Last year I did some coaching with a great guy in his 20s who was hungering for more fulfillment in his work. He had a creative background and an entrepreneurial streak but had taken a job in a conventional field, and he was finding it unrewarding.
I received an inspiring email from him today:
In our last conversation I mentioned a quirky little idea about a...business I thought would be fun to start, and you encouraged me to listen to that little voice. Well, I did, and regardless of whether it works out or not, I have learned more about myself, about working with others, and I believe about business, than I could have imagined learning any other way.
Words to live by--we should all be so appreciative of opportunities to learn. And reading them suggests a simple definition of coaching: Helping people listen to themselves. I'm gratified that I was able to play a helpful role in his transition, but my most important contribution was simply noting that I heard a certain passion in his voice when he talked about this venture and encouraging him to listen to it.
It makes me wonder about all the things we say to ourselves every day and fail to hear.
Photo by runfreefall. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.
Thank you for this post. In the last six months I have begun listening to myself - and it has transformed my life. For the past few years, I had been searching outside for answers about what I should be doing with my life (inspired by Gandhi's quote 'it's not that our problems are too big, it's that they are not big enough'). It is only when I started listening to myself, connecting to myself, that the answers suddenly became obvious, they had been there all along. I refer to the George Orwell quote 'outraging our true nature' in my blog post and I think that is what so many of us do when we don't listen to ourselves.http://thefiver.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/why-i-write/
Posted by: Olivia Sprinkel | Apr 20, 2009 at 05:39 AM