Ontological coaching can be one of the most powerful tools to help us become more aware of the vast beauty and complexity of life beyond the labels we assign to it. It is only with this fresh awareness and a direct, present sense of the unfolding mystery of life that we are able to navigate our hero’s journey, learning to appreciate things as they really are and discovering what actions we can take to achieve breakthrough results, bring order to chaos, and restore wellbeing.
This type of discovery requires that we set sail into uncharted waters, abandon familiar shores and endure periods of darkness, disorientation and discomfort. At times, we may find out the hard way that we have in fact already drifted asea without realizing it. We may feel angry and betrayed by the failure of life to meet our expectations of how we thought things were supposed to work, falling into a state of resentment and fighting against what is. On the other hand, we may become overwhelmed by self-doubt, falling into a state of resignation and turning away from our dreams in favor of being “realistic”.
Both reactions maintain the status quo while tricking us into missing the opportunity for real growth and transformation, resulting in a pattern of repeating the same breakdown over and over again. The starting point of our hero’s journey often finds us in such a pattern, in a state of confusion or denial.
The first step forward on our journey is to declare our breakdown in self-honesty. Indeed, is it not a heroic act of great courage to do so? It brings into question fundamental aspects of who we believed ourselves to be in relationship to a world we thought we understood. On top of the shakiness and deep uncertainty that this declaration brings to the surface, we may also feel deeply ashamed of ourselves for not already knowing how to move forward. We may feel profound guilt about the harm that we have caused to others in our attempts to maintain the status quo.
Ontological coaching can help us to see that first of all, it is not our fault we ended up here. Not only are these patterns of breakdowns a normal part of being human, they are part of a necessary process that drives our evolution. Our capacity to take action towards the results we want to achieve is constrained primarily by the type of observer we are. The stories about who we are, the ways of inhabiting our body, and the emotional landscapes that we live in have a profound effect on how we interpret the situations we encounter. These ways of observing life are largely inherited from our parents and our culture, which was necessary for our survival and gave us a head start. But they probably were not given to us with a warning label that said “work in progress, use at your own risk”. Perhaps they should have been. Instead, they were presented to us as “this is the way things are”.
Ontological coaching helps us to see how our ways of observing life are only a lens to look through, they are not reality itself. As it turns out, if we find that the lens we have been looking through is keeping us stuck, then we can choose a different lens. Furthermore, we can forgive ourselves when we realize that we weren’t even aware of the lens we were looking through!
An ontological coach will help us to find a lens that works more effectively for the situation at hand. In fact, our repeating pattern of breakdowns offers a rich source of information about what isn’t working and why not. Once we discover our breakthrough, looking back at our old pattern in hindsight can invoke deep gratitude and wonder. Life was never being unfair or cruel to us at all, it only looked that way through the old lens. Now we can see that actually, our pattern was nothing other than life trying to show us the way forward, giving us infinite chances to learn.
Our hero’s journey is not just about reaching a destination. It is about the kind of observer we must become in order to get there. The bad news is that there’s no such thing as finding the one and only right way of interpreting reality so that we don’t have to feel uncertain anymore. There will always be breakdowns and breakthroughs as we continue to evolve, and the hero’s journey will always require facing the raw unknown. The good news is that it really is OK to be where we’re at. No matter how dark it gets, it’s never too late to discover a new way of seeing any experience and finding our way back to inner peace, gratitude, and awe.
