its essence. I am getting coached myself. All so when I arrive in session with you, I am both empty and full. I am everything and nothing. I am all-knowing and void. Present. Ready.
I am a fish that knows this water. It is January first. Let’s begin.
Allison Iantosca is a Gestalt International Study Center (GISC) trained coach certified by ICF with extensive leadership and management experience. She is an Executive Coach and is the Owner and President of Boston based FH Perry Builder.
*Photo Credit: ereynoso, Unsplash