So in the last video, we talked about the different ways in which we learn.
And this is actually really, really important for us to understand as life coaches, because sometimes
some people respond more to their perception of reality than what they do towards reality itself.
You may have heard me say once or twice through the course up until now that how we see things isn't
always how things actually are.
I mean, come on, if you're going to be honest here, how many times in your life have you gotten the
wrong end of the stick?
Have you made an assumption or arrived that I can collect a conclusion about who someone is, whether
someone is good or bad, all in a side of your mind as you've listened to all the stories that you've
told yourself, perhaps backed up with somebody else's stories and someone else's justifications, and
then you arrive at this place, you know who someone is.
You know, they're a bad person.
You know, they can't be trusted.
And it's not because you know anything about them.
It's not because you know, their backstory, their history, their current circumstances or where they're
going in life.
You have just been completely assumptions and have assumed the worst.
Sometimes we assume the best of people.
Sometimes we end up and develop in all sorts of expectations from the relationships that we're in.
Expectations, which is just another expression off perception.
All right.
We perceive people to be a certain way.
We expect that people are going to conform and be a certain way for us.
And when our expectations are met, we end up disappointed.
Now, we've talked about this so far.
All right.
It's important that we understand that we all bring our own personal bias, our own subjectivity, our
own perspectives into every single situation.
All right.
No.
When we are not aware in life, when we are not aware of ourselves, we fall into this into this trap
of believe in that.
There is no degree of truth outside of that which we've experienced or that we understand.
All right.
My friend, that is never, ever the case.
Hence the reason in the context of our coaching relationships.
I asked her pretty much all of our relationships.
The healthiest attitude and approach that we can take is one off inquisitiveness where we are eager
and striving to understand people.
Second, do we assume that we know who someone is?
Is a second, do we have fallen into the trap of complete ignorance?
All right.
Reason being is because we will never nor anyone else.
The only experts that we are the expert off in life is ourselves.
We know ourselves from the inside out because we've lived and walked a lifetime in our shoes.
But we have never and we will never, ever know anyone else as well as what we know ourselves.
And even some people, they aren't even the experts of themselves because they've never looked inwardly
and evaluated themselves objectively.
It is important to to really become grounded in this fact that our perception is rarely the truth.
How we see things is nine times out of ten gonna be a million and one miles away from the truth, because
it's just our perception that people think that how they see things is real.
So when a client comes to us, they may very well be given voice to their feelings, how they feel,
what they think, what they are scared off, what they believe, what their opinions are, what their
world views are.
All these sorts of things.
But you've got to understand is all just perception.
Nine times out of ten people are responding more to their perception of reality than what they are to
the nature of reality within itself.
It's important to understand that, yes, our emotions are real.
Our kinds emotions are real.
They're real things.
They do exist.
However, they rarely reflect our actual reality.
With me more our emotions are a response to our thoughts or our beliefs or what assumptions aren't our
world views.
Some people, unfortunately, believe that emotions are illnesses.
Now, there's a book that was written by the American Association of Psychology, Psychiatry and back
in the think it was the 50s of the 60s called the DSM.
This was the dyke Gnostic old Diagnostic Statistical Manual.
And this was pretty much a bunch of psychiatrists sat around a table and literally plucked words out
of thin air to describe symptoms, to define symptoms.
And then pretty much every mental health condition under the sun was borne by a bunch of academics sitting
around the table right there.
What they created this book for was as a game for general practitioners and doctors.
Right.
To refer people on to a psychologist, test psychologist or psychiatrist and things like that.
And at some point over the last 20 to 30 years, it has become culturally accepted.
But emotions are illnesses, i.e., there are conditions that people need medication for.
But my friend the most certainly are not.
It's important we understand this is life coaches.
Why?
Because some people focus more on their feelings and what they do upon the nature of their reality.
And then some people can be completely deluded within themselves.
So it's important to understand that emotions are intelligences, but they are, in fact, guides.
All right.
That can help us to identify and notice those aspects or areas of our life that are working for us as
well as what we hope they otherwise would.
All right.
Our emotions can really service by pointing us in the direction that we need to travel.
So it's crucial that we understand this is life coaches so that we're not just dismissing people's emotions,
because that would be completely belittling of the human experience, but instead we are responding
more to them.
Some people if say, for example, you've got a client and they have spent years speaking with an old
school counselor or a psychiatrist or psychologist, they've been to the doctors.
They might very well have come to this place where they identify with a condition or a label has been
placed upon them, which is obviously going to be quite limiting by nature.
