Getting in the coaching game

"The connections we have, our own mental maps, can strongly influence the reality we see, often more than the inputs themselves."

- Jeffrey Schwartz, Scientist and Author of The Mind and the Brain

As I am preparing to get ACTP certified in the next year, I am finally beginning the seemingly endless journey into the world of coaching and the many levels of neuroscience, brain-based learning and all the rest underneath.

In fact, I am really just beginning to scratch the surface.

It does seem, though, that what all of this "stuff" (if you like to refer to quantum physics as "stuff" like I apparently do) seems to be doing is creating explanations for our, sometimes unusual, human behaviour and reactions to others.

Take, for example, the quotation above, which is something I am pretty sure we are all aware of, but find difficult to actually explain. It's happened to me a hundred times - I'm reading a book, I come across a word I don't know and am relegated to the online dictionary to decipher the meaning. Within 24 hours I will, more often than not, hear this word again on TV, on the street, from a friend, or read it again in a newspaper or magazine in a totally different context.

I have always had this sort of hunch that the new "connection" being made in my brain was so fresh or prevalent that I somehow became hypersensitive to it, but honestly I had never thought too much about it until recently.

What coaching is all about is helping others improve. This desire and drive, I believe, is not something that can be learned, it is burned somehow deep inside all of us and rises to the surface in many different ways for many different people.

There is an extra layer that an effective coach (or anyone that deals with people in his or her job really) needs - and that is an understanding of why people think and behave the way they do.

This journey for me begins with a newfound awareness of what I will need to do to achieve my ACTP certification - that means a lot more research, a lot more observation, and a lot more experience is necessary for me in the coming months.

I am looking forward to the challenge!

• Find out more information about coaching: http://www.coachfederation.org
• The inspiration for this post is due to a free paper that can be downloaded from http://www.davidrock.com, written by none other than David Rock, who is the founder of Results Coaches.
• Visit results coaches Singapore online - http://www.resultscoaches.com/

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