Una's Blog

by Una Hearne.

In the world today, we have to adapt and change as never before in human history.

Most of us experience multiple career changes and experience times of wealth and scarcity. Many of us live in multiple countries during our lives, have more than one marriage-type relationship and move house several times.

We can study a huge variety of subjects, choose from a wide variety of work and organise our personal lives to suit ourselves. There is more opportunity and choice available to us than ever before and this is clearly fantastic.

However, along with this choice and complexity comes increased stress and confusion. Life is no longer just about survival and getting by. We now want to make the best choices for ourselves from all the possibilities, we look for meaning and purpose, we want to fulfil our potential. The rules are not so clear any more, we are not sure what we ‘should’ do. We are not even sure what we want to do.

We are not taught the kind of thinking that is required to get clear on what we want and make life choices. It should be taught in schools but it is so new to us it will be some time before it makes it into the curriculum (don’t worry it’s on my to do list!).

My clients often tell me they feel they (we) ‘should’ be able to make life choices easily, and just get on with it. If that were true, we would be doing it already. Fact is, it is not that easy and we are not meant to do it on our own. In fact, we have never made life choices on our own, we have always made them in relation to other people and the prevailing cultural rules in our society. Not being able to process the vastly increased amount of information and choice available today does not mean we are broken, or weak, or lacking in any way. It simply means that no one person knows everything and we are meant to co-operate and help each other. Asking for the help you might want is a key life skill and is evidence of good life management.

In this context it is not a coincidence that coaching is emerging as a profession in it’s own right. It is a natural response to an emerging need. A coach is an expert in the process of thinking about your life, creating visions, setting goals, making plans, taking actions, dealing with obstacles and performing at your best. A good coach creates the clarity for you to think at your best for yourself.

A coach is not an expert on you or your life. You know best for you. You are the only person qualified to make life choices for yourself. You already have all the wisdom and answers you need to live the best life for you. Getting a little help accessing your own wisdom just makes good sense. And coaching is only one way of doing this – there are many sources of  information and help and it is really worth your while putting the effort into finding what works for you. You are, in fact, worth it.

 

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