The goal of coaching,

Belief attachments, part 7
Reza Hossein Borr

Belief attachments will not allow you any major change.
The official coaches must realise the differences between religious beliefs and ordinary beliefs. A person is always entitled to hold and maintain his beliefs. If the person himself concludes that he needs some changes in his belief to improve his life that is something that a professional coach can help him with. For example, I know somebody who believes that having money corrupts people. Obviously this person has a despising belief for money in his mind. It is obvious that this person cannot be rich. He may not even be able to make sufficient money to have a decent living. There is the kind of beliefs that professional coach must help the other side to change.

You do not change yourself when you need it badly if you are too much attached to your beliefs. Beliefs can be held for hundreds of years, generations after generations. Not only we hold beliefs firmly but we transfer them firmly to others. Whatever is the result of our beliefs, we cannot change easily even if when we need it badly to change. These are not only the religious beliefs that are considered sacred, some other people consider ordinary beliefs as part of themselves and they say it is called me. I am all about my beliefs and if I do not hold that belief, I would not be the same. It is me. This is not the case. People can change their beliefs over and over and can be the same person. Beliefs can be changed and must be changed when they are not useful anymore.

Sometimes beliefs become part of our identity. This is a very dangerous situation. The identity of the people must be separated from their beliefs but this is not the case now. We identify people as Moslems, Christians, Jews and others. In fact people can change any other thing so easily but when it comes to changing religion everything becomes very difficult. Those religions which are general do leave room for change. Anyway in coaching we do not deal with religious beliefs. We only deal with ordinary beliefs that can remove some barriers from the away of progress and prosperity of the people. The coaches must realise this very important issue.

Wrong beliefs can be the source of immense problems and poverty. Belief attachments are more difficult than any other thing in life to change and they are source of more behaviours than any other thing. Those who are attached to much to their beliefs can become the product of their beliefs and you can see the embodiment of their beliefs in their lives. If their beliefs and opinions are constructive and productive, they usually have very fulfilling lives. If the beliefs are negative and out of dated opinions, then they make you part an out of dated world. Those people that you see on the streets and looked very odd present their beliefs in their appearances. The appearance of someone can show a lot of his beliefs. Whenever you talk about the negative results of the beliefs, they argue that the beliefs are sacred and nothing must change your beliefs.

Professional coaches usually do not touch religious beliefs are. They usually deal with the beliefs that are originated from political and soc-economic conditions. They know that people are attached to their religions because they were born in the religion. The people love to have their religion appreciated even if sometimes it is the source of discomfort for them and when this is the case, they usually blame themselves for what has got wrong and not their religion. This is the reason that the professional coaches must avoid any religious arguments. Anyway a coach must look for other beliefs and discover how they are the source of different difficulties that the person may suffer from.

It is up to the person to decide what he can do and what he wants to do with his beliefs. If the belief is limiting one he has the choice of changing it. But unless the belief is changed the resulting behaviour from the belief cannot be avoided.

People become attached to the beliefs physically, mentally and emotionally. The coach must act from within the world of the coachee so that his world is reflected and respected.

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

The goal of coaching, Generating alternatives, 4

Generating alternatives, part 4

Reza Hossein Borr

If I do not do this, what can I do? If I do not like this behaviour, what behaviour I must have? If I do not like my job, what kind of job I would like?

If I do not like my car, what do I like? If I do not like, what do I like? I defined the goal of coaching as triggering thinking creatively to generate alternatives, yes alternatives.

There is an alternative to everything. There are in fact alternatives to all the present states, situations, behaviours, beliefs, thoughts, and possessions. Whatever you have and whatever you do and hope that you have done, there are many alternatives to them. Life becomes very simple if you think of alternatives. Life becomes extremely difficult if you do not think of alternatives and think that you cannot have anything different. Think for ways of alternatives. But don't fix something which is not broken as the Americans used to say. If something is working well just keep it. But always think of alternatives.

Ask yourself what will happen if I have a new alternative to the present state or behaviour or belief? Ask yourself what will happen if I have a new job? What will happen if I have a new home? What will happen if I can move to new city? What will happen if I have new friends? What will happen if I have different ideas? What will happen if I speak differently? What will happen if I think differently? There are always better and more effective alternatives.

When there are better and more effective alternatives why we should not go for them? Always think of alternatives. The people who thought of alternatives have created all those things that we have. The people who have not thought of alternatives have not changed anything. We need to change and therefore, alternatives must be always thought of, discussed and even evaluated and encouraged to happen.

