How I became myself
So, why coaching? Why didn’t I stick with the well paid, highly regarded and secure jobs in major international corporations?
I get bored. Very easily.
Predictable paths, calculable business models and tactical pulling of political strings in order to broaden one’s power (or that of my boss) didn’t prove to be what makes and keeps me feeling awake and my curiosity alive.
I was no longer able to find a sense in keeping on doing it. So I quit.
My interest in personal development, spiritual practices and the truth beneath the surface had started several years earlier.
I had just barely survived the emotional hurricane of a relationship brake-up and felt that I needed to make a choice: either I would become a misandrist at the age of 30, or I get somebody to help me find another way out of this. And I did. I went to a therapist. What I didn’t realize at that time was, that she didn’t do therapy with me, but she was coaching me. In the most true sense of it.
While I kept talking and whining and complaining in our sessions about how things are and usually occupied 48 out of our 50 minutes together with me feeling sorry for myself, she would ask me questions, more often than not only one. And many times her only question at the end of my litany was: are you sure, that this is how things are? Or could it actually be different?
What happened then, and kept on happening throughout the entire week until our next session, was nothing short of a miracle: my entire inner world, every thing that I was so sure to know how it was and why and that it couldn’t be any different and that’s exactly why I couldn’t feel any different about it, fell apart. Crumbling. Like tons of bricks coming down wall after wall.
A complete deconstruction of everything that had kept my inner structure and sense of the world together.
I actually remember at one point feeling myself sitting on top of that huge mountain of bricks that once had been my inner world and realizing in a flash, that now – only now!! – I had the chance to use those bricks and rebuild my inner world, but this time exactly how I wanted it. And how it would serve me best.
What a liberation! Nothing was preset!
I got to choose what beliefs I wanted to follow and what my view on the outside world and all of its inhabitants would be. Including those that hurt me and those that didn’t want me.
And I had to. Without choosing over and over and over again – until today! – a part of my world will remain uninhabited, dis-owned by me. It would be swayed by drifts and winds around me, putting me back into states of only doing what others thought was right or what society agreed upon.
So, was this the end? Was I liberated and free from all entanglements and unresolved matters?
Far from it!
It was the beginning.
At that point in my life I realized two things:
Firstly, THIS is addictive! I simply can’t stop digging, exploring, uncovering, sourcing and getting to deeper and more hidden layers. It’s so organic, that even though there were rules and structures that I discovered over time, everything kept moving and morphing endlessly, making it the most fascinating thing that I had ever come across. And it hasn’t stopped!
Secondly, I realized that without even noticing, I had started to ask all my friends the very same questions that my coach had used, whenever they were in trouble and telling me. I also quickly found out, that I didn’t have any difficulty perceiving what they felt inside, even on much deeper levels, often enough before they had become aware of it themselves.
Next I realized that I had the knowing, the sense of how to get them to feel theses things and how to provide a space and a holding for them that allowed them to feel safe and held to engage that spark for self-exploration.
I remember when I first saw the change of expression in their faces, how their eyes suddenly started to shine and how their whole being lit up when they too discovered, that they’re not victim to whatever happens to them, but that, not matter what the outside world throws at them, they themselves get to decide how to deal with it. And that only because something hurts, that doesn’t mean that they lost all their power over how they will deal with the experience.
It was then, that I knew, that THIS was what I will be doing for a living some day! Little did I know at that time, that it would be sooner than I thought.
And today, where am I today?
Still exploring. Myself and others. Deeper than ever.
Over the years, having tried out a vast number of techniques, some of them supporting my approach, some of them proving to be no valuable addition.
I have found the school and the set of techniques that I feel at home with more than with anything before. They represent everything that I was doing all along without me knowing it. And I’ll keep diving deeper into them.
Am I “done”? Did I reach my goal? Hell no!
And if I thought I was, that in itself would be proof that I had been on the wrong track all along. Because it’s not about “being done” and “having it all figured out”. It’s about more. More of being alive. More of being awake. More expansion. More of being real. More INNER TRUTH.
Who would want THAT to end?!