Life Coach Training
Lesson 15
Work with the Willing
Several years ago a friend cited to me a maxim that has become one of the foundations of my coaching practice, my business, and my life:
Work with the willing.
I have used this motto many, many times to make crucial decisions, and it always serves profoundly. The principle applies to your coaching practice on several levels:
1. Work with willing clients.
Establish your intention to attract clients who show up, gain benefit from your sessions, make progress, and attain their goals. You have the power to draw clients you want to work with, and who want to work with you. When your intention for these results is strong, the Law of Attraction will match you with those in alignment with you.
You can speak or write affirmations to the above effect and do like visualizations. You can also declare your ideal clients and results on your website and/or brochure.
You can say, for example:
“I work with clients who are eager to change their lives for the better and are willing to take positive steps in that direction,
(or)
“I use a holistic approach to coaching and I value clients who share this perspective.”
Whether you affirm your intention privately or you publicize it, you are sending out a hailing frequency that will screen clients for you and uplevel the integrity and effectiveness of your practice before your clients even show up.
2. Work with the part of yourself that is willing.
There are types or elements of coaching that you want to do, and other aspects that you are not willing to do. Identify where your willingness lives and where your unwillingness lives, tell the truth about both, and act in accord with your intentions. For example, you may be willing to do a certain number of sessions a week; or work with a certain niche of clients; or accept a certain minimum fee; or spend just so much time with any one client. Be very honest about what you are willing to do and what you are not willing to do.
3. Work with the part of your clients that is willing.
While your clients may be generally willing, there may be parts of them that are not willing. If you can help your clients recognize where their passion and willingness live, and not try to force their way through resistance, the resistance will dissipate. A Course in Miracles tells us, “All that is required for a miracle is a little willingness.” Your client does not have to be 100% gung ho to accomplish a particular goal. If she is even a little open, Spirit can wedge a positive result in the crack.
4. Work with the part of the universe that is willing.
If you cling to an agenda about what should happen in coaching, how, and when; and you try to force this agenda, you will become frustrated and disappointed. If you step back from a particular expectation and watch for signs of what wants to happen in your life and in your clients’ lives, direction will become obvious and an open path will reveal itself. When you and your client flow with the river of life, your work will be so easy that it doesn’t feel like work at all.
A butcher in a small village was known for the fact that his knife never needed sharpening. When people asked him why, he explained, “I never try to force the knife through gristle or bone. When I start to feel resistance I move my knife slightly to the side and cut around the obstacle. That’s how my knife always stays sharp.”
The best book I know on aligning with the willingness of the universe is Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, translation by Gia Fu Feng, Jane English, and Jacob Needleman. This brilliant inspirational classic has been on my shelf for many years, and always will be.
Intention is everything. Get clear on your clients, your practice, and your results, act in alignment with what you believe and want, and the universe will lay gifts at your door.
“When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer.”
–A Course in Miracles, Text, p. 280
Exercise:
1. Write in your own words an affirmation declaring that you intend to work only with willing clients:
2. Considering your coaching practice, what are you truly willing to do?
What are you unwilling to do?
3. If you are already working with clients, what parts of your clients are willing? (If you are not already coaching, apply this question to friends, relatives or colleagues.)
What parts are unwilling?
4. In your life other than your coaching practice, what are you doing that you are not really willing to do?
What are you not doing that you are willing (would prefer) to do?
How might you bring your actions more into alignment with your true willingness?
Affirm:
I go where willingness lives.
I work with clients who are willing, in a way that I am willing.
I utilize the power of choice in my coaching practice and my life.
The material in this lesson © by Alan Cohen is proprietary for the education of students enrolled in
Life Coach Training Program by the Foundation for Holistic Life Coaching.
Using for any other purpose without permission is strictly prohibited.