"Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering I am determined to
speak truthfully, with words that inspire self confidence, joy and hope".
-Thich Nhat Hanh

I have chosen the above quote to use on my future web site and promotional materials for my coaching practice. These words embody the essence of what I seek to bring to my work as a coach and the gifts I aspire to bring to my clients.

As an attorney, I am/have been a professional advice giver. I am paid to speak and to captain the ship upon which my clients are passengers. They determine the destination but I determine the course and the speed, steering toward a predetermined desired outcome of external reward.

As a life coach and particularly as a spiritual life coach, I am concerned with the inner landscape of both my client and myself. The destinations here are more sublime as I seek to enhance my client's wholeness, their unique gifts and their fulfillment. On this ship the client is always the captain and I their confidante, their mirror, encouraging their own inner wisdom and maintaining a big view of their journey and their potential.

How I communicate, be it through words, silence, or the presence of my full attention can help provide the wind they need at their sails, the calm waters and sunny skies for safe passage, and an ever present compass to show if they are headed in their own right direction.

In the Four Agreements, Miguel Ruiz shares with us ancient Toltec wisdom which identifies being impeccable with your word as one of the four basic ways to move beyond suffering into a life of power and clarity.

"The word is the most powerful tool we have as humans. Depending on how it is used, the word can help us to become free or to enslave us. By impeccability we can clear up communication problems, heal relationships and create enough personal power to break old limiting agreements."

As I move deeper and deeper into my work as a coach I find that my words, spoken truthfully, gently, attentively, sparingly and intuitively, from my heart, can have a profound effect on my clients.

Each client is unique, and each conversation is unique. This calls upon me as a coach to creatively, without predetermination, without a script, without self judgment, to find the right method of communication with that person in that moment. This requires my full presence and attention.

"Coming up with a formula won't work. You don't know what's going to help, but all the same you need to speak and act with clarity and decisiveness. Clarity and decisiveness come from the willingness to slow down, to listen to and to look at what's happening. They come from opening your heart and not running away. Then your actions and speech accord with what needs to be done - for you and for the other person."
-Pema Chodron

Along with fully conscious present moment awareness and speaking impeccably from our hearts we also have in our coaches communication tool box the use of powerful questions. The Quakers have a tradition of asking questions in their "clearness committees" which are designed to help people who are looking for greater clarity with an issue in their lives. After presentation of the person's issue the committee sits in silence and then follows a simple rule: Ask questions only! No advice, no problem solving, only questions in a spirit of caring.

"Our tendency as a culture is toward being very proactive, solving problems and fixing things. By assuming the answer is in the person seeking clarity and that we help by listening not by "fixing", the clearness process is enhanced? Asking questions seems to engage the focus person in a way that makes hearing his or her own inner guidance more possible?.."
-Gregg Levoy

I have certainly found this to be true as a coach, as a coaching client, and as an observer of others coaching sessions.

Finally, I have also found that silence itself can be and is often a most powerful way to communicate effectively. Coming from the legal profession where it is sometimes said that we speak as if we are being paid by the word, this has been a challenging but welcome space for me to inhabit.

"The unmanifested is present in this world as silence. This is why it has been said that nothing in this world is so like God as silence. All you have to do is pay attention to it. Even during a conversation, become conscious of the gaps between words, the silent intervals between sentences. As you do that, the dimension of stillness grows within you. You cannot pay attention to silence without simultaneously becoming still within."
-Eckhart Tolle

Silence can be a way of shifting the center of gravity away from the personal and toward a more universal perspective. It can be a gracious admission that we don't always have an answer and that sometimes the best response is no response or at least not a verbal one. Respect for silence is respect for both ours and our client's divinity. Deep conversation can take place in many ways.