Dr Hilary Armstrong's article this month talks about having the ability to reflect on yourself and ask yourself questions about your own coaching. Read these top ten questions to ask yourself to help reflect on your own coaching.

Someone once observed that you learn more by the questions you ask than by the answers you give. Call it Socratic learning, if you will, but I find that asking questions of myself helps keep me on track. Here are ten I ask regularly.

1. What am I resisting?
2. What is the lesson here?
3. Have I been here before?
4. Am I losing energy to this?
5. Am I holding onto something I need to let go of?
6. Am I in the present?
7. What do I need to do now?
8. Who's in control here?
9. What is my responsibility here?
10. Am I at peace with this?

Key Point:
You are what you think. You feel what you want.

Why Think Positively?

All of our feelings, beliefs and knowledge are based on our internal thoughts, both conscious and subconscious. We are in control, whether we know it or not.

We can be positive or negative, enthusiastic or dull, active or passive.

The biggest difference between people is their attitudes. For some, learning is enjoyable and exciting. For others, learning is a drudgery. For many, learning is just okay, something required on the road to a job.

"Most folk are about as happy as they
make up their minds to be."
Abraham Lincoln

This article "Building Quality Coaching Relationships: Reflexive Awareness and the Inner Village" is written by Dr Hilary Armstrong, Director of Training and Research, Institute of Executive Coaching, Australia and Hong Kong

When a person seeks coaching they have a story to tell. This story can differ depending on the social and cultural context the person is telling it in and the quality of the coaching relationship. It is important as one listens to a story to realise that a coachee's story is full of things s/he chooses to tell, as well as many untold things. What determines this selectivity is the quality of the coaching relationship.

Ontological Coaching is a powerful approach for getting to deep issues that block us from going forward. The depth of these issues is about the human soul. An ontological approach to coaching has the potential to touch the soul of coachees and radically shift their perceptions of themselves and what is possible in life. Ontological Coaching utilises an interpretation that the nature of human existence (way of being) is a 3-way interrelationship between language, emotions and body. Coaching that only involves language is a single dimensional approach. The combination of language, emotions and body brings a richness and depth to what is possible in a coaching

VP Professional Development - Executive coach, Director of Energie creative - Certified NLP practitioner, Coach U and Corporate coaching graduate

What led you into coaching?

I've always had a true interest in individuals and their unique qualities. In consulting and advertising so far, I enjoyed drawing out creativity and executives' own talents for the sake of clients' brand building. Actually, the more I respect individuals in their uniqueness, the better they perform. Then in multinational corporations I figured out many times that such behaviour, bringing individuals' ownership and satisfaction, would really benefit work performance, and give the missing dimension towards great result.