Got up just after 4am this morning, couldn't sleep - the dogs were barking and a mosquito did a jazz number in my ear... Checked my email and went outside with my coffee @ 5am - the birds were singing and the air smelled fresh! The beauty of summer!

Class was very interesting - we had an actual coaching session, with a friend in class, to get practical experience - the most difficult thing was NOT to give advice! If this sounds too simple... try it! It's much harder than it looks to listen to someone talking about their problems and NOT give advice.

Rather ask powerful questions - for example..

- "Why do you think that happened?"
- "For how long has this been an issue?"
- "How does that make you feel?"
- "What possible solutions can you come up with for this?"
- "What have you already tried to resolve this?"
- "What has worked for you before? / has not worked?"

etc.

Sometimes people just need to talk and don't necessarily want your advice... just be there for them, and listen! Don't agree, don't disagree, don't give advice immediately and don't judge them! Some of the best type of support is a good balance between simply being there for the person, balanced with active listening.

Advice has its place but we generally tend to dive in too quickly with advice and as a result we don't really listen!

Often the person will benefit much, much more, by just being heard.

Anyway - that's enough of coaching for one day! Next week we start with Family Healing.

I took this photo at the music shop, where my son bought his guitar strings, this afternoon - I opened the photo in ACDC and applied the "Photo negative" effect after cropping it a bit (to get rid of the price tags!) You can see the original photo here.


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