I’d like to share a story recently told to me by a coach who chose to use the Listening Space process with a client. This client was coming to terms with a recent diagnosis of ADHD:
This client was wanting to understand himself better, to figure out how to be himself. He was using emotive language so I thought that asking the Listening Space questions might be helpful for him.
The focus word for his exploration came quite easily. The word was ‘exhausting’, a word he had used a few times. He was saying things like,
‘I’m so tired. I wish my brain would stop thinking about a thousand things at once.’
The Listening Space questions helped him to slow his thinking down and to connect with what exhausting felt like in his body. Exhausting was on the inside, around his heart. It felt like a ball, a big shadow. There was no sound to it.
Bringing awareness to his experience in this way seemed to give him more clarity. He went on to say:
‘I’m noticing a fork in the road.
On the one hand there’s the route that I have always gone down.
On the other hand, there is a pathway to something better.
There doesn’t have to be friction with the world that I am in.
There is another way.’
The coach then reflected on their experience of using the Listening Space:
I felt like I was witness to something powerful, something intimate and important. I don’t think he had opened his mind to this possibility until this point. It was a cathartic moment that set the scene for helpful discussion about his strengths.
The interesting thing is that this process also provided me with a way of slowing down my own brain down as a coach. As coaches there are often unlimited roads we could go down with our clients. We can jump to second guessing, to providing solutions, to becoming a rescuer. This process allows me to listen for what is, rather than listening to think of some response.
If you’re curious about how the Listening Space could benefit you and would like to learn more then you can:
read the book
join a group-live course
watch recorded Listening Space sessions
