When we were children we were always in close touch with what we wanted. We ran around looking for it and had no problem asking for it.
But as we grew older, interacting with society now, we switched from Want To to Should Do… trying to find out from others what they think we should do… trying to fit in, trying to get approval.
Most people never leave that stage….it becomes a life of pleasing rather than serving, a life of reacting rather than creating, and hoping to settle in safely somewhere rather than progressing and growing.
That’s the dull and thick middle trunk of the tree I point to.
“What should I do?” “How should I do it?” “Who should I appear to be?” “Who should I talk to?” “What should I talk about?”
Limitation folds into further limitation.
However!!! Not everyone stays stuck on ‘should.’ Have you noticed? Some unusual people just seem to keep going… they keep ascending. They don’t stop at “I guess I’ve arrived,” in dull, disappointed, safe adulthood.
Somehow they pass through the ‘should’ stage and just keep going! How does that happen?
Maybe, for some, it’s through Divine intervention. They receive a jolt of awakening or enlightenment to the creative energy at the heart of who they are and their thought-based limitations fall away.
Or maybe it happens through coaching and especially through being coached. That’s where it happened for me and for so many of the people I’ve worked with.
Through coaching….we can reconnect to the Want To we were born with and create a life from what we love creating… that part of the tree up at the top; the part that has all the fruit, all the flowers… all the true flourishing.
So when you talk to a prospective client, your job is not to be impressive, sound-wise, and persuade them that coaching is worth paying for.
Your job is to find out what they want. Then you reconnect them to their Want To. The same one they had as kids. It’s in there. It has to feel safe to come out and that’s what starts to happen, that safety… that possibility… when you are in your first conversations, before they are an official client. (That’s a big part of what has them say “Yes!” to working with you.)
~Steve Chandler, co-author with Will Keiper of The Leader and The Coach: The Art of Humanity in Leadership
