Through my coaching learning, I have been struggling with clients living in victim mode, it was very difficult for me to understand their perspective of the world. I kept on asking myself: what determines our attitude towards life? What make us look at the glass half full instead of half empty?
An insight came to me recently and this is what I would like to share with you. During a module around conflict, I realised that my shadow was a warrior. I knew I had an achiever attitude, I knew that I was always on a mission, passionate and a hard worker and I also knew that my pattern was to drive myself to a burnout. But for the first time, my ‘warrior’ shadow stood out in front of me. For the first time I was looking at my warrior and separating myself from him, he wasn’t my identity anymore. He was big, strong and handsome ( yes, he is a man 😉 ) but looked so tired and all what I could hear him saying is that he always wanted to protect me since I was a child. I believed my warrior was there always to protect me but I also showed him that I was an adult now and that I can look after myself. I spoke my warrior into reality and showed him my life. I can relax into my life today, I don’t have to be on a mission or conquer the world every single day and I said to my warrior that maybe he need to rest to be there for me when needed and not always be on his guards!
My warrior within was ‘the skin’ I would wear to protect myself from the world. Suddenly I understood why I would feel a discomfort coaching clients in a victim mode, I was a warrior, a warrior can’t relate to victims….but suddenly the shield fell and I could sit in my clients shoes and understand that we were exactly the same, the only difference is that we chose different ‘skins’ to protect us. This learning opened doors of more acceptance and connectivity for me, knowing that I can share my insight with my clients, making them aware that their shadow is not them, the mood they are in is not them, that they can change of skin if they want and be who they want to be in the world.
So my thinking took me further and I started to wonder what are the different skins we wear as human beings to protect ourselves and a scary range came to my mind:
our overweight can protect us from showing our wounds, our cold behaviours can protect us from being seen vulnerable, our strong image can protect us from showing our insecurities, our doing and busyness can protect us from being, our careless attitude can protect from showing our sensitivity and so more….our protection instinct wear so many different skins to save our egos but mainly to separate us from others.
What about stopping for a moment, scanning our life and asking:
What is the skin that we are wearing to show up in the world and in our daily life?
What about acknowledging our protective skin, give it a name and ask ourselves:
• What are we protecting ourself from?
• How is this protective skin serving us today in your life?
• Is that protective skin still necessary?
• How is it serving us to relate and be connected to others?
In my coaching sessions today, I make a conscious choice to hang my warrior skin on the hanger and invite my client to do the same in order to create a transparent space where neither of us has to protect himself.
Does that mean that one day we will all show up transparent in our purity with no need to protect ourselves? This is where my French saying comes in ‘ l’espoir fait vivre’ which means ‘ hope makes you live longer’ and yes something says to me in the depth of my heart that with our increasing coaching profession a contagion of awareness, consciousness and healthy choices will emerge.
This article was originally published here, on Comensa.org.za.