Portrait of a Soul Stance
{ The Coach
Much of the personal development industry is about setting goals, making plans, and then beating and berating yourself into submission to the plan (after plan after plan after plan).
This approach assumes that we've determined point "A" accurately, that we understand our strengths and limits, and that we comprehend both the cause of our struggles and the underlying reasons for our desired goals. In short, most plans assume a lot more self-awareness than we really have.
The Coach Stance is less about charting a course with specific plans, and more about finding the big red YOU ARE HERE arrow on the map of your life.
It helps you see what you know and what you don't, where you're really strong and where you're merely powering through on your way to burnout. It seeks to understand the deepest why behind your goals and desires and to improve that why.
Once you know where you are and why, folding all of your desired destinations into a cohesive itinerary for progress is much easier.
Through perspective, this Stance helps you transition from conscious or unconscious confusion to insight by broadening and deepening your awareness. Above all, The Coach is a purveyor of possibility. Look for your inner Compassionate Mentor who sees you in all of your glorious potential (as only you really can). Through self-leadership, she’ll show you the shortcuts and steer you clear of the potholes, cheering you forward and pushing you to correct course when you begin to slip.
You’re seeking to embody shrewd management that sees the parts within a whole.
The Coach Stance Virtue Summary. These are the character traits and virtues that you need to use and develop for successful self-leadership.
Flexibility of soul. Less rigor, more spontaneity and flow.
The Humility of Curiosity. This combination overcomes apathy and complacency.
Patient Service. While you’re learning about you, remember it’s not about you.
Restraint to clear purpose. Wander...with intention.
Courageous Discernment. Open to new ideas and consider them carefully. Baby and bath water. Meat and bones. You get the picture. On the other side, stop wholesale swallowing the party-lines of your spiritual tribe. If you doubt something or don't really understand it then get honest about it before it becomes a problem. (And it will. And when it does, see you in the Counselor Stance.)
Ingenuity: Put on your manager hat. You can solve problems if you know the right parts to consider. Sometimes solving problems means asking for help, but you need to know what you need, ya know?
Attentiveness. Become a student of you.
This stance is not like other personal growth self-leadership paradigms that are hard, conquering, and goal-oriented. It's rather characterized by intentional curiosity about the nature of things, by openness, dot-connecting, and looking for the relationships between all things.
It’s a stance that chooses to care enough to look, and really to see what is. It’s wide open to possibility, intuition, and appreciation.
On the other side, it’s decidedly closed to blind assumption, superstition, willful ignorance, prejudice, and random experimentation.
This stance is looking for the rare combination of what is real, inclusive, beautiful, logical, and magical, all at the same time. Hard to find? Sometimes, but oh-so-worth-it and life-shifting when you do.