I’m writing this post a few hours after being the guest master coach for the Moore Master Coaching program. Coaching in front of an audience is the perfect setup for self-consciousness. Naturally, I think, thoughts arose about how to produce a result, whether or not we were making progress, and if I was making a good impression. Such concerns with performance are human nature.
While such concerns are natural, they also inhibit presence, authentic curiosity, and access to wisdom, which gets in the way of good coaching. (One might argue that it gets in the way of any coaching at all.) What’s more, trying to quell those concerns can set up an internal struggle that makes things worse. What’s the coach to do?
Whether or not we are coaches, everyday life presents us with similar challenges on a regular basis. Frequently we experience insecure thinking that, if we give it significance, inhibits access to the guidance we want and the well-being that is our birthright. The self-help literature is full of suggestions for managing insecure thinking, but the very idea that we need to manage it adds to our anxiety.
If insecure thinking blocks access to guidance and well-being, and if strategies and tactics for managing insecure thinking amplify it, what the heck are we to do?
The answer is simply and always that we are to trust the process. But what does that mean?
In today’s coaching call, what that meant for me was trusting in the innate creativity, resourcefulness, and wholeness of my client (whom, by the way, I had not met prior to the call) as well as the greater space of Intelligence in which the coaching conversation took place. I trusted that those things were present irrespective of the ebb and flow of my insecure thinking.
This is such an important distinction. It is not necessary that we get beyond our insecure thinking in order to access wisdom and well-being. All that is necessary is that we not take that insecure thinking personally. We can trust whether or not we feel trusting!
When we don’t take our insecure thinking personally it becomes background noise. The example I used in debriefing today’s coaching session was the sound of a television playing in the next room when you are trying to read. Whether or not the sound is a distraction depends far more on how much attention you give it than on the actual volume.
When we trust the process, we trust not only that there is a greater source of Intelligence at work in the world than our personal thinking, but also that this source is available to us in real time and in real circumstances independent of our moods. Yes, it helps to have a quiet mind. But that doesn’t mean that guidance only comes to a mind perfectly free of doubt and distraction.
In a very real way, the less we insist that we achieve some perfect state of receptivity and quiet in order to receive guidance, the more readily and frequently we will notice it as it arises.
What’s your understanding of trusting the process? Share it!
