UK Life Coaching Journal

Do you lead an unexamined life?     Comments (0)

There are two basic ways in which you can live your life. You can live it according to a direction which is stuck like a carrot on a stick in front of you. You can say, these are my aims, these are my goals. The vast majority of life coaching approaches encourage this blinkered goal-orientation. In other words, tell us what you want and we’ll tell you how to get it.

Most people lead an unexamined life. The Unitive approach to life coaching says, hang on, let’s have a look at where these aims have come from - what the origins of these aims were - because obviously they have taken you to a place in the present where you don’t want to be. So let’s have a fresh and perceptive look at how you’ve arrived at where you are right now, and then, once you stop aiming for will-o’-the-wisp goals in life, let’s see where your authentic nature will take you. Life then becomes a joyful journey, rather than a teeth-clenching dash up the fast lane of an endless motorway heading straight for la-la land.

Think of life as a meandering river. There’s two things you can do: you can say I want to go to such and such a place on the river bank which may be against the tide but I’m going to row and row until I get there because there’s a particular place I’m looking for and I want to go towards it, however difficult it may be. This is what most people suffer from. Or, you can let the river take you where it will, just watching what happens, moment by moment. Even though you don’t change, the vista before you is changing every second. Different things come up; one moment has a different potential to the next moment. So watch that - watch what comes up on the bank. And that’s what life actually is: just celebrating the scenery as it unfolds before your present perception.

The Unitive™ approach to coaching     Comments (0)

Unitive™ coaching works toward attaining a level of personal awareness that sees the whole as being greater than the sum of its parts. By establishing a non-directive, non-judgmental and safe accepting ambience with an experienced and professional coach who has personally gone through the same process, the client becomes aware of both sides of the so-called ‘problems’ in his or her life – the pairs of unresolved and opposing polarities such as thinking/feeling, good/bad, success/failure, safety/danger, child/adult, that are at the root of issues that so far he or she has habitually resisted.

Unitive™ coaching facilitates the attainment of a lasting state of problem-free non-duality in which the individual is totally aware of his or her own uniqueness and at the same time remains completely in touch with the reality of the presenting world.

Get real!     Comments (0)

The ability to be who you really are - to act intuitively from your true centre - is the greatest gift you can give yourself. If you can get in touch with your authentic being you will recognise your real needs and desires and communicate those with others. Once you unlock the door to self-knowledge, you will come to understand the strength of your individual power. If you can read the signals about how and what you are feeling, you will develop a unique expertise in recognising and resolving your own life issues. And with the ability to know and express yourself and communicate effectively with others, your material, career and personal achievements are much more likely to become ‘realised’, in the true sense of the word.

Real life coaching may be a road less travelled, but it leads directly to a tranquil place.  By showing us as individuals how to disregard the anxious demands of the imperceptive ego, we become aware of the unique place we occupy in space and time. We realise that human beings are not isolated units but linked together as part of a universal Whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Body Language     Comments (0)

As we progress through life, we gain a lot of experience of how to survive in the world through the simple process of trial and error. We learn about the sharpness of needles, and the hotness of ovens, the hard way. But when it comes to interpersonal communication, what can we do when someone we are meeting for the first time says something like, ‘You can trust me!’ True, or false? What attitude are we personally to adopt in response to this particular statement? It’s no good flipping back through our memory files to see what happened in the past when other people said precisely the same thing to us. Even if our attitude then proved to be the correct one, how do we know that this particular person, a stranger, is telling us the truth?  Everyone has a unique personality structure, different from any other we’ve ever come across. There’s no way you can possibly rely on your past experience to check this personality’s main function. Does it act as a cover-up to his or her unadmitted negative emotions? Or, alternatively, is it a channel for the communication of heartfelt and accurately perceived truths?

If you really want to know what’s going on, you’ll need to pay close attention, not just to the words that come out of a person’s mouth, but also to the movements and physical attitudes that the rest of his or her body is expressing. That’s another way of saying, we need to step back so we can get a perspective on the person as a whole. The words that come out of the mask can, as we’ve seen, be either true or false. But, the language of the body never lies.
 

