My 3 Favorite Words When Coaching
I have been coaching in various different ways in my life since 2008. Over that time I have learned a lot about what it means to hold space for another individual and just allow them to be with whatever is present for them without trying to change it, or fix it, or make whatever they are going through go away. This is often the most powerful thing we can do for others is to support them in just being with what is with compassion and empathy.
Within a session some of my top favorite words and concepts to explore are: Curiosity, Awareness, and Opportunity.
Curiosity. All of us so often have so many thoughts bouncing around in our head. By the time we are adults, we have set ideas and beliefs around how the world works, how we relate to others, how we relate to ourselves, what we believe in how we are "supposed" to look or weigh or say. When we invite in curiosity into any moment, we can take a pause and explore if the beliefs that supported us at one time in our life still resonate with who we are today. We also get to explore when these thoughts or beliefs arise who is talking in that moment. Sometimes a younger part of ourselves or our inner child is showing up in the present and with curiosity we get to learn from their presence and explore what do they need to hear from our adult selves to feel seen, held, and supported the way they perhaps needed to be when we were younger.
Awareness. We cannot change what we are not aware of. Whatever we are going through we can foster understanding that any experience or situation or symptom that is showing up is exactly where we are meant to be. With awareness we get to own our emotions, we get to own our reactions, and we can take away judgment or shame or guilt and just be with what is without making what we are going through as good or bad. For example with food there is no good or bad food, but throughout our life we learn what feels best in our unique body and what supports us in thriving. Sometimes though we have to eat things that don't feel best in our body and we have to feel depressed or sad or mad or frustrated to even know what vitality, happiness, joy, peace, and excitement feels like in contrast. When we foster awareness of our beliefs, our reactions, our emotions we create opportunity to explore what habits and patterns are working for us and what is not so that we can begin to explore what baby steps we can take to grow and transform.
Opportunity. Everything we are experiencing is an opportunity to cultivate a deeper understanding of ourselves and the body we live in. No matter what hardships, what dark depths of our soul we are traveling through, everything we experience in our lifetime is an opportunity to discover what reactions, actions, foods, people feel most nourishing to our unique system. Just as a caterpillar goes into the darkness of its cocoon and turns into mush to transform into a butterfly, we can trust that whatever we are going through is giving us the opportunity to birth a new expression of ourselves into the world.
No matter what we are going through, our awareness is giving us the opportunity to explore our inner world with curiosity to foster awareness of where in our life is calling for us to heal on deeper and deeper levels.