Top Ten Tips for Living your Best Life
A magazine recently asked me if I would contribute to an article they were writing. Inviting me as an ontological coach, they wanted to know what top ten tips I’d share with my best friend. What had I learnt on my coaching journey that I considered to be the most helpful and easily applicable life skills?
Apart from being thrilled at the invitation, I was initially also slightly concerned because ontological coaching is not about giving advice or tips, but rather about enabling people to observe themselves and the world in a way that allows them to be as resourceful as possible.
Could the cornerstones of ontological coaching be translated into ten ‘top tips’? Having given it a go, I now believe they can be. Below is an expanded version of what I wrote for the magazine. These are what I consider to be the most useful and eye-opening things that I’ve learnt as a coach and which I believe could enable people to be their own best resource.
Photo credit: Si Glogiewicz
Remember that nobody can make you do or feel anything
Nor, sadly, can you make anyone do or feel anything either. Wouldn’t life be easy if we could?! The good news about this is that how we choose to respond to other people and situations is up to us. This is because we are all effectively ‘closed systems’ - the way we make sense of the world depends on how we’ve learned to be (through things like experience and culture). What this means is that we are in control of how we respond or feel and can therefore learn to choose the types of responses or feelings that will be most helpful for us. I think Eleanor Roosevelt captured this notion best when she said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Question: What unhelpful response in your life might you be blaming on someone else rather than claiming as your own? What interpretation would serve you better?
You can’t change what you don’t notice
In order to explain this one, let me share one way of looking at what it is to ‘be’ human. As people, the way we are in the world and how we ‘show up’ happens in three areas of existence:
Language
We are born into language and cannot not be in language. Language includes our thoughts, our spoken conversations and our listening to the world. Using language is how we coordinate our lives.
Emotions
As much as some people prefer to think they don’t have emotions, we are all emotional beings. Emotions are physical processes that have a direct influence on how we think and how we behave.
Our bodies
Everything that we’ve experienced and learnt in our lives, including how see the world and our place in it, is held in our bodies. The way we ‘show up’ in the world for other people also depends to a large extent on our physical way of being. As a result, our bodies are powerful resources for supporting us in the way we want to be.
My hot tip relating to all of this? Start to notice as much of your way of being as you can. Try to notice what’s happening with your thoughts, your emotions and your body, especially in moments where you feel challenged. This way, the feeling no longer “has you”. Rather, you “have it”. By observing and describing what’s happening you are able to be more objective and less at the mercy of the emotion.
Question: Can you see how starting to notice is the first step in making a change, because you can’t change what you’re not aware of?
Remember that your words become your future
There’s a saying credited to Lao Tzu that encapsulates this concept beautifully:
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
In other words, the language we use brings about a particular future. Or said in another way, our language can sentence us to a particular reality. Following on from this, can you see how, by consciously starting to change the words you use, you can unlock new possibilities?
Question: Is there something troubling you at the moment? What words do you use when you describe it? How are these words impacting this issue? And what different words might unlock new possibilities?
Listen in order to improve your communication
Communication is as much about listening as it is about speaking. We tend to get hung up on how effectively we are speaking, when it’s now widely recognized that the meaning of a message depends more on how it’s heard rather than how it is spoken. This is due to the fact that we all have different ways of interpreting the world and what we hear. I might say one thing and assume you will hear what I think I’m saying, when in reality, you take an entirely different message from it. By way of example, what do you think of when I say ‘viper dance’? It’s likely that everyone reading this will think of something completely different. So too when we’re going about our daily business. Even if we speak the same language or lingo, our individual experiences (actual events and the emotions attached to those events) mean that we all have different ‘listenings’ of things.
Question: Is there a relationship in your life that could be improved through your listening more carefully? What difference do you think checking that you’re being heard as you intend would make?
Never be afraid of learning something new
People can often confuse not know something (or not knowing how to do something) with not being ‘good enough’. We can connect ‘not knowing’ with indicating some inadequacy, even a fundamental flaw, about us as a person. In reality, the two are not linked. Being a learner simply means that you do not know about something or how to do something in a particular area of your life. Interestingly, the first step in learning anything is being able to declare that you don’t know. And here’s a thought - a true master is someone who’s proficient at something but never stops learning and advancing in their field.
