Mark the Coach

Does this ever happen to you?
1. You’re doing some task, one you’ve done plenty of times before. Someone says something like “Why don’t you do it this way?” or “Why don’t you do that?”
2. You find yourself thinking, “That’s clearly a good idea – why on earth DON’T I do it that way?”
3. You do it differently this time.
4. Next time you come to doing the same task, you forget all about this conversation and do it just as you’ve always done.

It just happened to me (not for the first time, of course.) I was brushing my teeth, and my wife said “Why don’t you brush your tongue?” With great relish she pointed out that it gets exposed to all the crap my teeth get etc (I’ll spare you the detail). Why not clean it at the same time? Well, it all makes perfect sense, and I totally agree.

Not knowing and not agreeing often aren’t the reason we don’t do things. Mostly it’s a simple question of habit. We do an awful lot of what we do unconsciously, even if we’re aware of doing it. So while I consciously decide to brush my teeth, and am aware of doing it, the actual brushing is automatic. There are probably improvements I’d make straight away if I did it in a fully conscious way. But it works fine as it is, and hey, who’s got the time?

It’s similar in our lives more generally. We keep on doing things habitually that we know we’d benefit from changing. Habits have ways of really making themselves at home. They can seem hard to change. They can even seem like they’re inevitable, immutable truths. But in fact, they’re just repetitions.

Creating new futures is literally a question of changing habits. Find a habit that doesn’t work for you, drop the habit. Maybe create a new habit that does work for you.

Obviously that could well be easier said than done. But just knowing you’re dealing with a habit rather than a struck-in-marble truth helps you start the process. You’re not fighting the world, you’re just fighting your own repetitive ways of behaving or seeing things.

A client of mine often says to people “Mark’s the only coach I know who actually listens to you.” I find this at once gratifying and shocking. A lot of people, including some coaches, seem to think of “coaching” as primarily remedial, a problem-solving tool. I think this is a shame, because while coaching will certainly help you solve the problems you see in front of you, there’s a lot more available to you than that.

So here’s what I want to get off my chest.

At its most basic level coaching is about clarifying where you are, where you want to get to, what you need to do to get there, and being accountable. That’s essentially getting a to-do list in place and making sure it gets done, thus achieving the goal. This is in itself a valuable thing, and some coaching models focus mainly on this.

But the really juicy part of coaching comes in when you get stuck with any part of this process. Getting clear about things can itself be a big challenge. Thinking about what you actually want rather than why you can’t have it can be a big shift. Then there’s the myriad ways we hold ourselves back and trip ourselves up, stopping ourselves getting there. Coaching can help you deal with these rather than continuing to avoid and work round them.

And why is this so juicy? This is where the gold is, because

THE SAME THING WILL BE HAVING A NEGATIVE IMPACT ELSEWHERE IN YOUR LIFE.

Maybe even quite a few places. It’s just the start. So I regard problems as the way in to a whole realm of possibility. This is where the listening my client referred to comes in.

In this sense, problems are your friend. They show you the way.