Our coach, our role as coaches is not to respond to the labels that were clients place upon themselves,
but instead is to establish the facts, the actual truth about who our clients are, how they've come
to define themselves, who they want to be moving forward, and what they ultimately want to accomplish.
When people place labels on themselves, what they're automatically doing is placing themselves in boxes.
Some people define themselves by what they do.
Some people will define themselves by how they feel.
Some people will define themselves, their core identity, by their sexual orientation or by their religious
beliefs or by some of the things they've done in the past.
I think I mentioned earlier on.
Was a young man I was a work with years ago who had spent some time and in prison, he defined himself
as being a criminal.
So guess what happens every time I bring about six months after you get out of prison because he defined
himself by the things he done in the past.
Well, people naturally conform and behave in accordance with how they define themselves on an identity
level.
So it's important that we understand and the difference between perception and reality.
And it's also important that we don't respond to our clients perceptions.
Sometimes when they say, I am ill, why am sick?
I have this emotion.
I am broken.
I need fixed.
Why?
Because that's just a victim mentality that isn't gonna serve our clients in any way whatsoever.
So our role as life coaches is to get our investigator hurt, so on, and kind of be like Sherlock Holmes.
Ask good questions.
So the we're not here to advise or correct our clients, but instead we're to lead them into greater
degrees of insight and acceptance of truth about themselves and about what they actually want.
Most people focus on what you don't want then upon what they do.
So here's a thing we cannot see the big picture in life when we're operating inside of a small frame.
No, this is one of these universal truth.
It's always going to be true, regardless of what angle we're looking at it from.
Say, for example, a person defines himself by what they do.
Give you an example.
I used to define myself as being useless.
I find myself as being useless for many, many years.
And I genuinely believe that it was because I didn't know how it was that I best learned.
So when I put a label like this label on me and the famous self in this way, this would really prevent
me from ever taking risks, from stepping outside of the comfort zone, pursuing the things that I really
wanted to do because I never had the confidence in myself or I don't have the confidence, my ability
to learn to solve problems.
I didn't have the confidence in my ability to perform or produce.
So I would just do nothing.
Right.
Quite similar to current I would hold back.
Believe it or not.
All right.
So when we are operating inside of a small frame, i.e. a small way of thinking or when we're operating
inside of our perspective, that isn't being challenged in some way.
Well, of course, we're always gonna be limited by nature and we cannot see what we can see.
We don't know what we don't know half the time.
Hence the reason for us on a personal level and also as coaches is crucial that we remain in this place
of inquisitiveness.
Sometimes we all prejudge our current day situations based upon past results.
And by this, I mean this is just another way that we perceive inaccurately in life.
We expect sometimes that the past equals.
Determines the future.
A failed in the past.
I didn't get the result that I wanted in the past.
I had Mahidol of these destructive relationships in the past, which means I'm therefore doomed to more
of the same as some point in the future.
Well, that is going to be true for us.
If we don't change.
If we don't grow.
If we don't understand the lens that we're looking through life from, if that makes sense.
We constantly over and undervalue how valuable we genuinely are when we do not understand ourselves,
when we have not made peace with ourselves.
We are forever going to be looking for validation and approval from other people.
No, I tell you all of these things because that's where many of your clients are going to be when they
come to you for coaching.
Share with you a little story here.
There was a there was a guy you think he was a captain of an oil rig and there was a problem in one
of the engine rooms downstairs.
And then this this oil rig was pumping out so much oil every single day, a multi million pound dollar
industry.
Now, obviously, with the engine shutdown, this was going to cost him a lot of money.
So he'd called the mainland and asked for an engineer to be flown out as an emergency to to rectify
the problem.
No, the only guy that the Kurds could find was a guy who was kind of like emergency response.
The captain of the oil tanker and said, so how much is it gonna cost to get you out here to fix this
issue that I have with my with my rig?
And he said, well, it's gonna cost around about one hundred thousand pounds.
So the captain agreed and then helicopter flew the guy out.
No.
When the engineer got there, he went right down into the engine rooms and he tinkered around.
He wandered around for about five or ten minutes and then he got down on his knees and then he turned
to switch off.
All the lights went down.
Did he turn the switch back on?
Screwed, unscrewed.
Abort, then take the back up again.
I then that was it.
All the lights came back on, the engines back up running again.
And the captain said, this is absolutely fantastic.
I can't believe you've just rectified this problem just like that.
Absolutely amazing.
So surely your and the fee that you quoted me doesn't stand.
