I was doing it again.
Something was being hard. I had a thorny problem to help a client with, and our next session was soon. To prepare, I was reviewing my notes from our last few meetings.
But instead of diving deep into the problem with wonder and curiosity, I was dog-paddling on the surface, judging myself for not knowing what was going on. My inner critic totally had my inner genius pinned.
In fact, much harder than not knowing what to do was the thought that I’m *supposed* to know what to do. And also this one: “SO-AND-SO (insert name of insightful coach friend here) would know EXACTLY what to do.”
My judgment about my relationship to the problem was keeping me from dealing with the problem. That is, my self-criticism was standing between me and my power to be effective.
So I paused and asked myself: What is it that I’m supposed to know? And the answer came back immediately, clearly: It’s okay not to know.
Big exhale. Once I gave myself permission not to know, I was able to stop beating myself up, relax, and get really interested—looking for clues, noticing anomalies, sparking inquiry. The session that followed was very productive.
This event (more recent than I’d care to admit) reminded me of a counseling retreat I attended a few years ago. The leader asked us to investigate our “waking dreams” of the world. What, he asked, was some repetitive fantasy that we were living out—say, some kind of archetypal quest, or battle, or journey, or other recurring motif that we found ourselves in?
I had a few, but keenest that morning was that there was always someone sitting behind me and judging the bejeezus out of me when I was coaching or counseling. I even knew their names. These were real people—skilled counselors that I knew and had worked with for some time. In fact, they were both at the retreat.
So, we brought it into the room. I sat down to counsel someone and one of those actual people from my fantasy-from-hell sat close behind me to observe.
I took a deep breath and put all my focus on the client—observing the hurting person in front of me and not myself. I relaxed into trusting my instincts. We moved through some hard stuff in a relatively short time.
When we finished, the client was in tears and my heart was full. When I turned around, my “judge” had tears in their eyes as well. And then they spoke: “I judge you to be a wonderful counselor.” It was a very healing moment.
But not completely healed—yet. You would think that I would just get over this sooner or later and be done with it. But it’s an old wound that opens from time to time, perhaps tied to a need for approval (and safety) that got worked into my wiring from a very young age.
But I’m okay with that. Because, for many of us—coaches included—our greatest gifts are often closely connected to our deepest wounds.
