Lesson 16: The First Coaching Question (Phase II)
Start by stepping back into the Coach position (you’ll be doing this movement a lot from now on), as you activate the new ‘How do I get a life I love’ conversation, which replaces the old one between you and the Pit.
In phase II of Coaching, the Coach always asks the same, very powerful and important question:
This seemingly simple question is so important as it provides the essence for designing a future based on the free choice of working out what you want right now in this moment.
For many people, asking and answering this question may have been quite difficult in the past, because the neural pathways created by being in the Pit makes it impossible to make clear decisions – as you now know, being in the Pit means focusing on problems rather than solutions.
Once you’re free of the Pit, however, answering this question becomes very different. You start to realize the unlimited potential of this creative question, and see that it’s so flexible that it can be applied to virtually any situation as each time it is still exactly the right and best question to ask.
Having asked this vital question, step back into the Present to discover your answer.
You’ll quite quickly get used to these steps between the Coach and the Present. Notice that:
This very clear sequence retrains your brain to become familiar with asking questions in one place and then answering in another. In a short time the Coach position becomes connected with being positive and asking questions and the Present becomes linked to being acknowledged and answering questions effectively. This consistency helps this process to run much more smoothly and become automatic much more quickly.
The real power of the ‘What do you want?’ question comes from making sure your answers head you into a great future and further away from the Pit.
To do this make sure your answer fits these three rules:
It’s pretty simple really but the rest of this chapter will guide you through how to use these rules, which can be easy to break without noticing in the early stages.
The first thing is to ensure that your answer is stated in ‘positives’, rather than what is called ‘negative wants’. Once again the reason for this lies in the way our neurology works, as the next exercise demonstrates.
For the next two seconds I would like you not to think about Albert Einstein riding a purple goat.
Notice what happened when I asked you to do that. I expect that you immediately thought about Albert Einstein riding a purple goat.
The brain can’t process ‘negatives’, such as ‘don’t think’, without first understanding the instruction. And to understand the instruction it has to process the idea of ‘Einstein riding a purple goat’ so it can be ready to ‘not think’ about it. As a result, an instruction with a negative always has completely the opposite effect than the one it was designed to get.
In the same way, you’ll hear people say, ‘I’m not at all negative, I spend all my time making sure I am not stressed.’
Highlight the words in this phrase that are negative wants – instructions to the brain that ask it not to do things.
You should have spotted ‘not negative’ and ‘not stressed’.
Here, in this very simple statement, their language clearly shows up what’s really going on inside their brain: a whole heap of negative processing. This kind of unintentional brain activity has been confirmed in recent brain imaging studies.8
What is intriguing is this type of language is completely at odds with what they actually thought they were being, in this case, ‘positive’.
These are covered in even more detail in Dû – Unlock Your Full Potential With A Word, but these tips will help you spot negative wants easily.
Be aware of anything that starts with a:
Examples of this are:
Something-free
Also watch out for anything that has the word ‘free’ in it:
These immediately trigger the exact opposite pathways to the ones intended.
Hidden negatives
There’s also a category of very sneaky words that are negative wants but sound brilliantly positive; statements referring to the negative state without mentioning it directly.
For example, saying ‘I want to be free’ sounds great but, in this case, it highlights wanting to be free from something. This draws your attention back into the Pit and what is making you feel not free, e.g. oppression, stress, etc., which throws us once again back into the Pit. Other examples include:
Super hero statements
I’ve called them this because they are the kind of tag line a super hero would have:
BOLD, BRAVE, STRONG, COURAGEOUS
AND UNAFRAID OF DANGER!
If you have to feel any of these things, then you must be doing something that is quite scary and fearful, and so these sorts of statements take you back into the Pit. For example, if someone says, ‘I’m going to be very brave and go swimming,’ this tells us something about how they feel about swimming, and that swimming is something they fear in some way.
In control
Saying ‘I want to be in control’ of something, again, sounds great, but the things we need to ‘control’ are usually inherently chaotic, unpredictable, troublesome or dangerous. Notice where the word ‘control’ normally shows up in language:
If someone came back from a trip overseas and you asked, ‘How was it?’ And they replied, ‘It was full of control,’ it doesn’t sound too positive does it? To avoid this pitfall, it’s usually best to replace the words ‘in control’ with ‘making great choices’. So ‘I want to be in control’ becomes ‘I want to make great choices’.
Wow! ‘What do you want?’ is such a simple question yet, as you can see, there are so many ways that can have us spinning straight back into the Pit, without even knowing we were doing it.
However, now you have this deeper understanding of what you need to do to answer this question properly, you will find your life will change dramatically for the better.
So from now on if you hear yourself giving these types of ‘negative’ answers, simply step back into the Coach position then kindly and compassionately Coach yourself by saying, ‘That’s great AND can you turn that into a true positive please.’ Notice we avoided using BUT and replaced it with AND because, as mentioned earlier (see Congruency), anything preceded by the ‘but’ is undermined by it.
