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School of Coaching Training
Class #2713 - Coaching Proficiency #13: Relishes Truth
February 11, 2003 7:00 p.m. EST
Susan Austin, Instructor


Susan: Welcome! This is class 2713, proficiency 13 - relishes the truth. Who's joined us? (participants check in) I want to start the call a little differently than most of the other proficiencies. This is the last one of the proficiency classes that I led, and I’ve had trouble getting my arms around it. According to Thomas, this proficiency is not teachable. I want to open the call up from that perspective; this is very much going to be an open forum around this topic, because there isn’t anything you actually DO with this proficiency. What do you guys think about this not being teachable?

XXX: I definitely think it’s learnable.

XXX: It’s experience-able. I would go one step further and say that my body knows when I am in the truth.

Susan: Yeah, we can’t fake that one, can we?

Ann: I’m trying to express how I feel about it, and it’s kind of grow-able – you grow into it.

Susan: Yeah, I actually fought this proficiency when I first heard it. I didn’t want it to be a proficiency, and Thomas was pretty adamant that it is a proficiency. I finally agree with him now, but it took 3 or 4 months.

Anna: It’s like the difficulty in teaching what life is all about, what people are all about. It’s so tied into development and growth and learning through life experiences – that’s what makes it difficult to teach.

Sharon: For me, this makes sense. I had no idea what you were going to talk about; it takes the pressure off for me. I think this will evolve, and become part of me and my clients. I think I need to keep in mind to be aware of it.

Susan: Yes, you can go through your whole life not tapped into this; it’s funny how your mind works like this. As we start to become more comfortable with this whole notion of truth, it kind of relaxes us, and there’s nothing you have to do once you land on the truth. That’s one point, I think – many of us think once we land on the truth, we have to do something about it. I looked up the word ‘relish’ in the dictionary, and it’s interesting; basically it means ‘hearty enjoyment, zest, strong appetite, or appreciation.’

Let me just do the theory so we can get this on the recording. The notion is that truth is more important than results. Obviously you need to offer both to become commercially viable, but we’re really in the truth and possibility business. There’s a whole other level of just recognizing and relishing what’s true about our clients, and what’s true about ourselves going in.

XXX: I have to agree with you.

Susan: Yeah, there’s almost a presence about it. When truth is present – presence in truth is not the proficiency, so there’s almost no action on your part. You just come to become a person who relishes truth.

Anna: In a society where truth is so camouflaged and avoided, it would seem to me that the value of a coach who relishes truth, that can’t be over-estimated – the power of that in a coaching relationship.

Susan: I totally agree with that. When a coach does relish truth, the coach has no need to help the client go anywhere or do anything, if you will. There’s a truth in the perfection, if you will, of what the client’s going through.

Anna: And that takes the pressure off the client to do something or fix something.

Susan: It’s almost like when you get to that place; it’s almost like the work is done.

Anna: Absolutely! If you don’t go to that place, you almost feel like your work is just beginning.

XXX: I feel like a deepening has occurred, just a deepening in being present with the client.

XXX: I have to agree with that; it becomes such a full and undeniable moment with the client.

Susan: Yeah, I use the word ‘richer’ – the conversation just gets richer, even though it’s a hard thing to actually articulate or describe. There’s just something that happens on almost a mystical level.

XXX: When we relish the truth, it means that you no longer have to expend so much energy. At the risk of sounding trite, there’s an expression ‘the truth shall set you free’, and that’s true.

Susan: Very well said. I’ve also heard the expression that ‘truth is better than fantasy’. There’s something really amazing about landing, finding, and relishing truth.

Colleen:
Another word comes to mind, and that’s ‘clean’.

Susan: Yeah, there’s almost nothing left to say – there’s nothing else you have to do with it.

XXX: Yeah, there’s nothing personal in it; it makes you feel clean.

Anna: You mean personal in terms of hidden agendas - ?

XXX: Yeah, personalities.

XXX: I would think you don’t have to hide; it kind of gives us an opportunity to hold the truth, if you will, in that space.

XXX: I was trying to work on an image and I was wondering how this fits; I’m wondering if truth is like a precious jewel and we discover. We simply hold it, admire it, and appreciate it, but we don’t have to do anything with it until we’re ready.

Susan: Wow! Any comments on that?

XXX: I liked that.

XXX: That’s great.

Anne: I’m feeling that this is a foundation to the advanced proficiencies. This feels like a fundamental one for the advanced one.

Susan: Yes; I think it’s a very sophisticated skill – I don’t think it happens naturally.

XXX: There’s an absence of judgment when you relish truth, from which all great things can spring from.

XXX: I find that relishing truth is such a gift in coaching. Some how that fosters a connection between you and your client.

Susan: I’m curious; are there any linear processors on the call?

XXX: Here I am.

Susan: And how are you doing?