Question: How do you think recognising this will make a difference to how you engage with your next learning opportunity?
Don’t take it personally
What people think of us says more about them than it does about us. You may have heard this said before, but have you ever thought about why this is so? It’s simply because people see the world according to how they are, not how it really is. We tend to project our values onto the world - these values are like a lens that influences the way we see things. For example, if I think a table is beautiful and you think the same table is ugly, our opinions say more about our respective values and world views than they do about the actual table. Following on from this, it’s often easy to forget that someone’s opinion of us or a situation doesn’t make it ‘the truth’. We can give authority to others by unconsciously confusing their opinions with the truth, rather than seeing that it is just one viewpoint. That’s not to say that someone’s opinion might not be a great opportunity for learning and growth. It simply means that by remaining clear on what are just other people’s opinions, we can choose whether we want to pay attention to those opinions or not.
Questions: Who might you have given to much power away to by confusing their opinions with ‘the truth’? What difference does being able to see this mean for you?
See disagreement as an opportunity to deepen a relationship*
We are biologically wired to avoid disagreement. In fact, so much so, that some people even find disagreement physically painful. The problem with this is that we make a virtue of agreeing and in the process, compromise. This often happens at the expense of great ideas. The trick? Don’t focus on the conflict, but wonder instead at how it is that someone else can have an opinion that’s so different to yours? If you approach your differences in a curious way and listen to the other person to learn, you open up the possibility of learning something new and creating something even better than you might have imagined.
Question: Is there a conflict in your life where you could start to play with this and practice a different way of being?
Remember that we’re not always right*
This is because most of us believe, most of the time, that we are right. Interestingly, the same the part of the brain becomes activated when we recall a true fact versus when we believe we’re recalling a true fact (but actually aren’t). In order to overcome this human habit, learn to connect with that feeling of certainty that screams, “I’m right”. Whenever you feel it, pause and ask yourself the questions below.
Questions: What do I believe and how might I be wrong? What three other possibilities might there be here?
Be the change you want to see*
As a leadership coach I often hear clients saying things like, “I get it and I can change, but you should see the organisation I work in - they won’t” or “even if I change, my husband won’t”. This is when I share the notion that any system (for example, a business or a family) is the sum of its parts, and if a system has a particular culture then one way to start changing that culture is to role model what you would like the culture to be. An example of this is in a culture where people are scared to ask questions in case they say the wrong thing and look stupid, is to maybe commit to asking one question per meeting in which you allow yourself to be vulnerable. Or, in an office where everyone normally gossips negatively in the kitchen after each review meeting, commit privately to saying only positive things after every review instead. These are the sorts of things you can do to be the change the want to see.
Questions: What system are you a part of that you don’t like or agree with? And what changes can you begin to implement to start being the change you want to see?
Have fun!
As an ontological coach, I know how much emotions influence the way we think and behave. What you see as possible in one mood, won’t be possible in another mood. A mood of anxiety predisposes us to want to hide and not engage, for example, whereas moods of curiosity, wonder and fun foster creative thinking and bring out the best in people. Try it sometime - see how the people around you glow and grow, and see if you can see the difference in how you think and what you bring about as a result of shifting your mood.
Questions: What area of your life could benefit from a more playful or curious mood? What difference do you think this will make for you and the people around you?
If you’d like to explore the concepts in this article more deeply and in relation to your own life, why not consider some coaching? You can read more about me and the work that I do here.
Or if you prefer, let’s start a conversation: hello@claudiaboerscoaching.com
Note:
* Points 7, 8 and 9 are drawn from the ‘Leadership Mindtraps’ framework developed by leadership consultant Jennifer Garvey Berger. You can read more about her and her amazing work here: cultivating leadership.com
All the remaining points are distilled from the beautiful teachings of ontological and leadership expert, Alan Sieler of the Newfield Institute.