Years ago, I read a post on a web forum about a young man who was struggling with the ladies.
He had no problem getting a date with them. In his words, he was great at approaching women with boldness, decisiveness and charm.
Then during the date – again, in his own words – he’d use a different strategy. He’d be meek, apologetic, always asking if there was anything he could do to make the date better for them.
He was confused, even hurt, about how he never managed to get a second date.
My jaw dropped as I read that. Even not knowing that women tend to prefer decisiveness over meekness, shouldn’t it be obvious? In his own words, he asks them out with one strategy, which is successful. Then he uses a different strategy on the first date, and it isn’t.
How is this even a mystery? Stick with the successful strategy!
But, now, I get it.
Have you ever noticed how difficult, complicated and impossible your own problems are?
Then, when someone explains their problems to you, it’s all so simple and obvious.
There’s a funny thing about language. If I say octopus, then I’m not transmitting information into your brain. I’m giving you a signal to reconstruct the concept of an octopus in your mind.
This is how two people can talk about something using the same words but still misunderstand each other.
Language forces you to pare down your concept to its conceptual skeleton. To fully describe something as simple as a cat knocking a vase off a table would take thousands of pages. What size and colour is the vase? What about the cat? Which muscles contracted to move its paw? What angle did the vase hit the floor at? How was the air in the room moving? What did the impact do to the floor the moment it hit? Half a second after it hit?
To say my cat knocked a vase over deletes a lot of details while conveying the key idea.
When someone describes their problem to you, the same thing happens. They’re immersed in all the complexity of it. When you hear it, you hear it at its simplest.
That’s useful to know.
It’s also why telepathy would ruin you. If you could convey a full experience to someone else without having to simplify it through language, you’d lose the ability to see just how simple your problems are.
Because a powerful coaching technique is to ask yourself:
What would you say if someone came to you with this problem?
Often, you’ll amaze yourself with the wisdom that comes to mind.
Now, that works for a lot of things.
But it’s no enchanted gunshot. Even if that helps for many things, it won’t help with everything.
It won’t answer the big questions.
For that, you actually need to talk to someone else, not just pretend you are.
I won’t hard-sell you on my coaching here. If you like my skills and my style, you know how valuable my services are. If not, that’s okay – there are plenty of great coaches out there.
(And if you want my opinion on who some of them are, I can help with that.)
Either way, it’s worth seeing what my coaching program has to offer: