“Toward” Goals
“Toward” goals inspire forward movement.
A significant principle related to attention and intention is helping
clients to reach their objectives through “toward” goals. These are the
objectives on which clients focus their energies and seek to create new,
positive connections. Toward goals inspire the state of being curious,
open and interested, attitudes that are necessary for change, learning,
insight and creativity. There is inherent optimism in setting goals. And
when clients begin to take small steps to reach them, they typically
experience more clarity, a sense of accomplishment and enhanced
positivity.
In contrast, “away” goals might include considering what could
go wrong, a focus that activates negative emotions such as fear, anxiety
and uncertainty and can lead to avoidance. 21 According to Rock and
Page, “The trouble is, because problems come to mind so much easier
than solutions, people tend to set ‘away goals,’ and since problems are
more certain than unknown solutions, the brain naturally steers toward
certainty.” 22
Goal-setting works best if clients name their own objectives and
coaches support them to maintain their purpose and intention as
“toward” goals.
Helping Clients Gain Insights
Coaches help their clients gain insights into
themselves and the conflict dynamic.
Insights are those moments of clarity when something suddenly makes
sense. It has been said that “[a] n insight is a restructuring of information-
it’s seeing the same old thing in a completely new way.”23
Through strategic questioning and use of other skills, coaches help
clients to gain insights and self-awareness, qualities chat improve their
“mental maps”-how they perceive the world and feel about the issues
they are working on.
What leads clients co insights into their habitual patterns? This
topic is of great interest to coaches, who recognize that the experience
of expanded awareness inspires, excites and energizes clients to think
and feel differently about the issues they are exploring. New insights
and perspectives open up new possibilities, choices and opportunities.
But “people … experience the adrenaline-like rush of insight only if
they go through the process of making connections chemselves.”24
Author Jonah Lehrer refers to several other key features of insights.
Insights are typically preceded by an impasse or block. This is evident
in coaching when clients are still engaged in old ways of chinking and
feeling and are not yet ready or open to new ones. Another key feature
of insight is chat when a breakthrough occurs, people seem to move
instantaneously from impasse to “aha!” like a revelation, with an accompanying
feeling of cercaincy.25
Studies reveal that although insights appear to come out of nowhere,
the brain is usually preparing itself for a new awareness. Cognitive
neuroscientists Mark Jung-Beeman and John Kounios, who have individually
and together conducted a great deal of research on this subject,
discovered chat the insight process is an act of “cognitive deliberation.”
After the first “preparatory phase,” the brain begins looking for answers
(the “search phase”), during which period the cortex needs to relax
(“relaxation phase”). Ac these times, it is important to lee the mind
wander to be able co reflect and tap into the part of the brain from
where the insight comes (the right hemisphere). 26
The idea of focusing, yet also letting the mind wander, is supported
by related research by Jonathan Schooler and ochers who study
decision science. 27 In practice, it is evident chat clients often come to
new awareness between sessions when the seeds planted during the
coaching conversation germinate once their brains relax and their
minds wander. Similarly, when coaches quiet the space during coaching
sessions by silently listening, clients’ epiphanies often emerge as
