The goal of coaching,

Detachment from the present states, behaviours, Part 5
Reza Hossein Borr

We do not think of alternatives because we are too attached to what we have, to what we say, to what we do, to what we think about and to what we feel about. That is why we need the help of a coach or a mentor. A great coach must facilitate change from the present attachments to future alternatives.

To begin thinking about discovering new alternatives and striving for having them we have to begin detaching ourselves from different things one by one. What we love obviously we cannot give up. But what is stack to us we can give up and we must give up. Sometimes what is not essentially part of us becomes part of us merely by repetition. While if we accumulate different things we can build on them and get more. Accumulation is not the same thing as attachment. Accumulation is about having more of what you like and keeping more of what you like and enjoying what you have and enjoying applying and using what you have. If you learn the art of accumulation it will stop you from sudden interruptions and even when you make major changes, the major changes would be accumulative and add new values to what you had before.

Give up to find new alternatives whatever that has lost its desired application. If it is something in you which has already expired there is no need for keeping it anymore. This mostly relates to behaviours, possessions, experiences, habits, beliefs, attitude, and established patterns that stop you from going forward and upward. The job of a coach is to facilitate having compelling alternatives that will facilitate detachment from issues which have been deeply internalised.

The other point is we must not be attached to something that is not necessarily useful to us. We have to think what attachment is not anymore useful and replace it with a new alternative. A coach needs to remember that a person gets stack and consequently, the coach has to enable him to move forward. If somebody is supposed to move forward, where he is supposed to move towards? If somebody comes with a problem, he looks for an alternative. The alternative therefore must be so much compelling that makes it easy for him to change. If somebody is attached to behaviour, it is difficult to persuade him to detach himself from the behaviour as it would not trigger thinking creatively in him the generation of a new compelling alternative. It is the attractiveness of the alternative that makes it easy for the person to detach himself from his attachment.

It is important to realise that sometimes people get attached even to pain and sickness. When pain or sickness serves an important purpose, the owner of the pain or sickness likes to retain them. You have seen people who are pessimistic about everything. They have strong attachment to pessimism. If you talk to them you see that pessimism serves them in the way that they want to be served, for example, when a pessimist says that a thing cannot be done, he excuses himself from taking any measure and effort. This person loves to be left alone in his own idle leisure. If somebody convinced him that thing can be done, it means that he must wake up early, leave the comfort of his home and go out in the crowd and do the work in an environment which may be very competitive and stressful.

He even may not have the skills for doing that and therefore, to avoid all these stressful efforts and situations, he just rejects the idea by saying that it could not done. It is also important to remember that when he says it could not be done, he talks of himself and not others. If he generalises the idea and says that it could not be done by anybody, again it does not mean that you and other people cannot do it. When he says that cannot be done, he talks of himself, not you, not me and not the rest.

People attach to something because that thing serves them in one way or another according to their own psychological makeup.

Reza Hossein Borr is an NLP Master Trainer and a leadership consultant and the creator of 150 CDs and 14 Change management models. He is also the author of Manual Success, Manual of Coaching and Mentoring, Motivational Stories that Can Change Your Life, and a New Vision for the Islamic World. He can be contacted by email: sarawani@aol.com www.rezaaa.com