As a coach, in my sessions, I often find myself being pulled in opposing directions.
In one direction, I’m heading off focused and motivated to help my clients to breakthrough their self-imposed limits.
However, I’m pulled the other way, by my clients who are seeking in another direction a system to improve their lives.
I find myself in a peculiar situation, I’m ready to take the client to a place where they can see the far reaching and endless possibilities of their imagination.
However, their compulsion for systems, often means they want me to provide them with a system.
They are demanding a better system than they have now for their life.
This puts me in a curious and challenging position, being pulled here and there ( as if performing some contortionist act), but I stand my ground and never compromise; by simply giving my clients another robotic life coaching system or programme.
Despite the struggles, I relish the opportunity to stretch myself ( whether literally or metaphorically ), and seize the moment to unleash a maverick style of coaching far beyond systems.
It’s my chance to show a client the unrivalled power of imagination.
Imagination is often viewed as two things in our reduced lowest common denominator society.
Either, it’s a toy for children which we should throw away, or put into the toy box once we become fully grown rational adults. Or it’s this mysterious thing reserved for a few talented but misunderstood creative individuals.
But this misunderstood and much maligned faculty is what is lacking in people’ lives.
And what I have seen in my consultancy practice, in sessions, are clients deprived of imagination.
Clients come to me because they feel depleted, stuck, confused, and lacking in life.
Their life feels flat and boring, and that they can’t solve the problems in life.
Solving problems is what they perceive as the key to transforming their life.
So, they come to me the coach, looking for answers, looking for solutions to their problems. They are searching for a system.
If you were to peruse the coaching and personal development arena you will find thousands of coaches selling their own systems and programmes to people. They are ten a penny but cost a fortune, considering what they offer people.
They are selling worn-out solutions to tiresome problems.
Systems and programmes are a stark reflection of our reduced culture which is excessively mechanical and materialistic. Where everything revolves around solving problems.
It’s life and consciousness experienced and expressed on a rather diminished and tedious level.
But systems and solutions are what coaches, and their clients perceive as the keys to transformation.
This fixation for systems, often to generate improved solutions, results, and outcomes are what stifle people. Because systems are cutting people off from the very thing which can liberate, expand, and enrich their life.
Which is spontaneity. Everything in their life has become routine, predictable, and lacking the electricity of new thought, ideas, feelings, and experiences which makes one feel alive.
Spontaneity, living in the moment, and freely is non-systematic.
It’s what life is crying out for. It’s what makes life feel ALIVE!
Therefore, slapping on a new system for a person, still cuts them off from living spontaneously.
I don’t go down the conventional road of systems. It’s congested enough there. Instead, I take a detour.
Systems can and do work in certain contexts, and for specific short-term projects. They work for machines. But not for people in the long-run.
The trouble lies when a person decides to live inside a system and exchange their own uniqueness for the stability of the system.
Living inside a system eventually leads to the person being welded within its boundaries. Which then shapes and moulds that person’s perceptions and thoughts.
Suddenly the idea or conception of a life beyond the system seems impossible. This is where systems become prisons, and any life past it’s walls seems impossible.
Imagination is the missing key, which can release a person from the prison they find themselves in.
Subconsciously a person has been held captive and they are screaming to be released.
That’s where I, as a coach can help a person. Show them ways to grasp the keys which can free them. The keys lie hidden in their subconscious.
A person’s subconscious, contrary to what the consensus of psychology and spiritual practices describe it as; is a place not to be feared. It’s a space where immensely wonderful and powerful energies are wating to be accessed, which can transform a person’s psyche and life.
It’s why as a coach I don’t set my client up and offer them a new system, that may appear more attractive than the existing one. I don’t present a superficial system that deals with only the surface level of reality.
I’m aware how vital it is, I don’t lead my client into a new prison.
Nor sell them a new cage that’s simply bigger and gilded with a higher carat of gold.
As I’ve witnessed many times as a coach, people often experience everything in their everyday lives mechanically, living life systematically with a step 1,2,3,4,5 approach.
Often people are experiencing life with the same thought and feelings, not hoping or questioning whether there are further possibilities for their lives. Not conceiving of any ideas for their life, which are far beyond what they know.
Everything is centred on shoring up steps 1,2,3,4,5. Tweaking this and adjusting that, in the hope it will secure and solidify existence.
This is when, I as the coach must break the chain. Disrupt the monotonous sequence and flow of events. And present my client with something beyond their system.
Show them glimpses of what their imagination can do for them. Reveal through dynamic and explosive exercises and techniques the power of imagination.
Imagination is expansive, far reaching, experimental, adventurous. It possesses an infinite capacity to envision and conceptualise the new.
Imagination is what exists outside of systems.
So, my first move and strategy, involves leading the client into the realm of imagination, launching them to into a space where the impossible becomes possible.
As the coach, I’m taking my clients to an unexplored space; where they recognise what has been established as reality so far, is just the starting point. A place they can exit, and use merely as a launching pad for creating new futures and realities.
New futures and realities far removed from the stale and lifeless.
I’m not taking my clients into a space where they analyse, dissect, and refine what already exists.
That’s a lost cause. It’s a psychic dead end. And far too many coaches and counsellors are leading their clients to cosmic cul-de-sacs.
The past doesn’t hold the keys to freedom, nor does it reveal secrets of the cosmos.
The present and future is where true power lies. That’s where imagination can become the guiding star in a person’s life.
As it shines and illuminates the endless possibilities which spread across the cosmos.
And once a person is assessing their imagination and living intensely with and through it, then their horizon expands. Their outlook on reality expands, and they leap into the adventure of creating new and enthralling futures, which stretch far away.
Stretch far beyond the moon and stars.
Flying across the cosmos, where life is ignited by the celestial sparks of spontaneity emanated from the sun of imagination.
Now life has truly transformed. Life has shifted from being a robotic operation into being a pulsating and thrilling adventure of consciousness.
I’ve seen many times, how my clients have revolutionised their lives by embarking on immensely fun and creative journeys.
I’ve witnessed them sailing on the adventurous voyage of creating realities, moving through vast and endless oceans of infinity, guided by the prow of imagination.
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