When you coach somebody, you trigger in her a sense of looking for alternatives. People get stack because they do not think of alternatives and think that there is no alternative. People get sick because they think there is no any alternative state. If you want to make permanent changes in somebody, change his attitude from being stack to finding alternatives. Once a person accepted and acknowledged that there are alternatives he can raise the question of what alternative will best suit me in the present situation. Finding alternatives is giving people hope that they can see a better future.

People usually do not think about alternatives unless external or internal forces force them in so doing. They usually accept what comes on their way and move on as if that is the only choice. Nothing is the only choice. Every choice has other choices. Every choice has an alternative. In fact there is no alternative to anything unless you have to ask the question. People usually do not ask questions from themselves. They ask questions from others, and the greatest question that anybody can and must ask himself is: what is the alternative? Alternative to whatever I think, alternatives to whatever I say, alternative to whatever I feel, and alternative to whatever I do and alternative to whatever I have. If you have the courage to ask yourself these questions, initially you will begin a great sense of curiosity which is accompanied by uncertainty and also by turbulence in your life. People love stability and security and asking questions about alternatives tarnishes, reduces or even erodes the level of stability and security they have.

A coach, a mentor and a master must generate a state within a person in which she accepts to be questioned vigorously. He also must willingly accept to answer questions vigorously. A lot of solutions will come out when the questions are asked and when the answers are given. A lot of new inventions come up. A lot of new ideas would be produced. A lot of behaviours will change. A lot of efforts will follow. A lot of energy would be released.

One of the best skills of the coach is to create an environment in which responding becomes easy and systematic. Since answers will reveal a lot of secrets and possibly sad events of the past, a coach and a mentor must have the ability to create a comfortable environment in which recalling of the sad news and sad events of the past will bring in new solutions, not only to the same sad event but how in the future that the person will be equipped with the necessary skills for undesirable events of the future.

We make our future by what we already have and what we have already done and what we can do now. Making a good future will not be possible if the right alternatives are not created now. Find the right alternatives, apply them and when you reached the desired outcomes, think of how you can improve them even further. We must never stop looking for being better, looking better, having more, and the great secret is to start NOW.

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

What is the goal of coaching?

Thinking creatively, Part 3
Reza Hossein Borr

I defined the goal of coaching as triggering thinking creatively to generate alternatives. I described triggering and thinking from the point of view of coaching when a life coach or an executive coach intends to help another person.

Since the other people come to you when they cannot find the solutions themselves, it is your responsibility as a coach to trigger in them a process of thinking creatively to find a solution. You are not supposed to provide them with a solution although you may suggest solutions and ways of getting out of block using the examples of other people. Examples of other people are usually called story telling and I have written several articles about how to tell a story effectively to create change. Since the intention is to find solutions, the main source of finding a solution is creativity. Those people, who are more creative and know the art of thinking creatively and have the experience and knowledge of creating new ideas and you solutions, can easily and quickly generate dozens of different ideas and process them to find out which one can be the best solutions and alternatives to the present stumbling block.

Remember that there must be a very specific stumbling block that you have to do generate an alternative that can serve your interests better than the present one. Thinking creatively can be easy for those whose left sphere of brain has been more active and more difficult for those whose right sphere of brain is less active. People are usually classified as having a more proactive left brain or right brain. The people with more active right brain have more capacity for creativity; however, they need the necessary training for learning the art of creating solutions. Organising the work of brain and shaping the ideas that it produces is a major task that has to be mastered by everybody in order to stop the random wanderings of the brain which will not bring any tangible idea or product.

NLP offers the coaches with an amazing strategy for becoming creative. The wandering in the open air and looking up at the right side can bring hundreds of new ideas. You can walk leisurely in a park or anywhere else for the purpose of creating ideas. Here your purpose and outcome must be very clear. You must walk to create new solutions. Before beginning to walk, you set an outcome and guide your brain for producing solutions and ideas. Once the goal is set, walk with your head up, looking towards right side without endangering yourself of falling down. Keep a pen and paper and write different ideas that may come to your mind. The looking up and down will change your state and allow radon ideas to come to your mind. This procedure is for when you have already identified the problem and seek a solution. If there is no the possibility of walking in open air then seat or stand in the comfort of your home or office, looking up and at the right in a very relaxed manner and allowing comfortable sensations to move in your body and allow your brain to generate intended outcomes.

When you are dealing face-to-face with other people, off course, you can not walk in a park but you still have the choice of looking up towards the right side to trigger the action in that part of your brain that generates new ideas. This must be done very delicately without disturbing other people.

When you repeat this technique regularly you will be in a position to produce and generate hundreds of solutions and apply them before the problem happens. My philosophy has been always something like that: find the solutions and apply them before the problem happens and if the problems happen, find solutions not only to resolve the problem now but prevents the future problems from happening.

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