Frank’s Coaching Blog

After a couple of months of hardcore business building, it’s time to re-commit to maintaining this blog. In the meantime I’ve done many hours of coaching, which for me still leads to new insights into the workings of the human mind. That is the beauty of coaching. If we can’t see our own stuff because of the blind spot and personal fabrications and pretensions, we at least can see stuff at work in others. And this is also why everybody can use a coach. It’s just so hard to see your own eyes without a refection in a mirror.

Anyway, this post is inspired by Julia’s comment to the last post, who likes to further discuss the ‘pulling’ I described. Here’s again what I wrote:

When we think about the past, we pull it into the moment, because that’s the only spot where we can somehow experience it. And if we think about the future, we likewise have to pull it into the present to ‘experience’ it (I’ve put this in quotes, because we can only imagine the future, and we then experience our imagination).

Let’s look at the future first, because it is easier to validate. 

Que Sera, Sera,

Whatever will be, will be

The future’s not ours, to see

Que Sera, Sera           
                            Jay Livingston (music) and Ray Evans (lyrics)

  We really, really can’t know what the future will look like. We can imagine it, have fears around it, plan it, visualize it, try to escape it, or embrace it. Rarely does it turn out exactly like what we had feared or hoped for.  We could be hit by a car or brickstone tomorrow, or swallowed by the earth. We could have a lucky streak or an incredible amount of bad luck. It doesn’t matter how much we try to secure things and keep them predictable, the future is not ours to see.

Therefore it’s easy to grasp that the future is something we have to create in our minds. It has no existence apart from the one in our minds. It’s not real. It’s an illusion. Everything that happens, happens in the present. Never did a future happen. Only the present moment happens.

And because the present moment is the only point in time where something can happen, the future - and the past - must happen there as well, but obviously only in our minds. 

Imagine a time line. To give any kind of life to the future, you have to pull it into the current moment, because only there it can enjoy some sort of life. We may pretend that the future is actually ’out there’, but it’s only our imagination where it lives. It is not out there. There is no such thing. The ‘No Future’-kids from the 80s said it, but were of course not aware of the fact that there never was a future in the first place.

Now let’s look at the past. We can argue that the past actually has a reality. And more reality than the future ever could demand for itself. At least we have memories of the past, and that proves that it is real. 

Let’s do a little thought experiment. Let’s imagine we have lost all our memories from the past. The skills are still there, but we can’t remember what happened. Like in the movie The Bourne Identity (2002). Like Jason Bourne in the movie we might be plagued by the fact that the memories are missing, but we certainly wouldn’t be plagued by bad memories or comforted by good ones, because there simply are no bad or good ones. The only thing we could do is focus on the moment - and an illusive future.

Whenever we remember something, we use the current moment to re-activate impressions we collected in the past, called our memories. That these memories might even be complete fabrications we regard as real is the topic of another debate. Like in the future, in order to experience the past we have to re-enact it here and now, in the only point in time that is real. And that’s I again what I described as pulling in.

In order to give past and future some sort of reality, we have to pull them into our mind, and borrow to them the only reality there is, the reality of the Here and Now.

The good news for us coaches is that whenever something has this kind of borrowed pseudo-reality, we can let it go. And help our clients to let it go. We can’t let go of the present. That’s the only thing there is. But we can let go the illusions of past and future, and diminish the power they have over us. Awareness of the borrowed reality of past and future is the key to empower the present and lose the demons of the past and fears of the future.

Frank

Suffering is resisting. It’s a strong statement. Strong in the sense that it leaves us with at least half the responsibility for our suffering. One part of the equation is the world that we resist. The other part is obviously us resisting it.

If we accept this, does it help us in some respect?

If we add the truism that we can only live in the moment and neither in the past nor future, it starts to make sense. When we think about the past, we pull it into the moment, because that’s the only spot where we can somehow experience it. And if we think about the future, we likewise have to pull it into the present to ‘experience’ it (I’ve put this in quotes, because we can only imagine the future, and we then experience our imagination).

