Coaching 6, Part 1, Coachee

My coach and I discussed the empathic listening exercise we engaged in this week. I chose to have a discussion with my mom, who I am only able to have good discussions with because I intentionally keep the subject matter away from certain topics, mainly religion and politics. I decided to explore option 1 of the coaching assignments and talk to my mom using empathic listening. Alongside our good and functional relationship, I view her as highly judgmental and have subconsciously used that as justification to judge her. This made her a good partner for empathic listening.

I knew that in order to get beyond the minutia of regular small talk I would need to listen for an opportunity. Eventually, an opportunity did arise that I did not facilitate in any way, but I was able to catch it. I used it to gently test the waters of a conversation about religion. My experience in 616 so far has shown me that I need to know where someone else is before I can meet them for possible phase III / IV dialogue. I continued to listen empathically, and when I spoke it felt like I was stepping just behind her and giving her a gentle nudge forward. I took empathic listening, I think, to know where to orient myself for that nudge. I'd be kidding myself if I didn't admit to using some misdirection as well. The conversation when well for being one that tested the borders of topics we usually don't discuss.

My coach was happy to hear that I am trying to be more of my genuine self around my mom. My mom has come up a lot in our conversations, and my coach reminded me of things I have said in the past that belied even the slight progress that has been made. Without her assessment I probably would not have realized how far I have come in conversing authentically with my mom. I feel now that there is a whole new place to explore, and I think I'll start by reassessing how I charge the container when my mom and I begin to converse.

Coaching 5, Post 2, Coachee

I shared most of my stream of consciousness writing with my coach this week. She said that she felt like I really shared a lot of myself, and we agreed that was good for our communication and coaching relationship. We discussed the things our stream of consciousness writings had in common, which led to a fun discussion about the ways we are perceiving this class. Personal growth is an experience we are both having in this course, to include mindfulness and deliberation in our thinking, speaking and acting. We also concluded that the course should end on on top of a mountain during sunrise.

Here are some parts of my stream of consciousness writing.

My highest future potential self helps others be their highest future potential selves. I want to turn down the volume on other people’s problems or make them help them see how capable they are and that they can just be themselves without any boundaries. I am obsessed with new experiences and sensory inputs. This is person, I am a person, my future person is a person who makes people happy with themselves, not necessarily happy with me but happy with their own being in their own situation. Maybe I help them achieve something great but I don’t know about that. More I just want people to like themselves enough to want ot help other people like themselves. Ultimately it’s selfish I suppose because I just want people to be nice to me and people are nicer when they are more fully realized. I want people to see a world where anyone can be anything. I want people to see that we are a species meant to live lives of hobbies and passions, for these are the things that matter BECAUSE THEY MATTER TO US. No one has to tell us to do the things we enjoy, yet so many people are kept from doing the things they enjoy by circumstance. I am at alignment with this version of myself when I perform and people laugh. When someone thanks me for doing something I would have done anyway I feel very good about myself because I know I am helping. The validation is nice, but knowing that I helped someone be a better person is the real meat of why I like to hear what people think about what I do. I want to help someone love themself. That’s what I want. I want to show people what is beautiful about them so they can love themself. I have been told that I, sometimes to a fault, see only the best in people, or see them how they see themselves. This is acutally very intentional on my part for two reasons. First, I want to affirm other people’s positive and healthy perceptions of themselves so thay they like themselves. Second, I want to fill my reality with awesome people. If people are not hurting me or actively making my experience painful, what is the harm in seeing them as only the best versions of themselves? It’s quite fun actually. I suppose I want to create art that helps people empathize. That’s quite a ways away from helping people love themselves, but not really. I want to inspire people to put their personalities and physiologies out into the world. I want us all to “plug in” to each other and experience our personalities and physiologies fully. I want people to feel, but not in a selfish sense. I want to connect the kind of emotions that come from art TO THE REAL WORLD. I want to turn on people’s empathy. I want to use VR to promote empathy and theory of mind. 

