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Just like the time enough people had asked me what "Life Coaching" was (the way I do it), before I actually wrote anything to describe my approach to it, the same thing has just happened with "Life Planning." Enough people have asked me now (and I have done over 250 of them in the last several years) for me to honor the question. So I have three things to offer that together best describe it: 1) a description I use within the Life Plan itself of "why someone would do this," 2) a message I sent out on March 23rd called "Unveiling the human spirit," which really gave a rich spiritual context for it, and 3) a message I sent out on April 6th called "Start with honoring your parents, and then continue," which further reinforced and validated that context. Combined, these pieces offer a view of the purpose and intent of a Life Plan for coaching clients and prospects.
Why do this?
A Life Plan is for the sole purpose of giving someone a short-term and real-world experience, over the 6 months of the plan's duration, of "being who they say they are." It is intended as a catalytic process which, after having gained the distinction of doing so in specific instances, will enable and support the person in choosing to live their life fully out of their vision of their "ideal self" and to secure the support to keep it ever-present. In the package of material used, they will first state the vision of their "ideal self" as "Who I Am", then they will declare the most important realms of their life within which they are examining how this "self" shows up, and finally within each of them they will choose specific actions and their intended results which will allow them to fully experience this vision of their life in their day-to-day reality. As a result, they cut the strings with which their previous "real world" defined and limited their life and choose to experience and fulfill their highest destiny.
Unveiling the human spirit (From Jim's Coaching Journal, 3/23/03)
Ah, a miracle, I've found it. Thank you, R.L., for your gracious gift and your insight into what I needed at this particular moment. What do I mean by this? It seems lately that my Life Planning work has accelerated and intensified. I am now doing about 3 of these a week, and it has been both very emotional and uplifting. There is a growing clarity and understanding, as I now come to have done about 250 of these, of what it is that I am actually doing for and with another person. People constantly ask me, "What questions will you ask, so that I can prepare?" "What are you listening for?" "What is the 'self' you are aiming to describe in the section called 'Who I Am'?" "Is this who I 'should' be, because I can't really see 'me' in here?" "Can I leave 'feelings' out if this? I hate to get so emotional." "Where is God in all of this, and what's His take on it?" In the face of all of these and other questions, I have never had a clear response, until now. When I am with someone in this process, I am being with and listening for so much more than their physical presence and intellectual responses to things. And it is clear to me that the person is there because it is no longer an option to hide behind their learned behavior. It is a kind of "coming out," and I am being used by God as a spiritual guide to reveal to someone what is leaking out of them in this process, before it is consciously being allowed or cultivated. There is so much more going on than the obvious, to be sure, and I now know how to honor it more fully, because on Friday a good friend, with whom I've shared this gift and created a Life Plan, gave me a beautiful book entitled The Divine Conspiracy; Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God, by Dallas Willard, and I opened (again randomly) and sure enough, there it was, the simple explanation I was looking for to share with others. Oh, and B.M.S., pay particular attention to the part about "childlikeness." This is something you have achieved, and that I so greatly admire in you, and now I have even a little more clarity about why that is.
"The spirit and the space most familiar to each one of us are contained in our own personality. The necessary path of understanding lies in reflecting on our own individual makeup. I am a spiritual being who currently has a physical body. I occupy my body and its environs by my consciousness of it and by my capacity to will and to act with and through it. I occupy my body and its proximate space, but I am not localizable in it or around it. You cannot find me or any of my thoughts, feelings, or character traits in any part of my body. Even I cannot. If you wish to find me, the last thing you should do is to open my body to take a look - or even examine it closely with a microscope or other physical instruments. ... To be sure, the brain is a relatively more important and interesting piece of flesh, but nothing of intellect, creativity, or character is to be found in it.
