How Many Miracles do you Get?
A woman phoned into my radio show and reported that years ago she had become pregnant, and doctors told her that the baby would not survive. She and her husband prayed fervently for the child’s well-being, and the baby was born healthy and went on to live a happy life. Since that time she had a few miscarriages, and the couple very much wanted another child. “Do you think we each get a certain allotment of miracles, and when we use up our quota, we get no more?”
“That’s not how it works!” I practically yelled into the microphone. I told her that miracles and well-being are our natural state, given freely without limit forever. Only the human mind lays limits over the good that is available to us. It is not God’s Grace we need to beg for. It is our own. And we don’t need to beg. We just need to claim it.
During the months we have shared our current advanced program, we have explored many different angles on effective coaching and living. For our final month together we are going to stretch to underscore the reality and importance of limitless living, for ourselves and our clients.
The first step to freedom from limitation is to recognize that all the limits we experience are learned. Our natural state is total freedom. All ceilings have been programmed and laid over our true nature. Thus one of the most important goals of coaching is to restore the client to his or her right mind, which has no limits. Another way of saying this is to give clients permission to be who they are and live the life they would choose.
I have learned the importance of the permission principle by working with my Japanese clients, who have been trained that they need permission from the outer world for everything. A lot of my coaching with them involves encouraging them to give themselves their own permission. For example, a young woman who had just been divorced told me that she wanted to have three boyfriends. “Fine,” I told her. “Then I suggest you get three boyfriends.” She was amazed, and lit up, and thanked me profusely. (I saw her a month later and she told me that one boyfriend would do just fine.) Another client was angry at her father and didn’t want to talk to him. “Then you don’t have to talk to him,” I told her. She felt so relieved and happy that she didn’t have to talk to her father. I knew that by giving her permission to not talk to her father, it would hasten the time when she would want to talk to him.
Of course, it is not within my power to give permission or deny it, but in a case where someone needs permission, coaching can be a good forum for them to claim it. This is a good demonstration of our earlier lesson, “using the power of illusion.” In this case it is an illusion that the client needs the coach’s permission. But if such permission leads to healing, it is a good illusion to leverage. Ultimately I would explain to the client that it was she who gave herself permission, but that conversation would come at a later moment.
This week notice the limits that your clients labor under, and the limits you labor under. Begin to first notice them, then question them, then challenge them. No illusion can remain standing in the light of truth. The more truth you shine on illusions, the more they evaporate.
You can also practice giving your clients permission to do the things they really want to do. Again, you do not have that power, but you can use the power they have given you to return it to them. And in so doing you will return your rightful power to yourself.
To return to the woman’s question stated at the beginning of our lesson, there is no limit the blessings we are allotted. Our life was meant to be an adventure in continuous, more, and greater blessings, going from good to better to best, and beyond. Let’s not stop anywhere short of that.
Exercise:
1. Do you harbor any beliefs that there are limits to the amount of good you can receive and enjoy?
If so, what are those beliefs?
What belief might you adopt that lifts those limits and gives you access to more abundance?
2. What would one or more of your clients like to do that they believe they need someone else’s permission for?
Whose permission do they believe they need?
In your coaching with them, how might you give them that permission or encourage them to claim that permission for and from themselves?
3. In your coaching path or your personal life, what would you like to do that you believe you need someone else’s approval or permission to do?
Whose permission do you believe you need?
How can you give that permission to yourself?
Affirm:
I live in a universe of unlimited abundance.
All that I seek is mine for the asking.
I claim it now.