We often think we need practical answers when what we really need is to discharge

Today, I just want to share a reflection.

Often, when people reach out to a coach or a therapist, they think what they need is practical techniques to answer questions like these:

"I need to stop over-thinking, but how do I actually do that?"

"How do I stop criticising myself?"

"How do I make myself have more positive thoughts?"

Well, I'm not saying there aren't practical techniques that can be applied, but often, what we really need is not what we think we need and in my experience, practical techniques for things like these are rarely satisfactory. They often just set up more frustration later, when it looks like it didn't work.

"How do I take on my mind and win?"

That's what such questions start to sound like. How can I answer that and know at the same time that we are not really separate from our mind?

What if it's not about taking on your mind and winning anyway? What if the path to a more peaceful life is something more tangential?

Let me share what actually happens in a well facilitated session. I need to speak metaphorically to express this.

It's like we walk into such sessions like a battery charged up with negative energy. We come in wanting to know the secret of taking on our minds and winning. We're ready to apply all our negative energy into that venture.

Frustratingly, the coach or therapist doesn't tell us how to take on our minds and win. Instead, they hold a hypnotic thinking space open. They coach us to express. They gently enquire.

We express. We articulate. We emote. As we unravel our own thinking, the battery discharges. It's like an emotional cleansing. We become more peaceful. We see more clearly. We see something we didn't see before, something enlightening about how to be that we can't really express in words.

I often hear about how people found their coaching sessions draining but something wordless yet magical happened in the feeling of that negative energy draining away. There wasn't an intellectual answer to their questions, only a felt one.

Sometimes, that's what coaching seems like to me: a grounding earth rod to discharge all the negative energy away; to emotionally cleanse and create the space for clarity and insight.

The path is rarely to answer the question raised from the problem frame of mind.

Wishing you health and happiness,

Steve.

Sometimes life is about pushing more, sometimes it's about pushing less

My friend Chris once said life is the yin and the yang. I saw it. A dance between the active and the passive; between being the guide and the guided; between being the mover and the moved.

It seems to me our passage through life is a dance between doing and allowing. Sometimes it's time to do more. You're not going to build that business or write that book from the couch. Sometimes, though, it's time to allow more—to stop pushing against the resistance and allow life to guide you, rather than you guide it.

Peaceful wisdom knows exactly when to do each.

Fragile ego chooses poorly.

As a tip, I can only say this, though I've found it a profound guide in my life:

When we feel spiritual and emotional wellness—smoothness, like we're dancing in time with life, carry on.

When we feel spiritual and emotional illness—resistance, like we're dancing out of time with life, stop and take a moment. It may be a signal that it's time to change between doing more and allowing more.

It can go both ways. If we're being too passive, that feeling can be a call to get more active. If we're being too active, that feeling can be a call to get more passive.

Like I said, peaceful wisdom knows. The ego gets it wrong. If the ego is telling us we need to push more, we probably need to push less. If the ego is telling us we need to push less, we probably need to push more. Stopping and taking a moment is what allows wisdom to speak. It knows.

Wishing you health and happiness,

Steve.

When I share about life, it's not because I'm a guru

When I share about life, it's not because I'm a guru or an expert or in any way superior, because I'm not. I'm just as flawed as anyone. It's just that as someone who coaches, someone who is coached, and someone who reads and listens to the words of the wise, one gets to see everyday things from a different perspective; from a perspective we don't generally get to see for ourselves when we're within our own thinking. I'm no guru, it's just that sometimes what one sees is worth sharing.