Tip: Life-changing method for the brave

In coaching, the powerful questions are those that make the client stop and think. Questions that liberate. Here is a two-step program of questions and visualization that you can do yourself with the potential to change your life:
Photo by David Reece Flickr CC

Are you brave enough?

To put your current life-style into questions requires bravery, change is acquired by overcoming resistance. The closer to something important, the more elaborate the reasons for not changing. All this resistance makes up a part of our defenses, it's Freud's super-ego talking.

In my practice as coach and mentor I have devised a simple two-step method for change, a method for creating your own happiness:

1. Individually, or with a significant other, revise a list of generic powerful questions. With a piece of paper and a pen, sit down in a quite setting, preferably out-doors in contact with nature and write down your answers. The movement of the hand, the pen on the paper, the sounds of nature all help you go deeper. Fast answers on a computer is counter-productive. Take time, this is important. If you don't have the time for this exercise... that should give you cause for worry.


2. Have a significant other read you a visualization script about a visit to your future self. Have the script read to you, if you can't get anybody to help you, then record your own voice and play it back. The full potential is released when the message enters through your ears, and not by reading. Sit quietly, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. After the text stops, sit for another couple of minutes and register your feelings - then write down your reflections.

What this does is opening your mind for some larger questions, then giving you a way of answering them without too much interference from your chattering neo-cortex. Why is this important? Calming the chatter in our heads is what meditation is all about.

The role of meditation

To find your values requires contact with your emotions, to enter a meditative stage. There are many ways of meditating, with practice it becomes easier but for beginners, nothing is like a visualization script.

Resources

There are many sources of generic powerful questions on the net, one that I like is written by Marc at marcandangel.com, here is a taste:

If the average human life span was 40 years, how would you live your life differently?




How come the things that make you happy don’t make everyone happy?




At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive?




If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?

There are also many visualization scripts on the net, one generic structure that I like is described at the guided-meditation-site. My suggestion is to use the script with a small alteration, when you reach the calm beach you find your future self already there. Visualize the person and ask the older more experienced self for advice on the reflections you have on the powerful questions.

Go further with professional help

The two-step method should get you started on your journey. If you want to go deeper, professional help from an experienced coach will explore the undercurrents of your motivation further.

Do you dare to try the process, does it seem complicated? If you need more detailed instructions, write a comment or send me a mail.