Cultivate your next "Aha!" moment
Have you ever experienced a moment of insight? It can happen any time, when pieces of information come together with personal experience to create what feels like a lightbulb turning on in your brain.
Did you know you can cultivate these moments for yourself? The science behind coaching explains how to make this possible. Transformative coaching has roots in cognitive behavioural science, and has applications across a variety of areas, for example: managing chronic diseases, career development, and personal growth. There are certain foundational elements that underpin coaching and form the core of the coaching process. They remain the same, regardless of the area of application.
Guided Discovery
DIMITRI: Something’s been bothering me lately, Tasso.
TASSO: What’s that?
DIMITRI: What is the meaning of it all?
TASSO: All what?
DIMITRI: You know, life, death, love — the whole stuffed grape leaf.
TASSO: What makes you think any of it has any meaning?
DIMITRI: Because it has to. Otherwise life would just be…
TASSO: What?
DIMITRI: I need an ouzo.— Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein, Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar.
The first foundational element is Guided Discovery. The guided discovery process uses Socratic Questioning principles to uncover the true causes of complex issues or behaviour patterns.
This is a collaborative process between the coach and coachee, which when combined with lived experience and relevant knowledge, creates insightful Eureka moments or what we like to call “Aha!” moments, which act as catalysts for long lasting behaviour change.
Guided discovery is non-judgmental, and stimulates critical thought, which allows the coachee to arrive at their own conclusions, solutions and/or goals. This ensures that the coachee has a sense of agency to pursue their chosen path towards their goals using intrinsic motivation, which is more powerful than relying on extrinsic motivators.
Goal setting, tracking, evaluation
You have power over your own mind — not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.
— Marcus Aurelius
The second foundational element is the iterative goals process. Guided discovery leads to the coachee and coach creating goals and a plan of action together. The iterative goal tracking and evaluation process then helps measure progress towards goals and allows for course correction.
The coach’s support is invaluable, however a coach cannot do the work necessary for the coachee’s growth/change process: it is essential that the coachee takes ownership over their goals and progress through self-analysis.
Self-analysis i.e., analysing personal experiences, is a crucial part of the coaching journey. When placed side by side with key pieces of knowledge, self-analysis helps create more “Aha!” moments, a.k.a., catalysts for change. These moments act as catalysts for change because they help reframe our perspectives to events, and thus take control of our responses to them.
Try this at home
The next time you struggle to achieve a goal or build a habit, give the guided discovery and goals process a try.
First, use the socratic method on yourself to understand the essence of your struggle. Perhaps there are underlying blockers that need to be addressed first. Once you understand this, you have already won half the battle.
Second, identify which of the things you actually have control over, and those that you don’t. Focus on those things that you can control and create action items around those. You will now be able to create much more realistic goals and preform meaningful actions towards them.
Finally, simply rinse, and repeat. :)
At Medoo, our mission is to help people design and live intentional lives. We seek to create more “Aha!” moments in people’s lives through encouragement of self-analysis & insight by building specialised tools that support the foundational elements of the coaching process. If you are interested in participating in user tests of our early prototypes or in trialling our beta version, please get in touch with us via email hey@medoo.life.