One of the principles I operate from in my coaching practice is that you can only coach people where they’re at. So, it’s important to find out where people are in their life so we’ll know where to start with the coaching. For example, if I’m coaching someone in their life purpose I have them fill out a short questionnaire which includes the following “life purpose scale:”
___ I have no idea what my purpose in life is, not a clue.
___ I have a vague idea what my life purpose might be but I need to be much clearer.
___ I have a fairly good idea what my life purpose is.
___ I am clear what my life purpose is but I’m not living true to it.
___ I am certain of my life purpose and about 25% of the time I’m living true to it.
___ I am certain of my life purpose and about 50% of the time I’m living true to it.
___ I am certain of my life purpose and about 75% of the time I’m living true to it.
___ I am certain of my life purpose and I’m living true to it 100% of the time.
___ I don’t appear to fit anywhere on the scale. Please explain:
It’s easy to see that it would be difficult to coach somebody in living true to their life purpose at the 75% level if where they are on the scale is that they haven’t a clue what their life purpose is.
I have recently seen a new facet of this coaching principle in operation. I call it the “crawl, walk, run, fly” principle. As children, we all had to learn how to crawl before we could walk, then run and eventually fly, as in fly or soar through life. Sometimes, people want to skip one or more steps, but this doesn’t work too well.
But in real life what does crawling, walking, running and flying look like? Well, the crawling stage is the stage in which we handle our basic survival needs; things like food, clothing, shelter, companionship, etc. It’s the stage where we building a basic foundation of financial integrity. I believe it was Mother Teresa who said that people can’t spend much time contemplating about the state of their soul on an empty stomach, or something like that. We have to learn how to handle these basics needs before we can go to the next step which is working on our wants and desires.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having wants and desires. After all, most of us do. They are the spice of life. However, if you spend all your time focused on your wants and desires without handling your basic survival needs, you’ll run into trouble.
The same is true if you ignore your wants and desires and try to go straight to flying which I equate as the level of self-actualization or enlightenment. This doesn’t mean that every whim, no matter how small or fleeting of thought, needs to be materialized before moving on. No, just the basic wants and desires. Those that are really important to us.