Posted by 64bowtie on July 29, 2004, at 5:47:41
All,
I've been here since November, 2003; not long as things go. I must thank the group and DrBob for all I read and all they share.
I have been unabashed about trying to find my way while posting here. What I have been looking for is a harmonic tone to ride along on, communicating on a common waive length, sharing that harmonic tone.
Maybe there isn't really a harmonic tone available here at Babble. But what I am certain is I found caring; we care for each other. We have no obligations or expectations regarding each other. But still we care. We have no enmeshment found in struggling families. And yet we do care for each other. This is very precious to me, as it must be to all of y'alls, toooo, else why stay. You know that's it! (Now I'm so warm and fuzzy inside...)
So, I done got it, folks!!! I know what to say and how to say it. I know now the beginning, middle, and the end of the story. I know how to be a Life-Coach. 'course I been practicing for awhile; like high-school homework, sorta. I've been out there, away from Babble, doin' it. The difference is that I was messy at it before I came to Babble. I can now see my way clearly.
You may not feel today that you are different, think different, feel different, or have different intentions than you did in November, 2003. However, something has changed here amongst us. Because it happened here. Then, some of it spilled over into my day to day life, toooo. But I discovered purpose here, clearly!
I am sharing at the Psychology site so I best hurry up and talk modality this, modality that!
Ahem....!
Refering to freedom and happiness as the end game, I mean significant freedom and happiness not just someone's knee-jerk opinion of freedom and happiness.
We can stop behavior, feelings, and motives long enough to discover which ones are our own and which ones are overlays that we are assumed to adopt. We don't loose anything by giving up what isn't ours.
The moment we discover that we have time free of struggle and free of upsetness, then the Coaching can start.
First on the agenda is to discover and diagram the self. This is done by encouraging migration of attention from feeling to sight. Seeing ourselves removes the messiness of feeling our way along.
There are feelings that blackmail the spirit. Some are overlays and some are of our own invention. Bare in mind, feeling something is not held to any physical constraint. Seeing, and remembering what you saw, requires accuracy. Anything less than this accuracy is toooo messy.
At this first stop on the “Coaching Express”, seeing is perceiving, and for the time being, as long as it takes. Discipline comes in when we so quickly react without thinking. This must be updated. Turning sight loose on the thinking process performs miracles in our lives. I won’t play therapist and tell you how to think. As a coach, I encourage you find your voice, accept your voice, be willing to use that voice to guide yourself through the new territory your sight might discover.Once we take charge of our awareness by disciplining ourselves to focus our awareness on what we see, now, in real time, we can break with our childhood. For most, this will be way overdue. In many countries around the world, right-of-passage rituals earmark the point when we can identify ourselves as adults by age. By the very act of making the statement, a fundamental change in what we do with the newly discovered information coming into our awareness by way of perception and sight. We can then re-order ourselves in line with the way things are, and give up on what we expect things to be.
Next, we can take on our bad habits one by one. We can now see habits for what they are. Some habits are good and OK and make our lives more efficient. Others seem to have no beginning, middle, or end, with no apparent purpose or worth. I have a terrible time with time and timing, which is my devastating bad habit. I also get emotionally crosswise if I fail to get my point across. I operate from the faulty belief that I will die if I am misunderstood. The great news is through discipline and managing my habits, I spend only a tiny amount of time in that faulty belief today. Soon I will not even remember the last time I fell prey to my inner failings.
There is a litany of bad habits and faulty beliefs that are shared so robustly by all that they are almost sacred, or a red-badge-of-courage. In the family-of-origin drama-trauma scenario, these are the collection of bad habits known as dysfunction and dysfunctional behavior. Once we see a glimpse of this as a clear and present danger to our wellbeing, up pops that goal of this recovery, freedom. This is what we are looking for to be free of. Freedom of the stuckness found inside our dysfunction.
Notice that I, as a coach, suggest that anyone who wants to can do this. In their adulthood, they now have the tools, the abilities, the attributes, to daily practice their way to a new life of freedom from dysfunction, which in turn leaves time to overcome (win) against the rigors and turmoil of life. Much to your surprise when it happens, happiness sets in.
Perhaps for some, happiness is the clarity of vision of who they and what is happening, absent the magical and mystery thinking of childhood. For others, it is the unfettered awareness that time and timing are allies for the first time in our lives. Nevertheless, freedom and happiness arrive hand in hand.
A major stumbling block is ignorance of self-respect. Much is made of self-esteem. Without self-respect, self-esteem doesn’t even work. Also, without self-respect, respect for someone you are with 100% of the time, how can you do any good at providing respect for others, who you are not dealing with for nearly as much time in a day?
By pointing out that now as adults, we all have tools and attributes, skills and abilities, that we couldn’t imagine as children, we empower ourselves to embrace recovery. Ignoring these benefits is an example poor self-respect. Said differently, respect for our adulthood is one example of healthy self-respect. Holding on to our own childhood as more important and a higher order of life is a faulty belief, lacking any notion of self-respect. Aggrandizing childhood at the expense of our own adulthood, produces distorted results and is not acting respectful of the power of our adult self.
By now, it may seem obvious that accepting ourselves as adults and being willing to be adults is a surprising benefit of seeking freedom and happiness. A specific ability that comes with adulthood is to be able to process goodness, truth and beauty. Beauty can be a strange new catalyst to our recovery process. Beauty and dysfunction cannot occupy the same space, similar to beauty and denial can’t happen at the same time. We can’t be wracked with indecision while studying beauty and it’s details. Beauty either is or isn’t. Same goes for truth and goodness. (Mortimer Adler, ”Six Great Thoughts”)
Through all this, coaching may encourage us to study our process of impulse management to help us recognize onset of poor impulse control earlier each time until we can once-and-for-all extinguish that “two-year-old” behavior; I-want-what-I-want-when-I want-it.
Replacing avoidance with discovery will bring adult fulfillment. Replacing obligation with responsibility and expectations with plans and goals can improve our effectiveness, bringing on satisfaction. Results that are gratifying and satisfying can seem like happiness, even when they are not the first choice.
Finally, I am living proof that this process works. In my life I have coached, been coaxed, been coerced, been condemned (and believed it). What I do moment to moment is so much more gratifying and satisfying.
Rod
poster:64bowtie
thread:371935
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040728/msgs/371935.html