The truth is that in every moment we live, there is only space for one moment. How we fill this moment, is up to us. Do we fill it with acceptance or resistance? Do we fill it with positive expectations, or do we focus on being hurt and misunderstood?

What focus will make us a bit more powerful in the Now, what other focus will instantly drain our energies? There certainly is a decision to make.

Frank

There is something odd about the feeling that we deserve something, and frankly I can’t quite put my finger on what is going on.

Does this feeling make sense anyway? Does it serve us, or does it mostly stand in our way?

Many people for example believe that they don’t deserve to have a lot of money. So they do everything to get rid of what they have, and not earn more. Who tells them how much they deserve? Why should we think that we don’t deserve something anyway?

I suspect that this idea of deserving is just another negative way to motivate ourselves to do something. Similar to scolding ourselves. and this may even work, but the price is high.

The idea of deserving is not gentle. It’s not supportive. It’s just there to tell us that we are less worthy than we could be.

Deserving - some idea to find a way around.

Frank

The Higher Self.

This is just a concept, a helpful construction that makes our thinking more powerful. And it can also reveal some underlying believes about how the universe works. In my case there is a belief, and I’m not sure how metaphysical it really is: I believe that everyone of us has some kind of purpose, and that this purpose is kind of given to us. I don’t know if it is written into some book before we enter this earth plane, but is surely shows itself.

Here’s how we find out what our purpose is: What enthuses us? What skills do we have naturally? In which fields did we excel without effort? What would we do if we didn’t have money? When do we get into a flow? What has happened to us in our past that left its marks in our lifes, be it ‘good’ or ‘bad’?

One thing I know for sure. when we act in the direction of our Higher Self, we feel ok. We feel that we are making good use of our time and our life. And we are even enjoying the process at the same time.

Frank

I never stop being amazed about some people, especially men, who are reluctant to share their inner workings. They don’t speak about what they think and feel. Somehow they must think that it could reveal something about them, and let us judge them easier, or manipulate them easier. By not telling anything, they might feel saver and more in control.

I think that the opposite is true. The more you share, the more you learn about yourself, and others. Not many things we experience in ourselves are really unique. There are actually quite ubiquitous patterns, many of which are going on in all of us. When we shut down the connection to our inner world, we’ll never see the patterns, we’ll never understand outselves and others as well as we could be. In understanding lies the real power.

Frank

Before you call the thought police: no, I’m not about to raise my voice for legalizing drugs. Well …. no. I’m not. I don’t even smoke.

I’m here introducing the Okey-Dope, the drug that is perfectly legal and makes us high. You can produce it yourself. It’s healthy, and yes, it is addictive.

The recipe? Every morning after waking up and before you get up, make yourself aware of what already right in your life. What’s okay about it? What can you be grateful for? If nothing comes to your mind because you’re leading such a s**tt* life, give some thanks for being able to open your eyes and breath. There’s always something! As a result you will get an instant kick. Enjoy.

Frank

Recently I became a bit frustrated. I had been working on many projects since the beginning of the year. And for a variety of reasons, I felt very unsatisfied with the outcomes. Pressure was building up, and then there came the point where I though I just can’t stand it anymore. Here I was with several options: change my MO, give projects up, or hang in there.

Honestly, the change option didn’t really pop up. I just added it in hindsight. What actually filled my mind was the idea of giving up, and put some stuff to RIP.  At the same time I knew that this was a cheap way out, so hanging in there came in second.

I then did a reframe. A classic one, a textbook example. Within the sea of frustration I was feeling, I told myself that the most important breakthroughs happen usually right after we are just about to give up.

This instantly inserted some hope into the system, and things began to lighten up. This thought helped me to bear with the situation, and I decided to hang in there. Result? Still hanging in there at the time of the post.

Frank

Just do it.

One has to congratulate the sportswear company we all know for coming with this slogan and making it their own. I live only half an hour away from the headquarters of Adidas and Puma, so when it comes to sports equiment, I’m slightly biased by a sense of local patriotism. However, neither Puma nor Adidas had to luck the intrude my world with their slogan, but Nike has.