And the engineer said no, but the fee that are quoted, as is the fee that, you know, Drew, me and
the captain of the oil rig said, well, how can that possibly be the case?
You've only been here for 10 minutes this entire journey.
And no, get over here.
Only took you 45 minutes.
So what are you telling me is a hundred thousand pounds for one hour of your time?
And he said, no, no, no, not at all.
For one hour of my time, that's only one hundred pounds.
But the rest of the money is for all the years that it took me to learn to know where to look.
Are you with me?
So tell me the story.
Why?
Because there's life coaches, if we understand that people respond more to their perception than what
they do towards reality.
There were when people were having problems, when people were having issues, when people were having
feelings and emotions that they didn't want to be having.
Well, what we can surmise is that more often than not, people were just responding to their perception
than truth, responding or reacting more to their perception of reality than reality within itself.
And this is why we ask questions.
And this is where that exercise that to current through just a little while ago are very, very good
for offering fresh perspective.
All right.
Because many people focus more of what they don't want.
Many people focus on who they think's going to happen, what they think is going on, rather than what
is actually going on.
So as life coaches, we become students of truth who just simply lead or strive to lead our clients
into greater revelations and places of acceptance of truth.
If that makes sense.
So I want to share with you one more story.
All right.
On how it is that we can all fall victim to inaccurate perception sometimes.
There was a guy on a train and the guy was sitting there with his two young children and his head was
down and he was a little bit tired.
And these two children were running up and down.
The courage just going wild.
They were making noise.
They were playing.
They were screaming.
They were screech in at the top end of the courage.
There was another gentleman a little bit a little bit older, wearing a heart.
He was one of these business types.
As he watched these children, he was trying to read his newspaper and he start again so frustrated.
These children were running up and down, completely oblivious to the fact that there's other people
on the train.
How inconsiderate.
And as he really focused on this, he looked across at this man who was sitting there, the father of
the two children, and he started getting angry.
He says, what does this man all about?
What an absolutely useless father.
I'm going to get up and I'm going to go and give this guy a piece of my mind.
Who does he think he is?
What a completely irresponsible man.
What an irresponsible father says.
He stomped up and he walked down the courage and he stood in front of the man who was sitting there
and he said, Excuse me, young man, are you not aware that your children are running up and down his
courage, causing absolute havoc, screaming and shouting, will you please bring your children under
control and become a responsible father?
Just like that.
Then he was met with the man sitting in front of him, looked up and he said, Sir, sir, I'm.
I'm so sorry.
I really am sorry.
Listen.
I've actually just just come from the funeral off of my wife and the mother of my two children.
And to be honest with you, I don't even know if the truth has sunk in just yet.
And they're running around normal.
They're playing.
They're having fun.
And I don't want them to be experiencing what I'm experiencing.
So I'm sorry.
I will do my best to bring these children under control.
Tell me, how angry do you think that business type gentleman remains once he's been presented with
a bit more information?
Was he been presented with what was actually going on with this man?
No, I don't know how you've responded to the story, but if you think about it, we all do this.
Sometimes I do it.
Sometimes I respond to my perception without knowing all the facts is a pretty good chance that you
do, too.
And it's important that in time, once we've established trust with my clients, we start looking at
all the stories they tell us, i.e. all of their perceptions of if they are her or the interpretations
they make of their life's events.
And just simply look through this lens of truth.
We can't see the big picture when we're inside of a small frame, the small frame simply being our perception,
the big picture being the nature of reality, i.e., what is actually true.
Are you with me?
You understand why I want to share an idea like this?
At this stage of this section of the course, because most people respond more to their perception of
reality than what they do reality itself.
When people say I have a problem, when people say I have an issue, when people say I have a challenge,
when people say I can't do the things that I want to do.
Are they actually responding more to what's true for them or are they just responding to what they think
is true?
No, I mean, you we know the answer, but they don't.
So what we say and how we say what we say is gonna determine whether they go on to see what we see.
This is pretty much the essence of the coaching relationship.
So perception in the next video, I'm going to have a little exercise.
We're going to play a little game is called How Do You Perceive Things?
All right.
I'm going to present you with some words and I'm going to look at you in a certain way and say some
things in a certain way.
And what I'm going to invite you to do is just simply become aware of yourself and just see how it is
that you respond to the words that I say and how you respond to the words I say is just going to simply
be based upon your current perception, the way that you see these words.
All right.
So without further ado, I look forward to seeing you again in the next clip.
I hope you've found this video interesting and insightful.