How does a coach know what you're thinking?

They don't and they never will!

We express our thoughts and feelings in many different ways, from what we say, to how we say it and from how we breathe to when we blush or how we gesticulate (wave our arms about 😊).

A coach might be more skilled in picking up these nuances and may reflect them back to you but only you ever truly know what you think and why.

Our experience of the world is completely subjective and unique. No one can ever measure your experience. What is it like to be you? How does it feel?

An picture of a shadow cast on the ripples of water of 2 people in love holding hands

Are words, sentences and language good enough to allow for clear expression? They can’t measure a feeling but alongside emotions or perhaps arts and creativity, do allow our qualia to solidify in that moment to words or expressions that go some way to describe our experience or feeling. 

The feelings and expressions we articulate through words are collectively and continually shaped as part of our culture. Language is continually evolving in our collective agreement of what words mean.  

The words you say and how you say them have your meaning and expression. Meaning and expression that may mean one thing to you and something else to someone else.

The word, ‘run’ is said to have over 600 different meanings. If you run an organisation that runs running events that sometimes run late, causing tears to run down your face, the way you use the word run and the meaning it has may differ to you and other people.

What do the following words mean to you: Value? Success? Balance?

What matters most is your thinking and your expression, helped by the use of words. Regardless of the words you use or how you externalise your inner experience, the act of expression itself makes you more coherent.

And it doesn't really matter what you say or how you express yourself or even how well you are understood. Externalising your internal experience in the way you do is absolutely correct and creates your world.

Our experience becomes coherent when it is expressed. People say, ‘speaking it aloud somehow makes it real.’ Do thoughts and feelings ever take their full shape through words? Would you know your thoughts as well if you didn't express them?

How good are you at expressing yourself? How well do you know yourself? How well do you understand yourself?

When you share, hearing yourself, experiencing yourself, you elevate awareness of your thoughts. You see yourself and how you express your experience of the world.

When a coach actively listens, they create the environment for you to hear yourself. They slowly enable the environment for your thoughts to flow and become connected. For you to let loose and express yourself and your meaning.

A coach remaining non-judgemental allows you to flow and express freely and for the meaning to be most important to you. Your expressions of thoughts and feelings surface safely and without judgement.

A coach doesn't offer advice, a coach offers quality thinking time and space to explore your expression. A coach listens, a coach sits with you and allows you to think, explore and make sense. They are a passenger that supports your journey.

When you are heard, when you are seen, you are connected to the listener and the viewer; these connections generate awareness, they create consciousness. 

It feels like we have a desire to be connected and to be in agreement, as this agreement helps stabilise our world. This collective agreement moves us from subjectivity, towards objectivity.  The connections are incredibly important. 

If a tree falls in a wood and no one hears it, it doesn't make a sound. Without the connection between the tree falling, the air moving and the ear listening no qualia of sound is experienced. 

If a person expresses themselves and no one experiences it, they aren't connected…they aren't as conscious?

(Dictionary definition of conscious: from Latin conscius "knowing or being aware of something, knowing something along with another person," derived from con-, com- "with" and scire "to know")

And what does this mean for you?  Well, a good way to think about this is what assumptions or agreed subjectivity might be limiting your view? If what you perceive to be the objective world is simply a reality that the majority of us have agreed upon, whose reality have you been agreeing to live in?

If we are creating an objective reality only through agreed subjectivity, what agreed filters are you looking through?  

Are we constantly creating a reality through our collective yet subjective agreement?  This feels somewhat aligned to simulation theory.  That what we experience is simulated.  This has many angles from an actual simulation like the film the Matrix, or a computer game simulation, based on the thought that as a virtual reality or game becomes increasingly real, one day it may be as real as your life feels today… 

…And maybe that simulation is already the reality you are experiencing.

What I am proposing is our collective subjective agreement creates the simulation. Objectivity is the simulation and it may be a skewed view of reality to help us have stability, to evolve and to grow.   What lies beneath this? Or indeed above it?

We all decide to call a tree a tree and that creates the reality of a tree being a tree. It wasn't a tree until we labelled it that.  What was it before we existed? 

If a tree existed before anyone experienced it as a tree, then that tree never existed. 

As consciousness is created in connection, so is our world.  

An 'objective' view is apparent when we all agree to wear and look through the same headset.  

This simulation starts to break down or open up when we truly explore our reality.  Coherence coaching can help people take off their headset for an hour and see their real world. 

Coaches challenge people to see the real world and not the one they think they should see to fit in. Is it better to stand out or blend in? 

A coach will truly listen to you, challenge your assumptions and help create the connections required for your model of the world to emerge and solidify from you, without the filters. This can help you know yourself and be yourself more. 

If you feel like you are constantly fighting for others to see the world the way you do, wasting energy on trying to agree what is true and objective, perhaps you need to be heard? 

What happens to our shared reality when we finally take the time to truly listen to one another more?

This post has explored many elements of Philokosmia and particularly the 7th harmonic of Philokosmia, ‘Objectivity is collectively agreed subjectivity’