Ever get a stuck client or colleague when you’re coaching/supporting them? Stuckness always emanates from one of three sources:
Helplessness – choosing not to take responsibility for taking action
Hopelessness – self saboutaging empowering thoughts and actions
Worthlessness – not believing they are good enough and don’t deserve success
In many cases your average stuck person is caught in an inner war between that which they know they can do and that which contradicts this. The sources above lead themselves to self fulfilling prophecies, as the inner voice of hope and possibility, is trashed by the inner voice of despair, inaction and fear.
So here’s a really simple technique that works in any situation where clients are saying things like “on the one hand I think I can do x and on the other I don’t believe that”.
1. Ask them to locate the part inside of them that can do X and bring it outside and sit it on one of their hands
2. Ask them “does it have a name?” Whatever they say (A), accept it and use that name to refer to it in future
3. Next ask them “ Trusting your first instinctive response, what is the highest positive purpose that (A) has for you?
4. Whatever response they give, ask what it’s positive purpose is and repeat this process until they can go no further and answers repeat. Remember the last fresh response they gave eg. Happiness
5. Next turn to the other part that does not believe it can do X and bring this out onto their other hand. Ask what it’s positive purpose for you is. Encourage the first instinctive responses. For each one, ask “for what purpose?”. DO this until the response for this part matches that of the other hand eg Happiness.
6. When you have matching purposes, invite the client to notice this: “ Do you notice that they want the same thing for you?” Get an affirmative response and invite them to bring their hands together and “invite the parts to exchange any gifts of wisdom they might have such that they can join the whole again”.
7. Ask them to “invite any other parts from within them that would also like to join this new whole to come out now and join them”.
8. Allow time for this to happen and then invite client to take this new whole into them again.
9. Congratulate them on their work and ask them how things are different now.
I so frequently find clients saying that this technique is a life changing time for them, and so would encourage any coach to add it to their toolkit.
If you like this tool and would like to learn about other such tools for supporting clients click here