Coaching is all about taking action. That’s how we define it. It’s not philosophy class, and we are not satisfied with going away having insights and knowledge. Without creating action and the client going in the right direction, coaching has ultimately failed.

No doubt that insights can lead us to action more often than not, sometimes we know and observe everything that is happening inside us. And when we still don’t move and take action, then it’s time to Just Do It.

A barrier has to be broken down by putting action over thoughts and feelings. No agenda, just going ahead.

I found that this is much easier, when we mindfully create a structure around what we ‘just want to do’. Like setting up accountability, creating opportunities, taking out time, etc.

And then there comes the time when we leave ourselves behind and ‘just do it’.

Frank

Recently I began to journal losely again. Whenever I feel like it I pull out my Moleskine Notebook and write a couple of line about whatever topic pops up. Suprisingly there’s always something popping up, and the outcome is often creative and of a good quality.When I was posting to message boards in the past, coaching people or thinking out loud about how I see the world, I noticed something. I didn’t just dump what was inside my head, but I was creative at the same time. After I wrote the piece, I felt a little bit more wiser and insightful than I did before, although everything I wrote just came out of my own head, nothing added. So I should have known everything before, right?

I see this is also a great benefit of coaching. When we tell our stuff and give our Inner Traffic Report, some magic happens that lets us better know what we are about. Some extra stuff is added in the process of reporting and can’t be seen by just observing our thoughts. Frank

Magic Rushrooms. Yeah, I know. No, it’s not a typo.I could have entitled this post ‘Living in Slow Motion’ as well, because it’s about both, rush and slowness.

When I was younger I loved organizing events, and I did a lot of it. I was pretty successful as well. A reason for my success was that I hardly forget to think of important details. I figured out much later how I did it. My secret was that I saw everything happening in my mind in Slow Motion before it actually happened. That way I could look around and check out what was going on in every corner of the venue where the event was taking place. Like a movie director and cutter  I could make changes, go forward and backward in the film. Then what happened during the event was Magic Rushrooms. What took ages of detail-oriented planning just happened in a blitz.

Recently I wondered how I could miss important details in several of my projects. No harm was done, but missing the details would later bite me when I had to put in much extra effort to get things straight.

One day when waking up my mind somehow slipped into the center of my body, around my solar plexus, and suddenly my whole life slowed down. I was again able to observe every detail, even my thoughts that lead to certain actions. That gave me an immediate feeling of better control on what I was doing.

One of my coaches requested me to practice slowness. As a way to do this she suggested I could do a breath meditation with no immediate goal apart from slowing down. I’ve done this a couple of times sofar, and it really helps to get back to the old state of being able to observe and influence, although it’s not yet the same power that I felt when I woke up that morning.

Frank

We all are creatures constantly creating thoughts. And the thoughts are able to create feelings. Where do all the thoughts come from?You become what you think about, right? There is a lot of truth on this adage, and we don’t have to go to the metaphysical in order to see how true it is.

We have the New Thought school that is lately getting a lot of publicity through the success of the movie ‘The Secret’. It is based on the idea that we attract what we think about (Law of Attraction). Somehow, this school claims, our thoughts actually create the reality we experiece, and attract the topics of our thoughts into our life. As a former scientist, I will not debate the validity of this concept here. I can well imagine that it is all true, and I’m also open to learning that the opposite is true, and everything inbetween.

The reason I mention this idea here is that the argument I’m putting forward in this post is not based on the premise of “The Secret”, it works with or without.

We become what we think about. If we keep thinking about how to pay the bills, we are unlikely to come up with a plan to create abundance. It’s all about paying the bills, those numbers are what we focus on. If we don’t think about big numbers, they are very unlikely to show up in our life. We just don’t get inspired to go for something big. The next bills will set the bar.

The Chatterbox. That’s one name for the neverending process that creates the thoughts we experience. If we identify with all our thoughts and think that this is ‘us’, we’re screwed. Then we not only become what we think about, we also become what we already are. Ouch.

