A WORLD APART by Anne Welsh (Guest)
CONTEXT FOR SHARING IN ‘the good coach’.
INTRODUCTION. ANNE WELSH.
The writing of ‘A world Apart’ is an interesting journey.
It has been driven by inner prompting’s over a period of time.
Sometimes it seems more urgent to be spoken and at other times it is as if the tide goes out and the urgency recedes. As someone who does not find Academic writing resonates my writings follow a more poetic genre using personal life experiences along with universal truths. Truth’s that can often come through music, art, nature and poetry.
Some of these pieces were written some time ago and they have also inspired me to create a Training DVD and a series of Mandalas that represent the work of an ‘Inner Transformational Journey’.
This brings me to the question: Why put this in The Good Coach. I am a Coach and have practiced as a Coach, a Supervisor and a Trainer of coaches over the last 20 years.
It means I often reflect and think about the following:
What is a Coach and What is Coaching?
What type of person becomes a Coach.
What type of Coaching do they Practice. There are so many forms of Coaching. There is Sports Coaching, Performance Coaching, Voice Coaching and more and more.
The sort of Coaching I am referring to here could be called Transformational Coaching or Development Coaching.
What do I mean by that?
I mean Coaching the ‘Being’ not just focussing on the ‘issue’.
Coaching the ‘Being’ has the capacity to get to the core of any person.
It can bring about more transformational and lasting change.
In this, the persons Performance will naturally improve.
Improvement and Change are not purely focussed on the ‘Behaviours’.
Most importantly, it’s changes in Attitudes and Beliefs. They can challenge historical Beliefs and Mind Sets that may be limiting the individuals Growth in the Here and Now.
It can focus more on the Authentic Self of the Coachee and support them in recognising Adaptive Self type behaviours that they may have taken on over the course of their lives.
They can begin to gain greater Self Awareness and acknowledge what they value about themselves alongside the behaviours they may want to change.
It is giving that time and space for them to think about Sense of Meaning and Purpose for their Personal and Professional Lives.
It can support them to recognise the inner drives and motivations. The motivation that is required in relation to finding out - How they want Self Actualise in their Professional Identity. Their motivations can also become more aligned with their personal values.
So how does a Coach learn to work in this way…this goes beyond Models and Tools.
It is about the Coach being willing to travel these lands themselves.
This is where all the tools and models can fall down. It is about being willing - in my -language - to travel to ‘A World Apart’. It is also to know that these places are important to me and to support my health and well being.
As a Coach I need to be able at times to deeply retreat and reflect within myself.
What follows, as a series, are some of my sharing’s from ‘A World Apart’. Some of it may have a resonance for the reader and some may not. I hope you may enjoy.
Anne Welsh.
A World Apart – The world we were born into
First published on December 19, 2017 on Linkedin
As humans, we incarnate and enter the world. William Wordsworth’s poem ‘Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’[1] addresses this process. I share a few lines from the fifth stanza of the poem here.
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,”
Wordsworth points to our being ‘spirit in matter’. As we grow and develop we need to survive in this world so we begin to formulate our unique identity, creating masks, veneers and concealments to enable our path through life.
From psychosynthesis psychology we understand that we operate out of different parts of ourselves. In psychosynthesis these parts are known as subpersonalities.
Subpersonalities are developed from different roles that we have assumed or from ways we have learned to behave in different situations. They are often determined at very early stages of our life. Subpersonalities serve us and allow us to function in the world in many different ways. The deeper we explore, the more subpersonalities we are likely to encounter and we will find that each of them have different motives, needs, ideas and qualities. Sometimes, we may confront inner conflict, especially if we become identified with a particular part or subpersonality.
So, when we decide to enter ‘A World Apart’ and take a transformational journey we may need to take stock, stop and review which subpersonalities are still serving us and which need to be released.
We will be required to ask the questions ‘Are we living our life to our greatest capacity?’ or ‘Are we locked in the prison house?’ that Wordsworth points to in his poem.
What are Subpersonalities and why do we take them on?
When we are born we begin to clothe ourselves in identities that serve our functioning in the world. These identities are vehicles to enable us to act in the world. Self which is distinct but not separate from our consciousness cannot, for example, make a cup of tea without these intermediary identifications.
At birth, we incarnate into an individual part of Self or, as Wordsworth implies in his poem, we individuate ‘From God, who is our home’. For some individuals, this is experienced as a divine homesickness.
The call to awaken to and remember our origins can be uncomfortable. The process of awakening invites us to stop and look at ourselves and the life we have created from the identities we have donned.
To have the courage to step into this awakening process offers rewards, such as creativity, innovation and fulfilment. We can begin to trust ourselves, find routes to self-acceptance, deeper appreciation and love.
In the future, I intend to offer directions to explore how to find deeper fulfilment. For now, the journey begins with the process of recognising subpersonalities or parts of ourselves that can get in the way. There is also a need to recognise the qualities of Self that are inherent in each subpersonality. I invite you to begin to live the qualities of Self whist considering changing limiting behaviours and how we view the world.
In business terms, we can say ‘People are naturally creative resourceful and whole’.
In psychosynthesis terms we use the Paracelsus quote ‘In every human being there is a special heaven, whole and unbroken.’
Every coach knows that ‘context for working is everything’. The context for the journey is about engagement, challenge and inspiration.
This journey begins with YOU.
To connect with Anne Welsh, linkedin.com/in/anne-welsh-3674aa2
Anne Welsh MA, is the founding director of Synthesis in the City and brings a wealth of life experience to her leadership work. Anne is an APECS accredited executive coach and coach supervisor; a trainer; supervisor; mentor and group facilitator. Anne is also a UKCP accredited psychotherapist with over twenty-five years of experience working with adults individually and in groups.
Anne works globally with a diverse range of organisations in her capacity as a consultant, facilitator and leadership coach, including Glaxo Smith Kline and Investec.
References
[1] Wordsworth, W, Forgotten Books 2017
