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The words depression, stress, burnout, chronic fatigue syndrome, or even just blah, are being used in our daily conversations far too excessively. It is time to consider the intelligence of these "diseases" of this century in signaling to us that, indeed, the choices that we are making in the way we engage life are not life-sustaining. And aren't we choosing daily: when to feel discouraged and when to feel motivated; when to speak up and when to silence ourselves; when to leave or when to stay; when to wait or when to move forward.
The profession of coaching has expanded beyond the world of sports and athletics to include the world of business and personal growth. Over the past 5 years, business coaches and life coaches have emerged to address a need that individuals, at home and at work, have: the need to contribute and feel fully alive. The following information and opinions are not necessarily representative of all personal coaches but rather have emerged from my own experience and training as a business and personal coach over the past three years. My intention is that, with this information, you will know that you are not alone, that there are others feeling just like you and that there are resources to support you.
The human nervous system is designed to create habits so that we do not have to learn and re-learn the same things every day. This works wonderfully when it comes to driving a standard but this same process also applies to the way we think, the way we respond in certain situations, the way we respond in certain relationships. These habits of thought sometimes keep us "in the box", unable to choose differently, even though we do not like the results that we are creating.
The benefit of working with a personal coach is that it creates an opportunity to stop, and take the time to become more mindful of choices that we are making, habits of thought that are driving the results in our lives. The question then becomes, do we like what we are creating? Are these habits serving us? What do we want instead?
Signing up for personal coaching is all about getting into a relationship with a person who is trained to ask the right questions, those bigger questions that will make the difference in your life, if you choose to stay with those questions. All too often, the comfort of having the answer, of knowing, pulls us back to the old and familiar. And that is where we get stuck.
Personal coaching is about heightened self-awareness, possibility thinking and creating a mindfulness about how we are engaging life. A personal coach will be able to notice these habits of thought that define the lenses through which you see the world and offer up different perspectives that may, all of a sudden, make the world round rather than flat, opening up all kinds of possibilities. A personal coach knows that all the answers that you are searching for lie within and the brilliance comes not in the answers that are offered up but in the questions that will make you stop, … look within and discover what is possible.
My invitation to you is to take one day this week to be mindful of the choices that you are making that day, as you engage in everyday living. Could you have chosen differently? What could have been different in the results that you created?
Choose mindfully with the knowledge that with every choice, you create.
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Wellness from Within: How Coaching Can Help
an interview with Jackie Zirpdji
How many times in the last week have you said, or heard someone say, "I'm exhausted," or "I'm feeling kind of depressed lately," or "I'm stressed out"? These pronouncements about mental and physical states are becoming more and more common in daily conversations. They are often made with a sense of helplessness, as if the condition comes upon the person like a cold or flu. Is it possible, though, that we are actually bringing this upon ourselves? To what extent are we creating our own "dis-ease"?
Jackie Zirpdji, a personal coach and wellness consultant, believes that much or even all of these feelings of oppression or depression come about, in large part, as a result of the kinds of choices that we make in our daily lives. And there is no doubt that we do make choices in the way we engage with life that impact on our well-being: we choose when to speak up and when to silence ourselves; whether or not we should be honest with someone; whether we should ask someone for help. According to Jackie, the negative impact on our well-being happens when the choices we make produce negative results, and yet, we continue to make such choices. In fact, we feel we are unable to choose differently.
And now here's the curious thing: why would human beings, who are supposedly seekers of pleasure and avoiders of pain, make choices that, ultimately, add up to their own misery? Why would we bring these states upon ourselves? Jackie has a short answer: habits of thought. We interviewed Jackie in her home in Chelsea and asked her to elaborate on this concept, and on her work in general.
TWB: What do you mean by habits of thought? What is a habit of thought and how does one get formed?