The only way I can see to take the power away from the thoughts that pop up from nowhere and design our life is to learn to disregard them to a certain degree. We can actually filter them, and just ignore those we don’t want to give credit to. And what is the filter? Let’s make two classes: one with the thoughts that are supportive, and one with those that aren’t. How we figure out which thoughts are supportive? Good question! When they are aligned with our intentions and our Higher Self, then they are supportive.

I’m not going to explain what I call the Higher Self here and now. Maybe you figure(d) it out anyway. : - )

Frank

While we were growing grow up we all heard a lot of messages about money, like

• Money doesn’t grow on trees.
• We can’t afford that.
• I’m not working hard enough
• We might be poor but at least we’re honest.
• You only get rich by taking advantage of others.
• a s**t-load of money
• stinking rich

We don’t have to hear these exact phrases, it’s enough to grow up in an environment of people and media are who entertaining those kind of thoughts. The idea will inevitably permeate our lifes and our own thinking. The media are very successful in creating all kind of rich and loathworthy characters.

Have a look what concepts are expressed above:

• scarcity - there is not enough money for everybody
• you have to deserve what you get
• people who have money are bad
• money is dirty

If you deep in your hearts believe that rich people are evil, and at the same time you desire to be a good persons (as most people do), there is an instant conflict when you want to be rich. Or only have a certain level of abundance around you.

I personally know people who earn six-figure incomes and are ‘broke’ all the time. They spend every dime they own, and once the income stream would stop flowing - things can happen - they would be broke the next month.

Although they desire to be millionaires, it will probably never happen. In the heart of their hearts they don’t want to be rich, because that would mean they show signs of evil. As ridiculous as it sounds, it works very reliably for them.

Lottery winners are also good examples that a sum of money has to match the mind of the holder to stay. Studies show that most lottery winners are not only broke a few years after they came up with the right numbers, they are also likely to be in debt.

As coaches, if we come across money issues the client want to talk about, it makes sense to elicit their beliefs about money and rich people, and and least create some awareness around it. Before somebody is able to amass a larger sum of money, negative beliefs around money have to be changed to positive ones.

In case you want to read good books around this topics, reach out for Harv Eker’s Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealthand Maria Nemeth’s The Energy of Money.

Frank

A couple of months ago I read Taming Your Gremlin.

Generally I like all kinds ways of dealing with our minds and its complexity. And obviously this method works for people. At least it is cute enough to gain quite a fan community, whether they’re using it or not. Even in the highly acclaimed book Co-Active Coaching I found references to Gremlins.

 
(c) http://www.taminglight.com


The one thing I don’t like about this concept is that we- despite of all cuteness - have to give a lot of significance and credence to what is not working, i.e. the ‘Gremlins’. You name them, you draw them, you give them a voice. It’s like a mental Pet Rock.

 

I suggest that instead of giving the unwanted more power by focusing on it, we better focus on what we do want.

Frank

Here are a two very different ways of getting things done when there is resistance:

#1 Trick yourself by adding outside structures
#2 Ignore the Mindfrick

Look at my last post with Graham White’s list. These are all examples of #1. But what the heck is Mindfrick?Mindfrick is a term introduced by peakpotentials, and it means ‘mind friction’ (you guessed this, yes?). It’s actually a concept from Zen buddhism, but more modernly named.

So #2 is about letting your mind chatterbox chat and bring up all kinds of thoughts and feelings. When you know what your higher purpose is, then you can ignore most of the chatter and just act inspite of your feelings, thoughts, and moods. It’s different from #2, because in #1 you still work with the resistance, and you find a way around it. In #2 you acknowledge that it’s not real.

Go ahead and give yourself a treat here and there by doing stuff anyway, out of pure purpose.

Frank

The former headcoach of peakpotentials, Graham White has set up levels of accountability that could be interesting to every coach. This material isn’t accessible over the internet anymore, but Graham’s website is here:  www.incrediblepotential.com.

