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In this Issue
The sea of psychology
Quote of the Month
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The sea of Psychology
I have personally trained and coached approximately 60,000 people since starting in 1969 and everyday I am surprised by the lack of information we have about human as humans. In the early sixties I became aware of Heidegger and especially Being and Time. It was far to complex for me to read and I put it down. Many years later I picked it up again and suddenly it not only made sense, but was easy to read.
It was at this point that I realized the enormity of his work and the impact it will have on 'being human.' The giant step forward for me was the realization that 'being' lives in language. It was here I discovered how much emphasis goes into 'doing' without the investigation into 'being.' Doing is absolutely dependent on Being. If you are not 'being creative' no creativity will be observed.

If we are going to make any progress with coaching we are going to have to recognise that a tremendous amount of the coaching we are witnessing is a new name for psychology and especially 'feeling good.' In this there is no commitment to the seriousness of the work we do as coaches. Many of us are also aware that a number of so called Motivators find it fashionable to now call themselves coaches and think that this is what coaching is about, getting people fired up to rah! rah! perform. Like the old Hoover motivated salesman.

A genuine coach does not work in clichés and superlatives and does not work with positive thinking or get people to believe in themselves. This is all the structure coming out of the sea of psychology. This is the pettiness that has thrown us into the condition we are in as humans today..
Coaches work far beyond setting goals and reaching them. Goals are the language of yesterdays paradigms. Today's thinking calls for the shift to 'context.' The shift is from 'what are you going to do" to 'who are you going to 'be' under these circumstances. It is here we discover that 'being' lies dormant and is waiting to be evoked through language. and here I do not mean just words.

It is in this domain that what we discover, that what we as human have brought forth, is that human beings, in speaking, are always already committed to something and they are either aware of this or they are not aware of this.

It is from this position and perspective that one can witness the way people are 'thrown' into their lives.

We are born at a certain place, on a certain day and at a certain time and lying ahead of us is a lot of living and humanity. We are born into a culture that existed long before we were thought up, and us coming along, is just part of the 'drift.' We begin this journey into life not with empty slates but with traditions and standards and values, cultural heritages, beliefs, and we had nothing to do with this. It was there, in front of us, and as we emerged from our mothers body we were 'thrown' into it.

This throwness, this culture, created the structure of our lives and unfortunately we had no say in it. It had - and shaped us, we did not have - or shape it. We did not create our lives, our lives created us. Our lives resemble the thinking we are permitted to have, within the structure we are thrown into. Now, at the root of this, the platform that supports this and deep within it, is a language, which unbeknown to us was handed to us as we were sucked from our mothers womb. The very first step in 'being human.' In this language is the nature of reality with all its assumptions, descriptions, judgments, interpretations and predictions. The essence and root of psychology. The sea, in which life occurs, both as individuals as well as organisations.

Because of this we see the world the way we do. Because of this we listen the way we do. Because of this we do the things we do and react the way we react.

And all of this is occurring and being permitted by the structure. And therein lies our possibilities.
Not much hey?

So all the motivation and psychology and positive thinking are band aids, in actual fact a type of entertainment.
Ninety percent of all trainings are an explanation and as such meaningless and empty. Even the ones that are experientially derived. Because even these are filtered through our structure and placed in the box which describes it under the banner of understanding.

This is the stuff that gets explored in coaching...oops authentic coaching. We look at our structure and the limitations it has generated, because our patterns are, as Emerson says in one of his journals - 'the fires of the volcano we are using to roast our eggs.'

Our language is the 'fire of the volcano's and it is through language that intervention can take place. Any individual or organisation who wants to change their perspectives need to change their language.
This new speak will allow for a new structure to evolve.
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Quote of the Month

In our time, what is at issue is the very nature of humankind, the image we have
on our limits and possibilities. History is not yet done with its exploration of the
limits of what it means to be human - C. Wright Mills

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Thank you for reading this issue of the monthly Distinctions
Look for your next issue on April 10th, 2001

Distinctions is a free, monthly email publication from Future Coaching.
Event dates are subject to change. Some products, programs, or promotions are subject to availability or time limits.

Future Coaching encourages reproduction of the contents of Distinctions with proper attribution.

Copyright 2001. All rights reserved
Future Coaching
http://www.iam.co.za

Future Coaching's monthly newsletter for clients and friends
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Issue #27
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Dear Friends
Our site is up and running again after such a long time in the making. We have to thank both The Star as well as The Argus newspapers for the two articles on coaching and we were therefore pushed to get it up. We received just on 800 calls from these two articles plus many e-mails. We had no option but to put our site up. Not to forget we were also on radio three times and the calls we got from that was incredible
The address to which we invite you to visit is http://www.iam.co.za. We will be interested in your comments so please feel free to give us feedback.
Our mailing list grew by 800 this month which gives us the 6000 subscribers, we, however, do not know how many serious readers we have but we are well on our way to our target of 10,000.
Have a good month
Pat Grove