The very unity of experiences that constitutes a human self cannot be located at any point in or around this body through which we live, not even in the brain. Yet I am present as agent or causal influence with and about my body and its features and movements. In turn, what my body undergoes and provides influences my life as a personal being. And through my body, principally through my face and gestures, or 'body language,' but also verbally, I can make myself present to others. The human face, and especially the eyes, are not just additional physical objects in space. We say that the eyes are the windows of the soul, and there is much truth in that. They and the face and hands are areas in space where the spiritual reality of the person becomes present to others. There the inmost being of the individual pours forth, though of course the person is no more literally identical with his or her face or eyes than with lungs or toenails or brain.
Interestingly, 'growing up' is largely a matter of learning to hide our spirit behind our face, eyes, and language so that we can evade and manage others to achieve what we want and avoid what we fear. By contrast, the child's face is a constant epiphany because it doesn't yet know how to do this. It cannot manage its face. This is also true of adults in moments of great feeling - which is one reason why feeling is both greatly treasured and greatly feared. Those who have attained considerable spiritual maturity are frequently noted for their 'childlikeness.' What this really means is that they do not use their face and body (including their brain) to hide their spiritual reality. In their body they are generally present to those around them. That is a great spiritual attainment or gift. ... It is in persons, or 'selves' and their experiences of feeling, thought, and will - that we primarily come to know precisely what the spiritual is in us. 'Spiritual' is not just something we ought to be. It is what we are and cannot escape, regardless of how we may think or feel about it. It is our nature and our destiny."
Start with honoring your parents, and then continue. (From Jim's Coaching Journal, 4/6/03)
"When the breach in the human soul that is 'self-rejection' remains unhealed, the individual, and thereby society, is open to all kinds of terrible evils. This is where the Hitlers of the world come from. And for every Hitler who rises to power, there are millions who consume themselves and die in quiet corners of the earth. ... Thus, in training disciples to 'hear and do' good works, a major point will often be to help them honor their parents. This is not something that can be bypassed. The training in question has clearly discernible stages. First, the individual must be honest about who and what their parents really are and how they feel about them. Then they must confess the wrongs of attitude and act they have done their parents and ask for forgiveness. Then they must accept their parents for who and what they are, having mercy on them, and forgive them. All of this will require careful advice and much prayer and perhaps intense personal presence by a guide or teacher on occasion. It will take a lengthy period of time in some cases, and the adult child must take care not to get caught in old damaging patterns of interaction with the parent: for example, trying to make the parent understand, or trying to have the 'last word,' or proving he or she was right. Such matters must be simply surrendered to God for Him to work out as He will. ... Similar teaching, training, and guidance must be given with reference to the other aspects of the disciples' lives: body, love and sexuality, marriage and children, success with work and jobs. The object in each case is to enable the person to be thankful for who they are and what they have. And much the same progression will be required: from honesty to acceptance to compassion and forgiveness and then on to thankfulness to God and the honoring of our lives and each other in all of the aspects indicated."
- Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy
Back on my mother's birthday (3/23/03), I sent out a message called "Unveiling the human spirit," which came to me from this same book, given to me by a dear friend, that helped put Christian context behind my life coaching work. Coincidentally, I've been working with a number of people lately who have been struggling to reconcile relationships with one or both parent(s), and the temptation is to ignore this area of life as just too difficult, and not worth the effort. Also, most adults tend to live some distance from their parents, so the issue doesn't show up as "urgent." To people choosing to "opt out" of this work, while working with me to improve their lives, I have emphatically stated that there is really no choice in the matter. I spoke from my own experience and from pure instinct. I believe life is artificially limited to the extent that relationships with parents remain "incomplete" and "unresolved." Out of those conversations, and after calling the 82-year-old mother of the police officer I've been working with, just to say hello and let her know that I was thinking of her, I went back to this same book, not consciously looking for something on this topic, and lo and behold, this shows up - another context reinforcement and validation of what has evolved naturally (in other words, directed by God - yes, M.M., I get it). Truly amazing. Thanks again, R.L., for your quiet, relentless support. I love you, man.
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