Frank

Levels Of Accountability:

Conscience. This works for the things you already are successful at 100% of the time.

Written Record Of The Goal. This works for a new goal that you have only recently become interested in achieving but forget about because it isn’t already part of your life.

Detailed Schedule. This works for simple goals that just need time to get done. Nagging goals can be accomplished by developing a good schedule.

Commitment To A New Habit. If you have the willpower to be accountable to yourself in doing what you don’t enjoy FIRST, you use this.

Commitment To A Program. Find a good solution and implement it, join a gym, do your activity with a partner etc.

Broadcast Your Intent. Tell everyone and talk about it often. You become accountable to the fear that they’ll ask you about your goal and you don’t want to have to tell them you’re failing.

Be Accountable To A Specific Individual. This works for goals you need support in. Chose the person carefully. They have to be 100% committed to whatever system you decide on. If they fail you, you too will fail.

Be Accountable To A Drill Sergeant. This works for goals you need a lot of motivation to achieve. They must be someone who will confront you and force you to do the things you don’t feel like doing. They must be willing to get in your face and REFUSE to take no for an answer.

Be Accountable To Your Currency. Set up a system where you agree (in writing) to a financial penalty (or similar loss of something important) for failing to achieve your goal. Decide on the cost by how much pain you need to motivate yourself to accomplish a goal that you have failed on repeatedly. Give the MAXIMUM amount that it will cost you if you fail to the individual holding you accountable. Agree that it will become theirs (or a charities) if you don’t achieve your goal.

Professional Help. If you don’t achieve your goal for very significant issues you will lose your opportunities, your relationships your health or your life. Ask people who care about you to help you commit. Once you recognize the gravity of your situation, get professional help.

Graham White

Just a quick thought today:

When we are hard on each other, there is quite some energy used up on being hard, on being pushy, on finding ways to make somebody feel bad and incomplete. What if we used that energy to go forward without wasting a lot on all the friction?

The question is: Can we be perfectly gentle, energy-preserving, and at the same time effective in getting our goals?

I have no doubt about it. It just takes some other things to be in place, and again others to be missing.

Frank

There is no You and Me.

Bold statement. Here’s one of my deep level premises: On a certain level of our sub-consciousness there is no separation between you and me, there is only - hmmm - let’s call it ‘I’. With ‘I’ I don’t mean what our conscious mind thinks of when it says ‘I’. Because that I is always separate from you. The ‘I’ I’m referring to here is the observer that does not yet live in the adult world. That level is active in babies who just live as observers and have no concept of ‘different people’. A baby learns to recognize its own person as a seperate entity from everything else over time.Let’s assume for now that this level of thought is still active within us, we have just added some more layers on top, like the one that separates persons.Have you ever wondered why people who exhibit a certain ‘negative’ trait can really become passionate in finding and judging the very same trait in somebody else? You’re about to say, hey, come on, you’re just the same! But of yourse you have tact and wouldn’t be so rude. The point is: what you don’t like in yourself, you don’t like and judge in others. We can only see (and judge) traits of others that we have as well, to some extend. I believe that we can’t see others at all, all we see is us resonating with what others exhibit. This is a concept hard to swallow if you’re new to it.

It’s obvious that everything is filtered by our perception. Nothing gets into us objectively. So every interpretation is made on basis of our own consciousness, and our own ‘I’ experience.

This topic deserves a book, but I want to be short here and rather risk to be cryptic. At the end of the day what we perceive as You is only what we can see through and as another I, our ‘I’ (or is there another one we can use?).

Therefore: If you are always tough on yourself, you cannot be not tough on others at a certain level. And to love others, you have to first love yourself.

Frank

We had a discussion in our Mastermind Mind Group (MMG) recently about how to handle / motivate ourselves best in order to get results. Carrot or Stick?
One member argued that setting up punishments for himself works best. The fear of feeling humiliated, or the prospect of having something to do he doesn’t like is his favourite way of getting things done.
My own take on this is a bit different. I’ve changed in this respect during the last months. The new direction has been enforced by my studies with the ICA, but it began before.

