Something peculiar has been happening in my coaching sessions.

Over the course of several recent conversations, clients have started wondering aloud about my experience of them. Not about whether I think they should take the job or leave the relationship or send the email.

About them.

Do you think I'm being an idiot?

Are you judging me?

Is this a lot for you?

Am I giving you too much to make sense of?

Can you actually help me?

In one conversation, a client started wondering whether my other clients were easier to coach than she was.

I found myself fascinated.

Why did she care?

Okay, that's not entirely fair. Of course she cared. I'm a person sitting across from her, listening closely to things that matter enormously to her. I'm also a coach she is paying to help her. It makes perfect sense that my opinion might matter.

But still…something about hearing versions of the same question, over and over, caught my attention.

And I am, whether fortunate or not, a person who compulsively makes meaning out of things.

Longtime readers may remember that I once wrote not one but two newsletters involving Katy Perry's “Firework” and the existential implications of feeling like a plastic bag.

This morning, a ladybug landed on my computer and I immediately thought, Oh my God, good luck. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

So, naturally, after the third or fourth version of What do you think of me?, I opened a blank Word document.

There had to be something here. But what was it, I asked myself… (In the background of my mind, a set of perfectly manicured fingers began tapping impatiently on a table. Well? We're waiting.) 

____________________________________________

Okay, so here are some things I know: each of us walks around all day having an experience of being ourselves. There is the world everyone else can see, and then there is our commentary, the relentless, often obtrusive commentary. 

Am I enough?

Am I doing this right?

Why is this so hard for me?

Is she judging me?

Does my hair look terrible today?

Am I a bad mother? I am a bad mother.

Some of those thoughts may be insightful. Some may not be insightful.  But they matter because they shape our world.

One of the things I've been thinking about a lot in my Newfield training is the relationship between language and action. The stories and assessments in our minds aren't merely descriptions of our experience. They help create the field of possibilities we can see from inside it.

For example, “I'm terrible at this” creates one set of possibilities. “I'm learning how to do this” creates another.

There is a right answer and I need to find it creates another one entirely.

And this is the one that has been occupying my mind, because we live in a world where the expectation is there is an answer to every question, every ailment, every  misalignment–job, back, relationship or otherwise. All I have to do is find the right expert, coach, therapist, mentor, friend, podcast host, and LinkedIn thought leader. Oh, and partner!

Open LinkedIn for eleven seconds. Scroll: The five things you're doing wrong in your job search. The three signs it's time to quit.

Switch to instagram: There is a better morning routine. And it does involve kachava! Oh, there is also a better way to parent, a better way to sleep (duh magnesium + L-Theanine but did you also know about lemon balm?!), a planner that will make you productive, finally, after all of these years, and a way to load the dishwasher that doesn’t lead to divorce. Hallelujah! 

Which brings me back to my clients.

Because when someone looks at me and asks:

Do you think I'm being an idiot?

There is an enormous temptation to answer the question. Especially when the answer is: No! Of course I don't think you're an idiot!

Reassurance is lovely. It's like the tape measure at the top of the tool kit—the easiest thing to grab.

But in coaching, immediately reaching for it can defeat the whole purpose. Because right underneath Do you think I'm an idiot? might be another, much more interesting question: “What are you hoping my answer will settle for you?”

The truth is, I don't know what it will settle. When I asked a version of this question, I got one of those 17-year-old eye rolls that says, You're right, Mom, I will bring a coat because it is 27 degrees outside. Which is to say: sitting in the freezing cold isn't always particularly pleasant.

There are moments when the most useful thing I can do is resist giving someone the thing they're asking me for. Not because reassurance is bad. Not because I want my clients to suffer. But because there might be something underneath the desire for reassurance that we will miss if I make the discomfort disappear too quickly.

I know this because I do it in my personal life, too. It would be nice sometimes—nix, a lot of the time—to have someone look at us and say: You're doing it right. You're making the right decision. It's going to be okay.

And sometimes that's exactly what we need. But sometimes we need to stay there for a beat longer.

There has been plenty written about the ways we outsource our time, our attention, our thinking. I don't need to make the same argument here in different words. What I'm interested in is one possible consequence of all that outsourcing: we don't stay.

We don't pause long enough to notice what just happened inside us before we reach for something—or someone—to make sense of it.

Maybe that's why I hear myself saying some version of the same thing so often in coaching sessions:

Wait.

Stay there.

What did you just say?

Say that again.

Sometimes I want to belabor a single sentence. Hear it again. Have someone repeat the exact words that just came out of their mouth before we rush ahead to decide what they mean or what we're going to do about them.

One of the foundational stances of coaching is that the person sitting across from me is creative, resourceful and whole. That changes my job. I don't need to rescue them from every uncomfortable moment. I don't need to have the answer. And I certainly don't need to become another voice that knows their experience better than they do.

Sometimes my job is simply to help us stay in the cold long enough to hear what's there.

Because getting help hearing yourself is different from asking someone else to tell you what to hear.