Problem or difficulty?     Comments (0)

   The two words, problem and difficulty, are often used interchangeably. But, when you explore their true meaning, you’ll see that they refer to two quite different concepts. So let’s take a minute or so to explore the fundamental difference between the subjective, personalised and internal nature of a problem - that is, a conflict in a person’s perception of elements in the real world - and the actuality - the existential, undeniable fact - of the thousand and one random difficulties that always will happen in the course of a lifetime.

   The Unitive™ coaching approach does not deal with life’s external difficulties.  A person who is able to see the world as it really is will always deal with whatever life comes up with, in his or her own authentic way. If there are difficulties that he doesn’t have the skills or knowledge to cope with, he may go to a professional for help. However, the problems the unitive coach addresses are purely subjective. They do not exist in the world as such, but only in the client’s comprehension of that world.

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Unitive™ coaching - get wise to yourself!     Comments (0)

The Unitive™ approach is all about learning to live your life in the light of present reality, instead of through the distorting mirror of the past.  It’s a magical process: personally experiencing the power of the present instead of just observing it from the outside. In order to tap into your innate sources of personal wisdom, you’ll need first to let go of those bits of your previously acquired stuff that’s now become useless and immerse yourself completely in whatever new experience life may come up with.

You’ll find that once you’ve become part of that experience, your entire being - mind, body and spirit - will become an instrument for opening up receptive channels of communication between your own true responses and those of the people who share your present environment.

Is it all just a matter of luck?     Comments (0)

The attainment of a personally authentic life is not anything to do with random chance, or with simply being lucky. If it were, in the long run all of us would be equally fulfilled (or unfulfilled!)  But we all know people who are consistently comfortable in their skins. Obviously this can’t be due to a permanent lucky streak - there has to be another explanation to account for what at first seems an inexplicable state of affairs. The real answer is simple – ‘luck’ is nothing else but the personal ability to see and to accurately evaluate, things, events, people and situations, as they really are. That is, to be in touch with, and totally aware of, what really is happening at any given moment. read more…

Putting yourself in someone else’s position     Comments (0)

How many times have you heard people say, ‘I wonder what it feels like to be in that person’s position?’ But if you really want to know, all you need to do is, literally, to act in exactly the same way. You can never become an expert in body language just by reading books about it - proficiency will only come after constant practice. Although this may at first seem a strange technique to recommend, it’s a fact that one of the best ways to understand another person’s body language is to mimic the way he or she moves, and moves around. Most children are natural mimics. You’ll find that, like once having learned how to ride a bicycle, you will soon remember how it’s done. The more precisely you mimic the movements, the more exactly you will feel the mixture of feelings that the other person feels. And here’s something else you’ll find out - if you then begin to exaggerate that individual’s habitual actions, you will feel those emotions in a more intense form.

You don’t ever again need to wonder how it feels to be in another person’s place. Instead, you can actually put yourself into it. It’s a simple but immensely effective technique that will enable you to experience at first hand - to understand, empathise with, and honestly relate to - ‘hidden agenda’ feelings and emotions in other people. The more you practice, the more insight you will gain and the nearer you will get to optimum levels of communication in your working and personal life.

Listen up!     Comments (0)

The art of listening to other people is a very important aspect of successful interpersonal communication. Listening is an integral part of the process called attending. When you really attend to another human being, your authentic self will turn a deaf ear to the internal ’static’ - the Babel of contradictory messages from the various departments of your personality. Then, and only then, does it achieve the freedom to detach itself from the constant internal demands of the ego, and focus its powerful beam of pure awareness entirely on the outside world - in this case, on what the person it’s attending to is saying. Listening is an art. Like any other form of creative endeavour, the more you practice it, the more proficient you will become.  It’s pure attention in a state of calm relaxation - a holiday taken by the real you, away from the distractions of your personality.

Lines from a poem     Comments (0)

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

                                                              T.S.Eliot (’Four Quartets’)