But maybe it’s based on the personality type of a specific person. When you study NLP you learn that there are Towards-To and Away-From personalities. I suspect that you really find these types, like in my MMG, but it could be a learned trait that can be unlearned. Just as I have changed, maybe everybody can in principle.

First I want to make a difference between Tough Love and simple Toughness. Tough Love is being (seemingly) hard on somebody but with the intention to help and support. Like the mother who trains her child to respect cars and the road, and she uses scare tatics. It’s a good thing that a toddler who doesn’t understand traffic and the power of vehicles just fears the road. This is certainly preferrable to having the child explore and play on the road while risking a sudden death.
We can use Tough Love in coaching to help people break through a barrier and earn a new reference about what they are capable to do.
Toughness as I define it here is based on a lack of appreciation of the other person. People who are tough towards others can only be tough to themselves as well.

I’m going to talk on this in my next posts, because this topic is at the heart of being able to help people get to new places. It deserves quite a bit of attention.

Frank

In the class “AC100, UACs, part 2″ that I attended last Thursday, the instructor Angela Bird pointed out that she looks at UACs as attachments. That was a good clue on how to handle UACs.

I’m not sure whether the UAC definition is actually fully compatible with the concept of attachments. Here’s again a part of the definition:

We say that people are always committed to something, whether conscious of it or not. And that we are creating the outcome or results in our lives from those underlying commitments, judgments or beliefs. This module is based on the premise that whatever a person is truly committed to they will experience. This is a big premise but one that lays the foundation for a very powerful coaching tool.

Although I can imagine that at a certain level we’re always committed to something (our  brains as a constantly working target-searching-machine), I don’t think that we need to be attached to something all the time. The one characteristic that makes attachments what they are is that we hold onto them tight and with certain passion. I can imagine that automatic commitments can switch their target anytime, as long as their is one.

Well, the UAC concept is a bold hypothesis anyway. But when we take UACs as given, looking at them as attachments seems a good working model to me. The good thing about this is that we already know how to handle attachments: by letting them go.

I love this little tool called the Sedona Method . Here are again the three questions that do the trick:

1. Could I let it go?

2. Would I let it go?

3, When?

Frank

 In a comment on my last blog entry “You’re Always Winning“, Margit wrote:  

I am mulling on the “You’re always winning at the game you’re playing”…what if life wasn’t about winning or losing the game. What if it is just about being in the game? What if we could let go of our expectation and using that as a measuring stick?

This doesn’t mean letting go of our goals, or even putting measurable outcomes on those goals to track our progress. I am talking about an internal shift of letting go.

Thanks again for the comment, Margit. I think the “always winning” wasn’t meant to be understood as a philosophy of the conscious mind in this case. There are people out there who are very competitive and who get into the games they play with the one intention to win them. Letting go of that need could probably make their life a lot easier and more relaxed. That’s all happening on an outer world level, certainly being triggered and led by their inner game.

The game meant in the title of the last blog post is the inner game that is constantly going on in our mind. It’s the neverending play of thoughts and feelings that we experience. And it doesn’t have to be conscious, and it doesn’t have to show in the outer world as taking part in games. In fact, the ICA concept of Underlying Automatic Commitments (UACs) is looking at exactly the same phenomenon. The premise of the UACs is that we are always commited. Even in situations where we hesitate or seemingly don’t do anything there is a commitment of some nature at work. One could probably say that there is no non-action / non-intention at the deepest level of our minds. Having this as a premise can lead to truly mindboggling ramifications (afaic).

The “You’re always Winning” is therefore saying that we’re always on target according to our commitments, whether they are conscious or UACs. Our current commitments are being fulfilled at any moment at a certain level of our mind, even thought we might decide to commit to other things on the conscious level. The game meant here is comprising the UACs.

You’re really onto something with the ‘letting go’ remark, Margit. I wonder how consciously letting go of something can affect UACs. 

Ideas anybody?

Frank