AtQ – How Might You Go Deeper?

Exploring Powerful Questions

In this week’s Talking Note I explored the idea of drinking from the root. When we get close to the source the experience of our pursuit and the skills we learn both shift. The pursuit of drinking from the root also changes us. We learn to seek in a different kind of way. We learn to receive in a different kind of way. We become the kinds of people that desire and can take the overwhelming and profound truths and mysteries of reality.

This isn’t a license to push ourselves to confront harsh realities without grace. There is no need for harshness, as kindness and gentleness may be found at the root, too. Rather, there becomes a desire for knowledge – interaction with what is actually going on. Less navigating masks, false personas, and manipulating language and imagery. More seeing, experiencing, and interacting with ourselves and the world around us as it really is – to whatever degree we might.

If such a desire exists, we can begin exploring with a straight-forward question:

How might you go deeper?

There are two main kinds of coaching – one centers on action, the other awareness. Action-centered coaching is focused on doing things, scratching tasks off our list, and accountability for hitting goals. Awareness-centered coaching but considers the achievement of goals an outcome of greater awareness. Awareness of what? Our personal desires (the real deep ones that drive us) and blocks (anyone here have an inner critic?). With greater awareness the possibility for a deep shift in one’s person can occur. With the shift, the desired action then becomes the natural output of the person – the task list become lighter, the inner critic less critical.

Consider this example: