| The unitive coaching approach that I've developed | | | | therefore don't experience any conflict. But we poor |
| uses an entirely non-directive one-to-one tutorial format | | | | mortals are down here among the Beasts, who rut |
| to establish a creative co-operation between client and | | | | and consume and slaughter in their imperative need to |
| coach. It works by encouraging the development of | | | | survive. We alone among the beasts are conscious of |
| each client's innate self-awareness and uniquely | | | | our mortality, but still we aspire to join the angels. And |
| personal mode of expression. Instead of asking leading | | | | like it or not, that is the situation in which we find |
| questions aimed at some pre-conceived 'solution' or | | | | ourselves. In other words, the human condition. |
| imagined goal, the unitive approach acts as a mirror, | | | | This brings me to the essential aim of the unitive |
| reflecting the potential power and innate authenticity of | | | | approach to personal coaching. The first thing the |
| each individual back to its source. In this way, clients | | | | unitive coach needs to do, is to dis-engage his work |
| are enabled to provide solutions to their own problems. | | | | from the attachments of his egotistical needs. To be |
| By realizing new and lasting insights into their own | | | | really effective, anyone who assumes the role of |
| internal process, they make the necessary changes | | | | coach needs to realise that what clients are seeking is |
| they will need to transform their lives. | | | | not the person of the coach as such, but what the |
| My unitive approach is fundamentally different from | | | | coaching role represents to them. The coach is in fact |
| 'directive', that is, cognitively-based coaching, which sets | | | | nothing but a screen on which they can, and do, |
| out to influence and re-train people by the application | | | | project the missing entities that although they exist |
| of prescribed and goal-oriented programs of varying | | | | subjectively as perfect images in their internal yearning, |
| quality, made up of boxed sets of hard-and-fast | | | | can only be seen in their full glory when projected on |
| techniques. It's also very different to that of | | | | to the physical actuality of another human being in the |
| psychotherapy and counsellings. What the unitive | | | | real world. It's a process of falling in love, certainly, but |
| coaching tutorial programs does, and does most | | | | the object of adoration is nothing else than a projection |
| effectively, is to facilitate the self-liberating insight that | | | | of that aspect of the Self with a capital S which they |
| all our personal problems have no actual existence in | | | | imagine has rejected them in the past because of their |
| real life but stem from the acquired and illusory ways | | | | own inevitable failure to achieve perfection. It's only if |
| in which we have learned to perceive it. | | | | and when the realization dawns that the Self is not a |
| It's fashionable these days to talk about | | | | hanging judge who weighs us in the balance and finds |
| self-awareness. But the word 'self' can refer to two | | | | us wanting, but a redeeming vision of perfect truth that |
| entirely different entities. First, there is the self with a | | | | understands every aspect of our human - and |
| small 's' - in other words, the Ego, the Great Pretender, | | | | therefore, by definition, imperfect - nature and accepts |
| which tries to deny its basic feeling of insecurity by | | | | us totally, as we really are - that we can at last begin |
| setting itself lifestyle goals that are way beyond its | | | | to live comfortably in our own skin. |
| power to attain. At the other end of the spectrum, | | | | The unitive coaching process is a de-structuring of |
| shining in all its transcendent glory, is the ideal self - the | | | | negative conditioning acquired in the past. All our |
| Self with a capital S - the symbol of perfect being. | | | | problems - all our negative, guilty feelings about own |
| Although we instinctively yearn for those aspects of | | | | supposed inadequacies - are self-inflicted. When we |
| perfect acceptance we need in order to become | | | | stop giving ourselves a bad time, we'll find that others |
| whole, we fail to realise that the perfect love, the | | | | will take the hint and follow suit. The loving compassion |
| unconditional acceptance we crave is not out there in | | | | that we crave is part of our human inheritance: has |
| the physical world, but within. Oscar Wilde said that we | | | | always been within ourselves. How else could we |
| are all lying in the gutter but looking up at the stars. Up | | | | recognize it? We can do ourselves a favour and stop |
| there, high above us and out of reach, are the Angels | | | | trying to change ourselves for the better - for a |
| that we strive so hard to emulate. It's easy for the | | | | change! There's no need to get better. We're OK as |
| Angels to be angelic. Because they have no problems, | | | | we are. There's nobody out there with the power to |
| no desires, no temptations, no life-or-death issues, they | | | | tell us otherwise. |