XXX: I’m trying hard to follow everything.

XXX: Yes, unfortunately, this is a non-linear conversation.

Susan: I want to turn the conversation a little and talk about something that’s something about you that is true that you would prefer not to be true.

XXX: And this is being taped, right?

Lucille: I will say that I can move very easily into a workaholic mode, and I wish that were not true.

Susan: And how can you come to relish that?

Lucille: Well, I can certainly get things done – is that what you’re talking about?

Susan: That’s a great way to start. You don’t necessarily have to have a silver lining. I start with how that has served me. You almost get curious about what it is, rather than judgmental.

Judy: What’s true about me is that I still have more limiting beliefs than I would like to admit.

Susan: And any idea how you’ll come to relish that?

Judy: I think it makes me be more effective, more helpful, and more understanding when I coach a client – I know how hard it is to let go of those beliefs myself.

Susan: Interesting.

Joyce: I’m an appeaser. I like to make it better for people and not push things too much, and I don’t know how to – I’ve been working on this for years.

Susan: I think that’s great that you’ve been working on it for years – how’s it going?

Joyce: I sort of climb painfully up to the top of a hill every now and then and suddenly fall back down. That’s about where it is.

Susan: And rather than trying to overcome it or rise above it – that was my problem; every time I saw something I didn’t wish to be true, I kept thinking I should be able to rise above it. I’m curious, could you almost get to a place to stop trying at all to overcome this and just relish that you do appease?

Joyce: I don’t have any language at this point in time to describe that place in a positive way. I think about it in terms of that it makes me absolutely perfect for a negotiator or mediator, but I don’t believe that yet.

Susan: Then, how about relishing the fact that you may never get over the appeasing? It may be a gateway to a new way of looking at this that you haven’t done before. Even if there’s some part of us we can’t come to grips with, maybe we can just relish that fact – that it’ll never be okay until we do overcome it.

Maureen:
Can I share something? When Thomas was in Boston, he talked about this and I just sat there numb. Since that moment, I don’t want to say I’ve stopped doing it, but somehow it’s lost its intensity.

Susan: I agree. Sometimes we expect ourselves to be – I’m going to leave it at that.

XXX: There’s a saying from AA that what you resist, persists. There is something freeing about embracing the truth. It just kind of opens you up; it’s a release.

Anna: What would you have to say to yourself if you were going to come from a relishing place?

XXX: I think something like that would be okay.

Susan: We’re saying that it is true, whether or not you’d like it to be true.

Anna: So you tolerate a lot of things; what if you were to say, ‘Isn’t this great? I tolerate everything! I’m a great tolerator!’

XXX: That could work.

Carol: I hear what she’s saying; it’s kind of the same thing – I think that I’m a snob. I think there are times when I really relish it, and there are times when I’m just mortified by it.

Susan: When you’re relishing the truth, there’s a lightness to it, but I could hear a little heaviness around it. It’s almost like you want to wear a badge that says, ‘I’m a snob, isn’t that wonderful?’

Carol: Okay.

Colleen:
It’s almost like we’re identifying the things that are hardest for us. We tend to be self-critical as human beings. One thing that I’m on way to relishing is the fact that I can be impatient with myself – I consider it another person in the room with me. It helps me embrace my humanity more.

Susan: I just want to point out that it’s not so much that we want to minimize the effect of this; we’re almost saying that you should get to a place, Colleen, where you throw a party – I’m exaggerating here.

Colleen:
And I think I’m picking one that I’m not there with that yet.

Elizabeth:
I was going to say one thing that took me a long time to realize is that I put exercise above everything else. For a long time, I felt really guilty about it – fitness to me was just important. I just love that I finally can come to terms with that; I realize that I need it for a number of reasons.

Susan: Very well said. Anna, what’s true about you?

Anna: What I saw in the pattern of what people were sharing is that we’re all human. These things are just what’s human. There’s this whole place for us to grow into where we realize the challenge of being human, and that we lighten up over the whole deal of being a human and having human limitations. That allows us to relish all kinds of truths and probably help our clients a lot more too.

Susan: I just want to share with you an example – if you look at Thomas, he’s an entrepreneur and by their very nature they’re out on the edge. He wears that and doesn’t then always follow through – he makes promises and doesn’t do 100% on everything, and he’s okay with that. He relishes that because that’s who he is. He knows that’s how he’s wrired, and maybe someday it’ll get better or not.

XXX: Yeah, that’s humanity.

XXX: Your question was to share something we wish wasn’t true about ourselves.

Susan: That was just for this example, though.

XXX: So, in actuality, people were going to say something they weren’t relishing in this moment. I just wanted to clarify that because we weren’t stating things we relish – at least I wasn’t.

Susan: Yes, and the goal for this class is to become a person that relishes truth, good, bad, or indifferent.

