Coaching from Inside out

When coaching clients want to make some life changes, they are more apt to respond to questions and conversations about purpose, calling or meaning.

I have found that much of my coaching soon gets into a life purpose discussion. And that clients who get more clarity about their purpose and unique calling, then make decisions and choices that fit with that new understanding.

As a rule, people are taught how to examine their own lives through the lens of fulfillment.

I ask my clients to probe deeply into their lives – their values, priorities, goals and obstacles to fulfillment.

What is life purpose?

Pat Williams, author of "Becoming a Professional Life Coach", says each of us looks for fulfillment and authentic happiness in our own way. Sometimes the yearning for fulfillment becomes a call so loud and so intense at midlife that we cannot help but step off the path we are on and devote ourselves to the search for fulfillment. As many midlife questions discover, fulfillment often means returning to deep sources of satisfaction that we may have had glimpses of many years ago. At that earlier time, we may have lacked the courage to follow the call, or we may have allowed life stress and serious pursuits to cover up the glimmer of what we know to be true.

This pattern takes place in the lives of so many people because each of us has a life purpose that has, we believe, been with us since we were very young. At moments when we experienced a profound sense of being in the flow – being in the right place, at the right time, using our gifts – we are likely to be living out our life purpose. Life purpose calls us forth. It may be a calling we answer, something larger than our small selves, that deeply connect us with others, with is larger than ourselves.

Many people in the United States and throughout the industrialized nations misguidedly believe that the only way to have what we want is to work hard and long.

There is an alternative: BE who you are first. When you focus on being first, this let you DO what you want to do, which lets you Have what you need. We need to allow ourselves to BE first; the rest will follow. Discovering our life purpose focuses our attention on the essence of who we are – our Be – ing. As some wise person said, if we are designed to be human do-ings, we would have been called that.