I recently happened upon a website that I found very thought-provoking. Transformational Processing seems to encompass many of the fundamentals of coaching. It uses the following suppositions:
• Truth is relative
• Truth is simple
• A belief will prove what it assumes
• The map is not the territory
• The natural state is wholeness
• The person is creating her own reality
• A person is not her behavior
• A person is basically good
• Any part of a person is there for a good purpose
• The natural state of life is to have fun and learn
The pieces that really struck me are the ideas that the “Any part of a person is there for a good purpose”, which suggests that although people try to suppress parts of themselves they view as negative, each part is important to make up the whole; and “Natural state is wholeness”, which proposes that people are always whole, even thought they perceive themselves as fragmented. As coaches we help them to see their wholeness, and accept and love all parts of themselves.
My favorite is: “A belief will prove what it assumes”, which states that whatever beliefs we have prove themselves. For example, if we assume that people are basically good, we’ll find good people. If we assume that people are basically bad, we’ll find bad people. Think about it: this is a corollary to the Law of Attraction: we attract what we think of. Ponder this: if you expect everything to go wrong, does it surprise you that things will invariably go wrong? Think about when you’ve had “one of those days”. More than likely when you woke up, a couple of things went wrong: you stubbed your toe on the way to the bathroom, you dropped the lotion bottle and lotion went everywhere. At that point, you probably wailed to yourself “What else could go wrong? It’s going to be one of those days!” And sure enough, every little trivial thing that can go wrong, does. What would happen if you stopped yourself at the wailing point and said instead “OK, so a couple of things went wrong this morning. The rest of the day will be incredible!” You’ll be surprised at the result.
A belief will prove what it assumes….