The Session That Was

My 12 year old daughter wanted me to take a session for her class at school. I was surprised because her instructions to me at home are pretty clear - Don’t coach me. I know why that is so because I keep breaking the fundamental principle of the Coach’s Hippocratic Oath with her - Don’t coach without permission, which means coach only if someone has paid you the money to coach them. Though sometimes, inspite of paying the money, clients are still uncoachable. Then, of course, it is more effective to end the coaching relationship and return the money because it is painful to see people refusing to remove the blindfold preventing them from seeing how they are at the source of all that is working and not working in their lives.

Of course, all of us are at the source of all that there is in our lives. But, if that’s not the premise on which the coaching relationship begins and the client refuses to even consider that as a possible source, not much transformation will happen. We may keep bandaging to stop the blood from flowing but it doesn’t work for me if I am not coaching to heal the root cause to permanently stop the bleeding. That reduces the number of people I end up working with because there are very few who are willing to step out of their comfort zone to do the deep inner work to bring about total transformation to live their greatest life. Most of us are happy with what there is and an incremental change from there. I respect that too because each one of us are on our own journey and we make choices based on what  feels most authentic at any moment.

I confess, I digressed. Coming back to my daughter’s request, I, of course, agreed and ended up experiencing profound learning from a group of 12 year olds. I ran the session as I would for my clients. They had huge amount of pre-work to get them into the space of inquiry about themselves and their lives. They shared anonymously with me their deepest fears, secret dreams and questions they were scared to ask anyone else. My heart broke to read through their pre-work. Their pain was no different than what I experience from the 40+ that I usually coach. Just that the experience of the pain was far more intense as the young people hadn’t yet learnt to numb their pain to live the drama of adulthood. With the 12 year olds, the pre-work was sufficient for them to feel connected with what was really going on inside them. For 40+, it takes months and sometimes years of coaching for them to come to this level of vulnerable self-awareness.

It is when that pain in the basement of our psyche is pushed deep inside and we lock it away even from our own selves that we begin to live an inauthentic existence. It is this disconnection that causes all the relationship pain that we go through all of our adult lives, impacting us adversely both professionally and personally; coming in the way of our creativity, innovation, performance and productivity that we end up living good lives instead of great lives.

Nothing wrong with a good life. I respect the choice made to live a good life, just that not living the greatest life (professionally and personally) leaves us with an empty feeling in our hearts that has us feeling not good enough, not loveable, not worthy. And, yet, we can live life another way. I believe that is the purpose of our life - to remove the thick dark curtain inside and let our light shine through to make our world brighter than it was before. It is then we feel deeply connected with who we are and feel an authentic fulfilling connection with people around us; experiencing elation, joy, authenticity, harmony, tranquil stillness within with nowhere to go and nothing to prove, no yearning for anything, nothing to chase, love, reverence, abundance, prosperity and everything else on the growth spectrum. In this shift on the inside, we step into being a leader. We may have had a designation and a role before but its only with this massive shift in our consciousness that we understand what it means to be a leader and become one.

Based on their first pre-work, I sent them some articles that I had written for my customer community of CEOs and Business Owners. I sent a message to them to search for their answers, like detectives, from what they were reading and send me another set of responses. Through their responses, I experienced their joy of discovering their answers on their own, connecting to their inner wisdom; and even more questions came tumbling out. I realised, their connection to their inner wisdom is so much stronger than ours and we, in the name of parenting and education, slowly and steadily keep breaking their connection to themselves so that they can grow up as adults. 

So, a week later from when my adventure began with them, I finally find myself facing 28 twelve year olds, curious as to what this new teacher will get them to do now. I started with giving them a choice to be in the session because they wanted to, not because they had to or because someone had told them. The murmurings stopped and I got their committed listening. Interestingly, not one left the room. In giving that choice, they let their walls fall and allowed me in to their hearts. We began with them closing their eyes and focussing their attention on their breath coming in and going out; to get aware of what thoughts, feelings, sensations were coursing through their body and getting present to their intention from the session. As they opened their eyes and re-connected with the world outside, each one shared their intention with the group in the form of a single question. I invited them to consider that fulfilling their intention was their responsibility and that I was with them merely to give them whatever they took away from me. They accepted my proposal and agreed to pull their learnings from me rather than me pushing it on them. Once the agreements of the game were in place, the socratic discussion began. Of course, I had few distinctions that I wanted them to experience viscerally so that the notes were etched on their souls rather than on a piece of paper. I let them pull it from me. It was the most energising, engaging, refreshing conversation of my life. We ended our 2 hours together with each one of them declaring their personal inner commitment of what they wanted to be the best in the world.

I figured I must have done something good as my daughter brushed past me after she came back home from school, murmured 'amazing session' and quickly rushed out of the room before I could blink. I have grown enough in the last 12 years of being a parent to gracefully receive that as my gold medal :-) Even more fulfilling was when later she told me that she discovered why she wasn't playing well in the last golf game we played together. She had nearly quit and hung on till the end of the game only because of her father; inspite of her headache, body ache, tiredness. My admiration for him as a dad grew multiple folds that day.

My intention of our education system is for education to connect young people to their biggest dreams and to give them a structure to grow intellectually, emotionally, physically and emotionally to realise their greatest dreams in deepest communion with their highest self. When that happens, we will have world class scientists, players, leaders, artists graduating from our schools making a huge difference to the world, instead of scared beings fearful of what the future holds for them. Imagine the joyous growth and liberating transformation available in the world instead of stress, disconnection, emotional and physical violence; as they step out of their schools with compassionate love in their hearts and quiet inner confidence of being masters of their craft, leaders of their communities.

May teachers learn to be coaches and leaders so that they not only teach the young people concepts but coach and lead them to remove the thick curtain inside to live in the expression of their innate greatness and inherent genius; which is the destiny of each human being. Unfortunately, we live our destiny only if we choose to; it is not available to us by default.

Wishing each of us makes the choice to walk the path to come home to ourselves.

Love, Jyoti.