Demo session 8: Planning for the week to come
A coach or therapist can help you make sense of your own inner world, but you’re the only person who can make the choice to pay attention. In this final moment in our demonstration, “Michelle” and I negotiate a daily practice of internal inquiry that feels doable for her. Do you think she’ll do it?
The real magic of partswork happens between coaching sessions, as my clients get in touch with their own internal communities. At the end of every session, I help my client choose a specific way to stay in touch with their inner world, every single day, until we see each other again.
Since this is my first session with “Michelle” (Alysa Haas), I’m introducing the notion of daily inner work for the first time — and I suggest doing just a tiny bit of inner inquiry every day, no more than a minute at a time. Even so, parts of “Michelle” are very skeptical about the idea.
“MICHELLE”: I’m 85% on board. That sounds good.
ASH: Tell me about the 15% that’s not on board.
“MICHELLE:” Oftentimes when there’s something like this, like “you should do self-care,” I don’t want to do it. Or … I do it and then I fail, and then I feel even worse about myself, you know? So I’m skeptical about making promises that I usually don’t keep.
ASH: Makes perfect sense. So with respect to the … “self-care”: great news, this is not that. You’re a reporter, right? You’re a journalist, yes?
“MICHELLE”: Yes.
ASH: This is inquiry, this is reporting. Think of it that way.
“MICHELLE”: I do like that.
ASH: So for 60 seconds, just report. Just pay attention.
“Michelle” leaves the session not entirely convinced of the utility of this practice — in fact, she’s pretty sure that she’s not going to do it. Experience tells me otherwise. What do you think?
Thank you Alysa!
At the end of this demonstration session, I am just incandescent with gratitude to my friend and colleague Alysa D. Haas, whose idea it was to make this video, and whose remarkable performance as “Michelle” made me a better coach than I was when we started. I hope we can work together again some day soon!
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