1. If you had come more from the heart what might unfold differently?
The impact of coaching often comes from thought-provoking, surprising and powerful questions that evoke insights, give you fresh perspectives and make you think in new dimensions.
I often leave my clients with questions at the end of a session. I ask them to take it with themselves and keep it in their awareness until the next call. The point is not just finding answers, rather staying in the question.
The exciting part is what comes up when you really chew on a question and what happens if you allow the inquiry go beyond your mind and wash through your heart and spirit.
2. What do you hear when you listen with new ears?
Listen to what you might not know, what you haven't heard before.
Self-awareness is a key skill to live a more meaningful life, become a better leader or navigate the daily challenges of your various roles at work and at home. By increasing your awareness you explore blind sides and become ore familiar with your inner territory.
As a coach, I'm often approached by clients wanting to communicate better, to be heard and listened to by their co-workers, co-founders and partners in their relationships. Both learning tools (like non-violent communication by Marshall Rosenberg), and bringing a different communication approach can make a difference.
If you're approaching your conversations with thoughts like
"I've heard this before" or "This sounds familiar" or you're already articulating what you want to say instead of openly listening to the other party, this one is for you.
The next time you enter a conversation, listen with your new ears.
Photo: Own, Zugspitze at 2,962 metres, on the top of Germany
3. How could you bring freshness to this moment?
Living fully is to see each moment as new, to experience it as completely fresh. This is what's also referred to as the beginner's mind: dropping our expectations and preconceived ideas about something, and seeing things with an open mind and fresh eyes.
Are you experiencing frictions at work? Are your struggling with painful disagreements? Have you been lacking joy with your team lately?
Switch to your beginner's mind and bring freshness to your next moment.
This question was inspired by Pema Chodron, the great Buddhist Teacher. This one is from her book, When things fall apart, a wonderful read on compassion and how to deal with challenging situations and our own imperfectness.
4. When do you need to move and when do you need to rest and pause?
Knowing when to move and when to rest is an art. If you involve too much movement, you end up burned out. If you're staying long in inactivity, you feel stuck.
We're constantly balancing between the two and the ideal ratio can change depending on your current life situation, the actual season, and individual attributes.
The are many ways how you can influence this balance. You can work less hours or take more actions, move your body or take more rest, eat foods that have literally spice you up, or calming meals that do the opposite, practice yoga poses that support the desired direction, adjust the quality and quantity of your speech, travel vs. reduce your trips and so on.
It's particularly timely if you're navigating a transition. If you want to speed things up to avoid being in the in-between, consider what if you stayed in the unknown for a little while. If you're taking an overwhelmingly long pause and you're falling out from progress: what would bring you back into the flow?
5. What do you feel in your bones?
What if intuition was a place? Simply a place that we go to, like memory, that provides us with an answer? Where this place would be for you? Where would you go if you wanted to visit it?
Intuition can show up in unexpected ways. It can be a nudge, a hunch, a gut feeling, a physical sensation, or it might appear as a visual image or an unexplained shift in emotion or energy.
The important thing is to remember to be open to it: trusting it, being aware of it, and creating your own interpretation freely.
Intuition has its role in coaching: both the coach and client can bring it up to deepen the learning, bring fresh insights and move the client toward action. It's irrelevant, wether your intuition was correct, as long as it moves your forward.
Do you want to experience the power of questions in a coaching conversation? Book an intro call to get started.