UK Life Coaching Journal

Do you lead an unexamined life?    

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.