Once you’ve got your head around this rule it’s quite easy to put into practice – just make sure you’re being genuinely positive with your language.
There is a quick check you need to perform on each of the statements that you give in response to the ‘What do you want?’ question and that is, ‘Is it deliverable by me?’ So always ask: ‘Am I the person who has the power to make this happen?’
For example, if your answer to ‘What do you want? is ‘I want to be calm,’ then you are the person who can make calmness happen in your life, so it passes this test.
However, if you answer ‘I want my boss to be nicer to me,’ then recognize this as being undeliverable because your desired outcome depends on ‘I want the other person or thing to do something.’ Although you may really want it, you clearly cannot make your boss do what you want them to do. In fact, as you’ve probably noticed in the past, you can’t really make anybody change unless they want to. The only person you have real power to change is you. Trying to change the other person is like trying to control the weather.
To turn this answer around and make it deliverable:
Let’s consider another example. You’re stuck in traffic and answer the ‘What do you want?’ question with: ‘I want the traffic to flow freely.’ It’s easy to realize that this is undeliverable, as you know you can’t really change the traffic.
So the Coach asks: ‘How do you want to respond to the traffic [or other person or thing]?’
The answer: ‘I want to be calm and positive, independent of what the traffic does.’
Making sure your answer is deliverable by you puts you back in charge of how you feel about things, instead of being dependent on your boss’s mood, the traffic, or how anyone or anything else is on any particular day.
By responding in this way, you become like the football player we discussed earlier (see Real-World Filters) who delivers his best penalty kick absolutely independent of whether the team is winning or losing.
The final rule in this section is all about using more of the sort of language that activates the kind of neurology that we want to be stimulating.
So, for example, ‘I want to be calm’ becomes ‘I want to be profoundly calm’ or ‘deeply’ or ‘powerfully’ or ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ or ‘totally’.
This is important because the Pit is filled with this kind of big dramatic language too, for example: ‘I feel so down, deep dark, intensely and painfully immersed in the weight of these horrific feelings.’ And you know how successful the Pit has been at triggering you into feeling certain powerfully negative ways, so learn from this and make sure that your positive statements are equally big and dramatic too.
And of course, when giving these powerfully uplifting answers, make sure you match them with your movements, voice tone and body posture.
Saying, ‘I want to be deeply happy’ in a flat tone, with a slumped body, like Droopy, the totally down cartoon dog, or Eeyore the depressed donkey in A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories, will never work, as there’s too much confusion in your brain for it to able to take any clear instructions from such a mixed message.
Equally, saying ‘I want to be deeply relaxed’ in a hyper, fast voice, like characters such as Speedy Gonzalez the cartoon mouse or the hyper-bouncy Tigger, while having an incredibly on-edge, high-alert posture will never work either.
Playfully allow yourself to generate some more exotic and exuberant language around what you want, as this is the way to ensure it will become part of your future.
It can also be very helpful to come up with an image, symbol, metaphor or simile to describe what it is ‘you want’. Doing this seems to activate another set of parallel neurological pathways, which deepens the connection between you and your goal – getting a life you love.
The easiest way to create this alternative pathway is to use the phrase, ‘Like a…’ So if your answer to the ‘What do you want?’ question is: ‘I want to have a deep and profound sense of peace,’ then your Coach would ask, ‘Like a…?’ This allows you to answer in any number of ways. You might say:
It’s best to avoid statements such as, ‘Like I used to be,’ as this reminds you that you’re not that way any more and so has the potential of taking you into the Pit.
If it seems like a lot to think about when answering one single question, then relax! With practice, this knowledge will become second nature and if you do go off track, then you’ll have a useful reference of the steps required to get back again.
In the meantime, let’s finish by applying the question we first met in the Pit chapter: ‘What if it all goes wrong and then the worst-case scenario imaginable unfolds leaving me feeling dreadful, fragile and stressed?’ In response, move through these now familiar steps:
» Present – re-score
» Coach – ‘What do you want?’
» Present – ‘To feel deeply calm and confident about my future, like an eagle soaring on the wind.’
Obviously, this will not necessary be your exact answer. There are an infinite number of great answers to this question and each one will be tailored by you and depend on what you want in that particular moment. So go ahead and start to enjoy using this new set of skills to move your brain into new territory and a new future.
Once you’ve answered the question brilliantly, re-score yourself out of 10, where 10 is feeling good and zero is not feeling good. You should notice a significant improvement in your score.
Now you’ve completed this section you should have an outstandingly effective answer to the question, ‘What do you want?’
Once again, pause your training here and practise the steps you’ve learned so far. Now anytime you spot the Pit, you Stop, your Coach acknowledges you and you move through answering the first Coaching question.
Each time you do that, you will be rewiring your brain, firing up the creative enquiring pathways that build exciting ideas about what you want in your life.
Just doing this will start to make opportunities show up in your life, allow you to be more Present and experience the life you love.
When you’re ready to continue we’ll go on to phase III of the Coach position and discover the second Coaching question.