The Central Nervous System (CNS) is designed to "create habits" or "get programmed" to use everyday lingo. This means that we do not have to keep learning how to do the same things over and over again. Our CNS does it automatically-runs the program-without us having to have a conscious awareness of what it is we are doing. Many of us can relate to driving in that way-have you ever driven home and not been aware of how you got there-you were too caught up in your thoughts, the music etc. So this is a great thing because when we can do certain things without having to "think" about them, it leaves room for a lot more things to be in our awareness. Our habits of thought and patterns of behaviour contribute to creating the lenses through which we see the world and ourselves in the world. Also, before thought comes into our conscious awareness, there is an energetic response in the body that shapes the neural pathways, meaning that there is a physiological pattern of response to events that happen inside and outside of us. Become curious about the chronic sore throat, or the lower backache because there is an intelligence in the body that you have access to. Many of those habits of thought and associated physical responses are acquired through our early experiences, from in utero to age 6. Is this the only possible way that we can "see" the world? Absolutely not, it is just the way that we have been "programmed" to do so. The question becomes, "Are these habits of thought serving me or not?"
TWB: Why would we have made these habits of thought right from the beginning if they ultimately serve to make our lives unpleasant? Did they work for us at one time?
We develop some of our habits of thought from assimilating what it is that we are seeing, hearing, feeling. If we are constantly seeing, hearing, and feeling words and behaviours that indicate that the world is not a safe place, for example, we will adopt that as a belief, a habit of thought that permeates the way we engage life. One of the fundamental pre-suppositions of WEL-Systems NLP (http://www.wel-systems.com/welnlp.htm) is that every response is an intelligent response. As children, we very quickly learn what it is that will get us love and what won't. We also develop other habits of thought to make sense of our world. If my mother is always doing things for me because she has a need to have things done perfectly, I may develop a belief, or habit of thought, that says that I can't do things for myself. This will again influence how I engage my life. This may have served me well when my mother was doing it all for me as a child but it probably won't work for me as an adult when I am striving to become all that I can be. My life will then be an invitation to notice and let go of the habits of thought that do not serve me well and adopt others that do.
TWB: How do we come to recognize our habits of thought? In other words, how do we get our brains to pull away enough from a thought habit in order to recognize it?
By paying attention! We are not used to paying attention to our lives, to such things as: the choices we make; the things that we notice and those we don't; the events that trigger changes in us such as our internal state or our bodies' responses; the strategies that we run for different outcomes; and the patterns that repeat themselves in our lives. We just live life and watch it unfold as if someone else is driving the bus. When we start paying attention, we start noticing what is working and what isn't. Once we start paying attention, we can stop ourselves and say, "Hey, I have another choice here."
TWB: You say that personal coaches are there to help us recognize our harmful or self-negating patterns of thinking and behaviour. Once we recognize them, do coaches give us other ways of thinking or acting, or do we have to figure that out by ourselves?
With Susan or me as your personal coach, you will have no need to "figure it out" for yourself. The reason is that there is no right way, there is only your way, what works for you. What we do is help you get in touch with what that is for you. Our coaching approach is not about figuring out, analysing, or giving you answers or ways to think or act. We believe that you have all the answers within you. As your personal coach, we work with you to get in touch with those answers by asking the right questions, by inviting you to consider other possibilities, and by supporting you to become aware of what you are holding to be the truth that may not be serving you well. Susan and I are both certified WEL-Systems CODE Model coaches, CODE stands for Creation Out of Deep Energy. Our coaching approach does not rely on us figuring things out and analysing things. Rather, we use the processing power of the body to support you in making your own discoveries. The result is that you do not only come out of the coaching experience knowing things intellectually, but your physical tissue has also absorbed the new information and has created new neural pathways and you now move through life differently.
TWB: OK, here is one of those "in the real world" type questions. In the real world, a boss may ask an employee to work an inordinate amount of overtime hours. Let's say that I'm the employee and that my habit of thought would have me say, "Yes M'am!" even though I do not want to work so much overtime because it would cause other problems for me, particularly in my family life. Now, I have come to recognize this response as a habit of thought, and I stop myself. I tell myself to have the courage to say "no" but I am fearful of: a) creating problems for my boss; b) losing her respect; c) being overlooked for a promotion; or d) losing my job. These are real fears because in the real world, things like that do happen. What would you, my personal coach, suggest I do?
