 ‘When they believed the lie, the lie became truth for them.’ (Selwyn Hughes) I will never forget that flash of insight at a Christian counselling seminar. Selwyn Hughes was talking about risks of deception and self-deception and used the biblical story of Adam and Eve (and the serpent) to illustrate his point. If I genuinely believe something to be true that isn’t true, it will nevertheless appear true to me. Insofar as it appears true to me, I’m unlikely to question it. If my peers or wider cultural group also believe it to be true, that will likely reinforce my belief. This came to mind recently when chatting with some young adults about the state of mental health in their generation. In an era where, increasingly, what would have been hitherto regarded as the normal human condition (e.g. ups and downs in life; quirky attitudes and behaviours; feeling anxious, stressed or in a low mood) are now regarded as pathological mental health conditions, we wondered together what lies may appear true to them and who might benefit from them. Take, for instance, the young woman who looks at the ways in which peers present themselves on social media. By contrast, she feels inadequate, insecure or a failure. Her expectations and emotional experience are influenced by what she perceives as ‘normal’, and she feels anxious and starts to avoid social contact. A well-meaning medic tells her she has Anxiety and prescribes medication to help her feel better. The label provides an explanation and, thereby, a kind of relief. Yet, she may have unknowingly swallowed more than just the meds. The diagnosis subtly traps her and, over time, begins to shape her personal and social identity: ‘I have Anxiety. That’s why I feel anxious. It’s who I am.’ Her world gets smaller as she acts out what she now believes to be true. She thinks she is defective, that she needs to be fixed, and not that her feelings are a natural – perhaps, even healthy – response to, e.g. dysfunctional background, toxic environment or maladaptive lifestyle. The lie became truth for them. What do you believe? ‘The global mental illness drugs market size is predicted to grow from US$1759 million in 2025 to US$2497 million in 2031.’
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 ‘I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world.’ (Mother Teresa) During my final cold night in Tbilisi last week, I was walking to pray in an ancient orthodox church when I noticed an elderly woman foraging in bins beside the road, presumably looking for food. I saw her, but I didn’t stop. I even had some Georgian cash in my pocket but somehow convinced myself I would need it to buy food and drink at the airport the next morning. Once I reached the church and stood in front of a cross, I quickly came back to my senses and left almost immediately again to try to find the woman to give her what I had…but it was too late. She had melted into the darkness and I chastised myself: ‘How could I have been so selfish, to put my own needs before hers?’ I felt desperately ashamed, and rightly so. Lesson to self: When you see the need, don’t overthink – just do it.  ‘There’s a fine line between a disruptor and a destructor.’ (Benjamin Downing) I’m paid to be a disruptive influence. That’s my job. In fact, it's one way to think about coaching and action learning, as an opportunity to disrupt stuck, ineffective or harmful patterns of thinking, behaviour or doing things, to create fresh, innovative or healthier alternatives. In that sense, it’s very different to destructive interventions that cause anxiety, paralysis or chaos. Yet how can a coach or facilitator avoid inadvertently flipping over? Some tips can be useful, e.g. always contract around what the client wants, is willing to or feels ready to do rather than imposing; and focus on patterns rather than a person’s identity, e.g. ‘There’s a pattern here that seems to protect you and limit you at the same time’ vs ‘You’re a self-sabotaging person.’ Disruptive coaching expands the client’s capacity to choose, whereas destructive coaching narrows it. So, some questions for the coach or facilitator: Was I more invested in the insight than in the client’s safety? Did the client leave with more agency, or less? Did discomfort open space or close it? If the answer to #2 or #3 is ‘less’ or ‘closed’, you may have crossed the line.  ‘Defining the problem is half of the solution.’ (Dilafkor Mirdjalilov) I flew back from Tbilisi yesterday after co-leading an Action Learning Associates workshop this week for the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention regional team. It was great to work with experts from Georgia, Uzbekistan and the United States. All demonstrated a keen desire to learn Action Learning facilitation to address the complex array of strategic and cultural opportunities and challenges they face. We started by introducing a classic approach to Action Learning facilitation on day 1, then a peer-consultancy variation on day 2, then a team or project-based approach on day 3. This provided a grounding in core Action Learning principles and techniques and a variety of ways to apply them. We integrated structured practice opportunities to enhance the team’s confidence and competence. One challenge in the midst of pressing contextual demands was to create sufficient space in small groups to clarify and reach agreement on which pivotal core issues to address before diving in to address them. A next phase, particularly in the project-based approach, was to identify key questions: ‘What are the questions that, if we were to answer them, would enable us to reach effective solutions?’ It demonstrated that, in such situations, slowing down to engage in critical reflection is, paradoxically, a useful way to speed up important decision-making. It can enable wisdom and growth and avoid the need to undo leadership decisions made in undue haste. I was impressed by the team’s willingness to try, test and apply Action Learning facilitation. I was also grateful for their warmth and enthusiasm throughout.  ‘Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.’ (George Eliot) Mike is a role model of vision, compassion and integrity. I’ve rarely met anyone like him. In fact, he’s one of the most amazing leaders, line-managers, I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. It was all the more heartbreaking, therefore, to see him treated disrespectfully by an executive team and dismissed (in my view) unjustifiably from post. This was some years ago now yet I still feel a wince of pain whenever I remember it. At the time, I asked Mike how he managed to handle himself so honourably in the face of such harsh opposition. He replied simply that he had been reading the account of Joseph in the Bible and had concluded that, ‘They can take your job, they can take your income, but they can never take your integrity. That’s only yours to give. Remember, Nick – whatever happens in life, guard your integrity.’ Wow. Such courage under fire. The day of Mike’s leaving arrived and people crowded into the staff room to say goodbye to this man that so many had held in high esteem. The executive team stood at the side with their backs to the wall, looking tense and nervous. What might Mike say? Could it kick off a riot? Mike looked around the room, smiled gently and said, ‘The executive team are ordinary people who carry extraordinary responsibilities. Pray for them.’ It was absolutely astonishing. People looked at each other quizzically around the room, and the executives breathed a (somewhat surprised) sigh of relief. Mike said those words with such incredible empathy and kindness. Not a hint of resentment or revenge. Mike’s wife had joined him for the leaving do and they closed by standing in the centre of the room together, holding hands, and sang a gospel song about trusting in Jesus.  ‘Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours.’ (Richard Bach) Like walls that block our field of vision, limiting assumptions can trap us in cycles of thought that prevent us moving forward. Take, for instance, a belief framed as an objection such as, ‘I could never do that’ or ‘That’s not possible.’ They're stated as absolute truths and, as such, they don’t invite question. This is where coaching can help, enabling a person or group to identify their implicit underlying beliefs and assumptions that may, until now, lay out of sight. We can offer challenges by reframing too, for instance ‘If you were to do it, what would you need to be successful?’ or ‘What would it take to make it possible?’ It can feel like stretching, bending or breaking perceived reality to see what new insights and solutions may emerge. Once fresh options surface as possibilities, we can press on further with action questions such as, ‘What would need to happen for that to happen?’ and ‘What are you willing to do?’ Try it – and see. Curious to work with a coach? Get in touch!  ‘Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.’ (Jesus Christ) I spent some days last week on a retreat at a Franciscan friary in the bitterly-cold North East of England. It’s something I choose to do each New Year these days – a retreat, that is, not to half freeze to death in a stone-built monastery. It’s a way of transitioning from the past year to the new, a spiritual defragmentation or reset of sorts, with a renewed and refreshed focus on God. The biggest challenge each time is to get over myself, to somehow disentangle myself enough from the fog of my own mental and emotional hopes, fears and preoccupations to see...Jesus. A recurring theme that emerged for me during my times of prayer and reflection was power. I read two starkly-contrasting accounts of people at Auschwitz during the Nazi era: the brutal guard Irma Grese who used her structural power to commit the most unspeakable acts of violence against prisoners, vs the self-sacrificing Franciscan friar Maximillian Kolbe who used his personal power to die in the place of another prisoner. Both were ordinary human beings. A critical, defining difference in that moment, in that context, was how each abused or used their power. I sat now in the candle-lit chapel, gazing at a harrowing figure of Jesus Christ, represented here as apparently-powerless, cruelly-beaten and tortured on a cross, straining upwards to glimpse his heavenly Father. It struck me how the world has become dominated (again) by power figures and ideologies, finding their voice through polarising politicians and political religions, and how so many people are flocking to support them. It’s symptomatic of widespread feelings of powerlessness and a desire to increase our own power via their power. Grese vs Kolbe? Father, forgive us.  ‘Every border I crossed blurred another line inside me, between who I was and who I was becoming.’ (Yoon Jeong Kim) When I trained to be an English teacher for speakers of other languages, one of the things we discussed was to look out for was false friends, also called false cognates. These are words from different languages that appear similar yet have very different meanings. An example is the word ‘sensible’ which means something like ‘reasonable’ in English, but ‘sensitive’ in Spanish. A risk for language learners is that they assume that familiar, similar-sounding words, phrases or even gestures used by others carry the same meanings as their own, and that can lead to all kinds of misunderstandings. Language and culture are closely-linked, and similar risks can occur when we meet or work with people from different cultural backgrounds. We may assume that others’ similar behaviours carry the same meaning as ours, or assume that different behaviours of others mean the same as they would in our own culture. An example is nodding or saying ‘Yes’ which in many Western cultures would signal ‘I agree’ or ‘I consent’, whereas in many Eastern cultures it could mean ‘I hear you’ or ‘I understand what you are saying’. In some Eastern and African cultures it could simply be a sign of respect. Given the potential for confusion, consternation, embarrassment or frustration, I try to approach cross-cultural conversations and relationships in a spirit of curiosity. If a person or group from another culture says or does something (especially if this is a recurring pattern) that confuses, surprises or jars me, I try to pause, breathe, suspend my own judgement (based on my own cultural values) and inquire tentatively what it could mean for them. I encourage them to do the same with me. This isn’t always easy and often calls for prayer, humility and patience, yet the benefits can be immeasurable.  ‘Steep your life in God-reality.’ (Jesus Christ) ‘First God’: these are the opening words of The Message. They resonate with the opening line of North American Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life: ‘It’s not about you.’ This feels very pertinent to me at the start of this New Year as we mark a symbolic transition. Some use it as an opportunity to make resolutions for the year ahead – that is, to choose this or that change in lifestyle. Others use it as a chance for a life reset – to leave the past behind and move on in the direction of a future that’s more aligned with what they hope for. For me, there’s something deeper, more existential, at stake here. We’re living in at a time where quite a lot of people are starting to have doubts about their doubts about God. What if God-reality turns out to be real and true after all? This begs important questions. Danish Søren Kierkegaard in his reflections on Christian psychology distinguished between an authentic self, rooted in relationship with God, and an inauthentic self, trying to make its own way in the world. According to this view, the opposite of ‘sin’ isn’t virtue, but faith and trust. This critical insight reminds me of German Thomas à Kempis’ paraphrase of Jesus’ teaching in his now-classic text, the Imitation of Christ: ‘If you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, says God, and if you seek yourself you will find yourself – but to your own undoing.’ In fact, this seeking theme runs throughout the entire Bible. It’s as if God relentlessly seeks authentic relationship with us, and we are free to choose to look for it – or not – and whether to accept it – or not. This New Year, it looks to me like the ball’s firmly in our court. |
Nick WrightI'm a psychological coach, trainer and OD consultant. Curious to discover how can I help you? Get in touch! 
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