Coaching 5, Post 1, Coach

My coachee's post nature walk stream of conscious writing had many of the same elements as mine. Ideas and intentions ranged from theoretical and metaphysical quandaries to very concrete visions of potential futures. We both found it fun when ephemeral talk of the creative self would circle around and into a very specific future action or vision of our reality. We both experienced genuine clarity throughout the exercise.

My coachee and I have come to a conclusion about using Dialogue in our real lives. Many of our conversations revolve around personal relationships, though professional interactions also come up. I think personal relationships stay in our focus because those relationships are made up of the individuals more permanently in our lives. Because of that, we seek to connect, through Dialogue, with them more passionately than we desire to see change in those we interact with professionally. My coachee and I share this perception, and probably have similar ratios of personal / professional life investment.

When trying to move into Generative Dialogue with people in our lives, we have realized that we have to listen to them to see where they are and meet them their. This seems like obvious "week 2" stuff in Dialogue, but when interaction happens with someone who is very, very, very, very far way from us in terms of Dialogue, it can seem almost too ridiculous for reality to consider how far from us (people with Dialogue) the space for Generative Dialogue is. The size of the gap feels like "week 12" stuff. It is many "miles" across a chasm, and the best thing that can be hoped for - in a single series of interactions - is moving that Generative space a few inches towards the middle. This realization is a beautiful tragedy...making engagement in Dialogue as much of a responsibility as it is a pleasant virtue.

Coaching 3 - Meditation and Awareness

Tuesday: Body

            Looking back, after doing mindfulness meditation, I realize that my body experience was informative, but no necessarily in the way intended. As a warm-up I think it was still effective though. I was very aware of the way everything touched, and I tried to make texture my primary information source outside of the ever-dominating sight. For some reason I interpreted “body” as “skin, muscle and bone.” I did not take notice of my other senses the way I focused on touch. The lined fake leather of my steering wheel, the difference in temperature between fingers when holding an iced drink – I noticed I grind my teeth sometimes for comfort. The pressure feels good. I was much more touchy with my environment as well, allowing my forearms to rest on pieces of gym equipment at work, touching my clients a bit more often than usual, pushing my leg up against a tree to feel bark against my skin. Overall I became more aware of my environment and more free in pursuing a tactile experience, but I did not notice myself noticing these things, I just noticed them. I’m excited to isolate other senses besides sight in the days to come. I suspect that paying attention to the senses in isolation will add up to paying attention to the whole body. I meditated for the first time in over a decade on Tuesday night and it created about 3hrs of profound experience, directly applicable to the class I think.

Wednesday: Breath

            Wednesday was a study day and I only left my apartment to go to class. Sitting at my desk for most of the day, I periodically would notice my breathing, forget about it, and notice it again. It reminded me of trying to maintain good posture while typing. The mindfulness youtube video that I have become enamored with also mentioned breath, but was unique in that it put breath on an even plane with the other senses regarding isolation and awareness. Even sight was addressed in this particular video. I think I had my first “notice what I’m noticing” moment when I switched from my breath to my hearing. I am naturally attuned to hear music and investigate what I like when I’m watching tv or a movie, in a grocery store or mall, anywhere really. It’s how I find new music. Shazaam. Because I do this already, when I tuned into my hearing, I noticed that I was doing it, and a light came on. I felt like my meditative experience from the night before and my daily experience found something in common with each other. I also noticed that I primarily breath through my nose. I intend to make note that this is not something other people can hear, because I've always found that gross when others do it. 

