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You know the feeling… You are one hundred percent sure you know what is going on… Your perspective is right… And you have all the necessary information to be right… Your reasoning is flawless… “How can anyone see this in any other way?”, you think…
Or you are given some critical feedback… Your boss, your spouse, your employees, your children, or someone else you care about tells you that they are unnecessarily suffering because of something you do, maybe quite habitually… With all good intentions, you try to understand… Try to correct yourself, even…
But you don’t understand… You don’t understand, because you are sure this is an exaggeration… You don’t see yourself acting in the way described, or why it matters so much… Maybe it is just perception… Or maybe they are too sensitive… Or they don’t understand why you have to act this way, and it is for their own good… And how come they do not see all that you do for them?
Then one day, something happens… Something shifts… All of a sudden, you understand why you have been mistaken all along… You see why your thinking was flawed, incomplete, one – sided, or even completely erroneous… You have been unaware of, leaving out, or even avoiding some part of the puzzle, alienating some part of yourself…
Or you suddenly understand what your boss, spouse, employees, or children were trying to tell you all along. You clearly see how you have been acting, and how those actions were hurting them, and even, you. You realize how you have been acting without knowing, out of habit, and maybe as a way of responding to unattended stress or worry or desires.
This realization, first, comes as a surprise, like a shock. Then, you feel pain… Maybe a little shame… Your sense of self-identity may feel a little shattered… Then comes the relief… You don’t have to uphold, defend, support this limiting belief, self – image, pattern, behavior anymore… And you realize how much energy you have been putting in it. You feel the stuckness you were living in, unaware. Having realized, now you have choice. And you realize you actually didn’t have choice before. How could you have, you were acting out of a pattern that had taken you hostage? You realize, now, maybe for the first time for this particular issue, you have the chance to exercise free will…
This realization is what is called Awareness… Awareness of “what is”– as we call it in the Gestalt Center for Coaching – is what makes lasting change possible. Otherwise, we are trying to fit to demands that we don’t understand from inside or outside of ourselves, by trying to change something (ourselves, our actions, our emotions, our thinking) we do not understand either… Only through awareness we can create change, growth, satisfaction, happiness, success… Or meaningful success…Success that feels like success…
Yet awareness is elusive… In the Zen tradition, it is called the “Gateless gate”… Ram Dass says “If you have it, no words are necessary. If you don’t have it, no words are enough”. From this side of awareness, when you are not aware, it does not exist… From the other side, it is so obvious, so clear, so simple, you feel amazed how you couldn’t see it in the first place.
This is why we call our approach “making the obvious, extraordinary“… This phrase refers to this quality of becoming aware. When we make contact with the existential reality, we gain access to all the opportunities, all the potential in the field. It feels extraordinary. And this phrase also refers to our unique approach of facilitating awareness.
This is what we teach in the Gestalt Coaching ProgramTM, and in other programs and workshops offered by the Gestalt Center For Coaching… Our methodology, by helping our clients to pay attention in a directed and open way to their immediate experience of themselves and their environment, facilitates new awareness, fresh insight, and extraordinary opportunities to emerge… This is why our approach has been called both pragmatic and magical… We call it pragmatics of magic.
If you also are interested in becoming aware of and free your potential, and learn how to help others walk the same path by becoming an awareness agent, we invite to inquire, explore and discover our approach. We will be sharing a series of articles outlining our approach to facilitating awareness and our methodology of teaching it in the next few weeks.
We invite you to start a conversation with us to see if we can support you become a coach, a leader, a parent, a human being who utilizes this enlightening and radical power of awareness. We also invite you to explore the Gestalt Coaching Program™ page on our website by clicking here…
Looking forward to see you in next article in this series…