Meaning Before Maneuver

I recently had the opportunity to do a “discovery call” as personal coaching practice for an acquaintance of mine who needed to obtain hours for his coaching certification. He offers professional life coaching, spiritual direction, and consulting services. He is the rare type of person who always seems to have a greater level of depth, insight, and discernment than that of other people (at least certainly more than me!) so when he posted he was offering free sessions, I jumped at the chance.

The call was quick and was presented as a truncated version of what a regular full session would look like, but even in the 30 minutes we had to talk I was struck by a few things that I wanted to offer in this space.

1: A pause is often not a bad thing.
We started by taking 20 to 30 seconds for me to organize where I wanted to start. (*Note, I found it interesting that it wasn’t where he wanted me to start necessarily, but was very intention in trying to learn where I needed to start. I might come back to that more in later Blog posts)

2: When your purpose and meaning are clear, your action steps will become clear as well.
This was the impetus for this post. I was struck by the phrase of his questioning that helped me to arrive at some level of self discovery. Questions like “Is there more you want to add to that thought?” or “What came to mind when you said that?” It was this progression of that that helped me to land on some vision of what I was going after AND how that leads to some next steps to consider.

That was pretty profound for me even if it seems like common sense… the idea that you have to know where you are going before you can get there. It’s identifying the meaning that can help define the maneuvers achieve that goal.

It also is a solid counterpart to the aphorism of “it’s about the journey, not the destination”. It’s a both / and. I see it as two different sides of the same coin and a balance of both sides. It can help to clarify your motivations and lead to move purposeful actions.

All of this has me thinking… How might this impact the way I show up in the classroom?