How to Coach the Self?

Is personal transformation spiritual progress? Without a doubt, yes, though the first step in a journey of a thousand miles!?

Self-coaching, discovery and transformation are part of the first major steps to evolving as a spiritual being. All these require reflection and committed practice leading to transformation. You’re now in frame of mind to expand your transformation to others, lighting the lamp, as Buddha said, that has been lit in your heart. The path towards that is a systemic approach to coaching.

Whatever can be achieved in individual coaching can be far more powerfully achieved with a systemic team, or even group, coaching approach. The difference between the team and group is simply this. In a group, individuals focus on their personal outcome needs, whereas a team, focuses on a shared, often emotive, vision. Even an informal group becomes a high performance team, once it establishes a psychologically safe and trusted space, where members can develop and plan a shared vision.?

Systemic team work has these benefits over individual interventions.

·??????Team can focus on meta goals serving the society and system in general, in addition to individual needs.

·??????Powerful high performance teams evolve.

·??????The process is value added in terms of time and resources invested

The starting point is still the individual.?Understanding Self is a central theme in Kurt Lewin led Organizational Development concepts, as an integral part of the triumvirate of Self, Teams and Organizations. Coaching the Self is the starting point of all coaching

The 5000 year old Upanishad describe the Self as energy, a holographic fragment of the infinite, eternal and expanding universal creative energy. The concept that we as creations of the universe are energy beings, encased in mind body matter, was scientifically proved about 100 years ago through Einsteinian concepts of Relativity. Individual consciousness is an integral part of the energy of the Collective Consciousness.

To many, even today, the concept of energy, soul, and spirit are extensions of a mythical god, and hence unacceptable. It takes effort to separate the myth of religion and god, from the truth that we are energy beings. It has also taken time for psychology, even for Jung who understood Eastern philosophy, to shift its focus from the negativity of the Unconscious, whether individual or collective, to the wellness mode of energy.

From a coaching perspective, the understanding of Self is critically important from multiple levels. Unless a coach is self-aware and willing to self-discover limiting memories and beliefs, the coach is unequipped to work with clients to help them discover their negative beliefs. We come across many coaches, who still carry their baggage of conditioned beliefs, unaware and disinterested in exploring within. Such coaches do not serve clients well.?

@Coacharya, our coach training starts with Self Discovery. Learners reflect to create awareness of sensations, emotions and thoughts based on negativities, some unconscious. This creates emotional intelligence to identify emotions in themselves and others, which they can then act upon to be consciously competent. Continued reflection and practice anchor them into a flow state of unconscious competence. The journey of awareness from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence is the Hero’s Journey of Coaching.?

Coaching starts with the determination of one’s goals based on aspirational values. These are generally blocked by limiting conditioned beliefs. Coach reframes the dissonance between aspirational values and limiting beliefs. The coach needs to have undergone a similar reframing process in discovering and dissolving one’s own limiting beliefs through self-coaching, . without which the process of reframing beliefs of others is not sustainable.?

Learning coaching competencies is necessary. But, it is not enough. Understanding and coaching the Self through rigorous reflection, through practices such as meditation, are critical to coach’s self-discovery and awareness. This is the Coacharya process, enabled by our integration of Eastern Wisdom with Modern Science.?

Reflect?

·??????What does the Universe wish you to be??

·??????Why would this be different for what you may wish to be?

Please do write in, resonant or dissonant. Let’s have a conversation.?Please share with others who may benefit.?

Ram is co-founder and mentor at Coacharya?https://coacharya.com . Ram's focus is integration of Eastern wisdom with modern science, spiritually, systemically and sustainably. Visit Coacharya.