Great questions and a great example of what an individual, either a boss or employee, might come into a coaching session with. The coaching session would typically involve lots of inquiry, questions that would most likely trigger insights for the individual. Some of these questions might be around setting boundaries-like where else in your life do you have difficulty with setting boundaries? Where else in your life do results or performance take precedence? What results do you create because of this? What other choices do you have? We might want to pay attention to context-like how easy is it for you to set boundaries with peers but not with authority figures, for example. We would also pay attention to physical responses to questions and work with those to access the information that those physical responses are holding. So it's not about suggesting what you should do or how you should respond, it is more about guiding you in the process of self-discovery so that you can make choices that allow you to engage authentically in any situation, with clarity about what you want and don't want.
TWB: You have used the term "authentic self" a number of times. What do you mean by that?
This term stems from a belief that we do arrive on this planet, in this space and time, with a unique signal that you can refer to as a soul or divine intelligence. It defines your potential contribution or the meaning that you want to give to your life. This unique signal is what I refer to as your authentic self. It is the perpetually unfolding identity of who you hold yourself capable of becoming.
TWB: In your work with clients, do you give them tools or techniques that will help them become their authentic selves?
What we give them, predominantly, is a different perspective from which to consider life-the WEL Systems perspective. The models and information associated with WEL-Systems create a new perceptual filter, or window on our world, that allow us not only to see things differently but to see different things. It also becomes a perspective from which new questions emerge, questions that individuals learn to ask themselves that will support them in connecting with a greater sense of self. A fundamental building block of the WEL-Systems perspective is that our bodies are bio-processors capable of processing amazing amounts of information. We provide individuals with a tool to support them in accessing the information that their body holds for them, coined by the WEL-Systems Institute as Quantum TLC™ that involves a three-step process of: Breathe, Follow the Impulse, Allow yourself to Know the Truth.
TWB: Tell us more about personal coaching. Some people consider it to be the "new-age" equivalent to psychotherapy. How do you respond to this assertion?
New Age, Psychotherapy, Coaching are all words that mean different things to different people. Coaching is not psychotherapy, therapy, or counselling. Personal coaching itself takes on many different forms, but the one consistent element is that it is there to support people in becoming more aware of where they're at, what's working and what's not, and how to get where they want to go. Personal coaches will use different skills and tools to work with individuals to accomplish this. Susan and I are both associates of the WEL-Systems Institute having both achieved the highest level of training with the Institute as WEL-Systems Catalysts. As such, there are some fundamental underpinnings that permeate the work we do with individuals and teams that include: heightened self-awareness, self-empowerment, possibility thinking, and the innate intelligence of the body. These embody and set a context for the conversation that goes on when we are coaching and guides us to ask the big questions, those that will really make a difference in a person's life.
TWB: I'm going to end with one of those lofty, philosophical questions. The existential is always fascinating. What is happening in our world such that we have lost touch with who we are? Why, really, do we need to have people to help us know ourselves?
We have grown up in a society that encourages us to look outside of ourselves. Our family systems, our school systems, our religious systems, our medical systems, all of them encourage us to look outside of ourselves for guidance, for approval, for healing, for the answer. Because of this, we have lost touch with who we are, what it is that is important to us, what resources we possess to create what we want. We have grown up in a society that emphasizes intellect above all else. Because of this, we have neglected the intelligence of the body to the extent that we no longer recognize the messages from inner space, the messages from self. The result is that many people are sick and dying either physically or emotionally. I believe that this is not what the gift of life is for. In our work, we have found that people who take the time to understand how it is that they have become who they are, who take the time to live life mindfully, totally aware that they are choosing and creating life moment by moment, reclaim their power to create a life that they believe is worth living and start becoming all that they can be. It is not a journey that all want to take alone. We have the skills and the presence to take it with them.
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