Before identifying coaching strategies related to these three domains, I wish to introduce a foundation concept related to the polystatic process and the ability to lean and learn into the future. This concept is Appreciation.
An Appreciative Perspective on Polystasis
The concept of Appreciation emerged during the early years of this century (Srivesta, Cooperider, et al. 1990), in association with the emergence of positive psychological perspectives (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). As related to the process of anticipation, an appreciative perspective refers, first, to the assumption made by Peter Sterling that our body is always accurate in response to anticipation; it is our mind that messes things up. Rather than try to change our body (though the injection of a mood-altering drug), we must change our mind by focusing on our behavior, our cognition and/or the emotions that produce or are influenced by our behavior and thoughts (cognition). We are leaning and learning into the future when we make accurate anticipations of the near future, which enables our body to be effective in doing what it is supposed to do.
Appreciation refers, secondly, to the identification and full appreciation of an appropriate and valid anticipation leading to an adaptive response. We “catch ourselves getting it right” rather than dwelling on the times when our anticipation is inaccurate. As a coach, we should help our client identify and appreciate the moments when they got their anticipation right. Let me offer a hypothetical example of how we “get it right”:
Imagine serving as a performance coach working with Ludwig van Beethoven, the renowned 19th-century composer, during the later years of his life. This would be a difficult assignment not only because Beethoven was growing deaf, but also because he was a troubled man who was reportedly very difficult to engage in a positive and supportive conversation. However, Beethoven apparently had a few moments of positive anticipation while working on his 9th Symphony (the crowning composition of his career. In preparing Beethoven’s hypothetical “memoirs,” Caroline Sinclair (2012, p. 96) provides the following narrative:
“[T]his was a new level of happiness; in the Ninth, the feeling was . . . profound, for I wished to rejoice in the love of God, and in the brotherhood of man – and what could be greater than these? I truly felt that God was nearer to me than to any other artist when I was writing the Ninth. Moreover, I associated with him without fear, and I felt, also, that in front of me was the possibility of infinite growth. It seemed that this was, perhaps, the first time in my life when I was in a mood where I anticipated good things to befall me, the feeling being not at all disagreeable. I was incited by such moods as this, which are translated by the poet into words, but by me into tones that sound, and roar, and storm about me, until I have set them down in notes. To me, language has ever been an inferior way of communicating; music is far superior, and has the power to express regions of the soul better than any words can do.”
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