“Well, this hasn’t worked!”
Oh no!
A dissatisfied-sounding customer at the very start of their final session with me.
What to do?
An earlier version of Giles might have got quite up in his head about that one. Taken it personally. Messed up the rest of the session, trying to persuade or cajole or reason.
These days, I’m just curious.
“Fascinating! What is it that looks like it hasn’t worked? What was supposed to happen?”
The beginnings and the ends of coaching sessions with me are usually very different affairs.
Because we’re human. We get shook up. We take our thinking very seriously. We don’t notice it’s running the show again.
It’s so innocent.
And so the beginnings of sessions with clients are sometimes (ok, quite often) a bit… shook up. A bit thinky. All the mind’s problems come spilling out, and it’s my job to listen.
And doing so with my client, as they answered my dumb questions, it became apparent that their opening statement was missing a bit. It should have been:
You see, it had a bunch of expectations about what should (🚩) have happened.
Over the weeks of working together, it had gathered that it was the problem and it wanted to get involved and stop itself from thinking. (LOL)
Because that’s enlightenment, yes? It needed to make this work, and Giles—that tricky bastard!—wasn’t telling it how to do that!!
😡
At which point I’m reminded of the quote from Dr Chris Niebauer's glorious book, No Self, No Problem:
“Even if the left brain wants to go beyond itself, it can only go deeper into itself.”
So, when looked at from the vantage point of the mind, No! It absolutely ‘hadn’t worked’!!
And it never will.
It’s quite simply a game you cannot win.
Later on, towards the end of the session, thinking had settled.
Together, we’d relaxed back into life, into presence, and something approaching a state of being (rather than a state of doing, thinking, analysing, judging, calculating, remembering, applying, trying and any other verb you can think of that’s not ‘being’).
When looked at from this vantage point—not identified with, or being at the whims of the mind—it becomes apparent that there’s not even really anything to ‘work’.
🤷🏻♂️
The whole idea of something ‘working’ is just a creation of the mind. That mechanical, sleeves-rolled-up left brain of ours, wanting to stick its oar in and ‘make things better’ (for itself).
Honestly, the mind is like the Ben & Jerry’s of suffering: there will always be another flavour of ‘I’ll be happy when…’ 🙄😂
The key isn’t to take the mind's demands on at face value.
The key is to spot what it’s up to.
Again and again and again and again and again and (yawns) again.
🥱
And in every moment that you do… you don’t win the game.
You quit the game.
Freedom!!
💖
Giles
Book recommendation
Chris Niebauer PhD
I've got the paperback and the audiobook – very accessible and enlightening.