By Allison Iantosca, PCC
It is easy to undermine the choices we make or to even notice them at all. But if we stop to consider the whole of our life, including what inspires us, informs us, makes us who we are, maybe we would be more accepting of our choices. Coaching creates that possibility.
A simple-minded example, reading is my first true love. To tour my home office or my overflowing bedside table or even the shelves in the upstairs hallway or below the television in the family room, one could, without hesitation, deduce that a reader lives somewhere amongst these walls.
I love words. Exquisitely crafted and curated for precision in expressive detail. One well-constructed sentence in the first chapter that offers instant lifelong knowing of a new character. A quietly seismic commentary on politics or community or social justice between a capital letter and a well-placed period. I want to stop time to relish being awestruck or dumbfounded while my hunger to experience more keeps the light on well past my bedtime. In other words, I know what it is like to be lost in what I love. In a sense of flow: happy and so completely sated.
And yet I am prone to invalidate its salve regularly by thinking of it as wasteful, listless, extra. To be relegated to a vacation deck chair or a few pages to help me off to sleep at night. Because I like it? Because it enlivens and teaches me? Because it’s easy for me?
Because doing something that is so natural doesn’t count, I tell myself. Learning and ambition come from things that must feel somehow difficult.
But what if I chose to believe that reading did count? What if I thought of it as a necessity? Sustenance. A requirement for my successful navigation through this life. A book as my companion, without which I am unmoored. If this were true, I wouldn’t put energy into resisting the very thing that inspires my creativity and spirit.
And that is a choice I have begun to make for myself – a change that matters. Because change can’t happen without choice, and choice can’t happen without awareness of why we’re already doing something else.
I provide this illustration of personal awareness because it pertains to the coaching that I love with an ardor equal to reading. Joining in similar inquiry with another person daring to turn a little love and patience towards themselves for what they do to stay safe is the heart of coaching.
I had two different coaching clients last week. Vastly different people in every way but both opting out of what they were doing so naturally. Discounting what was so present for them. Both so compelled to deride the support they gave themselves, as if their behavior was almost shameful.
One was carefully orchestrating a protective balance between her head and her heart. When she went too far towards one, the other demanded attention. She wouldn’t let herself make up her mind because then one would have to be sacrificed. But instead of naming all she was doing to stay in balance, she called herself names and berated herself for being wishy-washy and non-committal.
The other client was astutely protecting his sense of self-worth and achievement. He kept wondering why he was letting corporate leadership talk him into “waiting out the next wave of industry bottleneck”. It felt indolent and useless. Shouldn’t he be doing something more productive? Maybe even looking for another position in another company? Yet to do that he would have to spill the apple cart or start over and that all felt like undoing all he had done. Instead, he called himself lazy and began to wonder if he was losing his edge.
Boy oh boy do we do a number on ourselves. These two incredibly successful people worked hard to convince me they were anything other than that! Yet when I pointed out how true they were being to some really important personal values, they softened a bit and said, “I never thought of it that way.”
And that was the moment when change began.
Because change can’t happen without choice, and choice can’t happen without awareness of why we’re already doing something else. That is the gift we give to ourselves —validation that though we want to change, we are putting our energy into our current behavior for very good reason.
The governing voice that tells me not to read is wanting to be sure I am not wasting my time. In knowing that, I can reset how I think about reading. That, in fact, it is not a waste of time, rather it gives me the richest sense of my wholeness and there is nothing wasteful at all about that.
The same goes for my clients as they build awareness about the choices they have and the choices they can make.
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: Lucas Geroge Wendt