XXX: Would it be right that we don’t have to say we like this thing, but that we can celebrate and be enthusiastic about the fact that it’s something we’re no longer struggling with.

Anna: Then, you’re just accepting – I think relishing it is celebrating it.

XXX: So then you’re saying that it’s a distinction between that and saying ‘I love this about myself’.

Anna: I think you’re saying that humanity is judgmental, and…. There it is. I love it; I love being human. That’s the place you’re coming from. You’re relishing the detail of that truth.

XXX: And not necessarily the dynamics of it.

XXX: Not just that it’s the truth, but you’re relishing everything about it.

Lucille: I wonder if there’s something we do have to do before we can relish the truth.

Susan: We should write up a 3-step module on that. And it may be that you can do either or. I just want to point out on the orb – relishes doesn’t mean you have to agree with it. If it’s true, there’s no arguing with it, it’s just true. You don’t have to accept it, but you can relish that it’s true. You don’t have to accept the fact that you are judgmental, but you can relish the fact that you’re judgmental. It’s a part of who you are. It’s also – if you look at the orb – you don’t have to do something about it, again; there’s no ‘next step’ on this proficiency. You don’t have to hunt for it; you’ll start noticing it.

Anna: I have an idea about how this could be used with a client. If you were to say, ‘May I have your permission to relish that with you right now and can I show you how I might do that?’

Elizabeth:
I just wouldn’t believe it if somebody said that to me because it’s so unusual. I think I would just clam right up. If I said that, I think that would really turn – I think the trust that you might have developed in the relationship, you might lose some of.

Anna: So if they were in the accepting place, do you think that might be a better segue?

Elizabeth:
I think ‘relish’ is a coaching term, and if we changed it to a different word, they might better understand and accept it. I might turn it around to say, ‘how can you accept that about yourself? Let’s dig deeper about why that’s an issue for you.’

Anna: So you would go in another direction?

Elizabeth:
That’s just how I would do it. I was just cautioning that I think in a lot of people, that if someone said I needed to relish the truth, I would be cautious.

Anna: It’s really about how provocative this is, isn’t it, Susan?

Susan: I also think coming out of the blue it might seem very out of place, but in a coach-client relationship there is probably a place where you could use it and it would land successfully. Again, the coach wasn’t asking the client to relish it, but asking if she could relish it.

XXX: Then behind this is the fact that we will most often relish it quietly for ourselves.

Susan: Yes, this isn’t about sharing the relishing.

XXX: I think the next step after relishing it yourself, you’re then role-modeling it.

Susan: Yes, I think it’ll show up in your coaching.

Maureen:
What I’m experiencing right now is enjoying listening to the different spins on this – we can all relish it in our own special way. We may experience it in an entirely different style, just from one client to the next.

Susan: Yes; that’s a good point. I don’t think there’s any denying that you’ll know when you’re relishing or just faking it. Most of us, if it’s something good we may relish it, but if it’s something bad, we stop at the acceptance phase.

XXX: In the orb, I love how it’s been displayed when we’re relishing that we’re un-weighted and un-tethered.

XXX: What keeps coming to me is that we are a whole person, and when we’re unable to relish truth about ourselves, we’re in pieces. I’m not sure I can articulate this even, but we are fragmenting ourselves. I think relishing ourselves as whole people, that leads to the un-weightedness.

Susan: I love what you just said – like you said, you’re fragmented, you’re not whole. It’s nost just about individuals, there are truths about life. There are other aspects, of course, on the sheet. There are truths about the fact that people say they want success, and yet they resist change. It’s natural for people to do that. I think a lot of the dynamics is kind of landing on the truth of the situation and getting into the dynamics that way. You almost can’t be defensive when it is the truth.

I do want to leave some time for wrapping up; this is a proficiency that’s different from the other ones. I’m curious where you’re at with this, what you’re taking away from today, and how this is helpful.

Sharon: When you asked the question about what we didn’t want other people to know about ourselves, how much resistance came up. I’m taking away a recognition that when I see resistance, asking if this is an area where truth comes in.

Elizabeth:
I learned – this is probably one of the toughest proficiencies, and I learned from everybody who shared on this call tonight. This was probably one of the best calls. It really just opened things up for me.

XXX: It helped me with what I need to do tomorrow with my coach. I need to relish a few truths!

Susan: And it’s kind of like a muscle; you do it once and open up and it’s like WOW! I’m still on the learning path.

Colleen:
I think that relishing the truth can provoke a lot of feelings that we get to be with. We may not have had the opportunity to be with them before.

Susan: And a lot of times Thomas will get the person he’s coaching to relax into the truth and the client will see the next step.

XXX: It’s something that’s necessary for people to see.

Anna: I just want to relish the truth that you taught the unteachable – good job!

Susan: And I just want to thank everyone on the call. You made it not only wonderful for me, but a lot of fun. Thank you for making it a special class!



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