Thursday: Emotions

            Noticing my emotions on Thursday was very difficult. Rather than the mindful experience I have had lately that seems to prod me to continually step back from my thoughts and emotions, the best I was able to accomplish were various realizations that my emotions were dominating my experience. In some cases, they even briefly controlled my behavior. Someone that works for me let me down in a professional experiment at work. I found out about this just after being informed that my work day was going to end at 6pm, rather than the 2pm I had been anticipating.  I was managing the negativity of the unexpected long day fairly well, but when I got the text informing me that my employee had screwed up, and was unwilling to own up to it on top of that, things did not go well. When I called her, I managed to pull of a quick disclaimer before asking some very pointed questions about her preparation and performance.  After we got off the phone I called her back and apologized for being so upset and laid out a few very specific steps we are going to take together in order to help her performance. I did realize in the moment that predictions I was making about her intent and motivation were based completely on conjecture. I learned a lot monitoring my emotions but it was through a crisis experience.

Friday: Thoughts

            When I read this exercise, I assumed that stepping back from thoughts would be easier than stepping back from emotions. Emotions seem so much more powerful, and I think that is why they are actually easier to observe. Thoughts are so frequent and so often happen without any real consequence that it’s pretty hard to notice them unless you are meditating. I did have a helpful combination of emotional and thought awareness that led to a good decision. I was booked on a  comedy show that no one showed up to. By no one I mean two audience members showed up. Six comedians were present, a host and five performers. Without getting into the hows and whys, I realized that the booker was not going to make sure the comedians weren’t gong to hold the two audience members hostage for a show that was going to go on way too long. The show started at 8pm, and by 9pm only 2 comedians had performed. Any hope I had of getting anything productive out of the experience was gone. There was no energy left in the room and the host came back on stage to masturbate in front of the two audience members, completely disrespecting their politeness in hanging out while comics interviewed them and made inside jokes. I noticed my thoughts first, as I was imagining telling the booker to get control of the show and shorten it significantly. This was a non-functional idea, and then I noticed it was coming from an emotion of anger and disappointment. I sat back from the emotions and thoughts and calmly informed the booker and a few of the comics that I had to leave.

Coachee Meeting 2

Meeting with Coach

            Kate and I discussed the various conversational roles I sought to explore during the week.  I shared that I am most comfortable as a mover and bystander, using the latter to facilitate the former. So during the week I tried out being a follower and an opposer.

            Kate helped me see that during my attempt at being an opposer, I had failed to properly charge the container. Going into the conversation I had assumed that the relationship I had with the person was enough charge to create a productive, or at least functional, charge, but I had been mistaken. Kate encouraged me to take more care in that regard, especially when opposing in field 2.

            We also discussed my interpretation of following. I have to admit, my take on it was neither what Olen or Kate laid out as a productive form of following. In class online, Olen mentioned that following is a way to open doors in conversation, and Kate shared how she uses following as a way to close out a topic in a conversation so the discussion can move forward. I had interpreted following as offering validation to others within the dialogue. I think now that there is room for all three interpretations, and an awareness of what is happening within individuals, as well as in between them, is key to knowing how to apply followership in a given moment. I’m very glad for both Olen’s and Kate’s contribution to my understanding because my view of it was quite limited.

Coach Meeting 2

Meeting with Coachee

            Lauren and I met and to discuss the various conversations we had engaged in during the week. She mentioned a recent conversation where she had been acting as an opposer and mover, yet for the majority of that conversation, things did not seem to be going in a productive direction. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the person she was debating with (she was in field 2) suddenly became agreeable and the dialogue moved on to field 3. She was unsure of how exactly this happened.

            This opened up a new discussion between us about mindfulness throughout dialogue. I shared with her a similar experience I had years ago and how my reflection on that experience continues to this day. There were certainly implications towards the proprioception of mind we have been discussing in class. We then talked about the difficulty in maintaining awareness of what’s going on with one’s internal self while recognizing what’s happening internally in those we engage in dialogue with.

            This led into a conversation about being aware of emotional states, and how they are often the steering force in a conversation. A dialogue artist’s emotional state was recognized as a key element in charging the container, especially regarding safety.

            We closed with a look at our own roles as coach and coachee. Lauren if very willing to be vulnerable in our discussions, which is very helpful, and she mentioned that I am good at asking probing questions. It seems our styles create a productive dialectic.