Coaching and nature

When I designed my professional web page I decided to highlight three different working areas: Consulting, Training and Coaching. The consulting area is very much related to my work in the field of environmental conservation and sustainability challenges. At the beginning I saw the coaching area very close to the training work, taking into account that a good trainer needs many personal and team coaching skills to deliver successful trainings and workshops. Nevertheless my perception changed in the past months when I worked on the web. I got aware how much my work on sustainability and Nature is linked with coaching. I like to share with you some of my thoughts.

A coaching session with a client needs active listening and emotional openness of the coach to connect with the coachee. This connection or rapport is basic for the development of the process. In our relation to Nature happens something very similar. Only with conservation science we will not connect with or understand what Nature is. We have gathered tons of data about ecology with our scientific thinking but we feel disconnected and helpless for example when we start to think on climate change:

“So because ecological facts are about us, about how we are and what we do and how we act, they are hard to see from a distance-getting perspective about yourself, interrogating your way of doing and seeing, is one of the hardest things to do-and difficult to swallow, intrinsically.”
(Timothy Morton: Being Ecological- 2018; page 28. I highly recommend this small book!!!).

If you ever went through a coaching process you will have experienced this feeling in your personal process for sure: the difficulty to see yourself from a distance and getting aware of how you feel and act. There is as Morton explains a radical gap between things and thing-data, a radical gap between the apple and how it appears. As a coach, I have to be aware of this gap when I work with a person and connect with what is behind the appearance. Connecting with Nature means not only data but needs emotional openness to get amazed by the beauty and perfection of what we call Nature. It means also to understand our vulnerability as a human being or humanity as a precondition for defining our relation with Nature which should not be based on simple exploitation of natural resources. Vulnerability is also a very important concept in the coaching process: accepting that when we show ourselves as we are, we show ourselves as vulnerable and open to connecting.

Coaching is a lot about how we talk with our self: our internal discussions, where we often go around in circles. Getting aware of these discussions and change our way of talking with our self is often a real breakthrough in a coaching process.

Again, there is, in my opinion, a clear similitude in the actual sustainability debate. We are dumped with data and going in circles with our discussions. I completely agree with Morton when he states:

“Being Ecological is starting by peering under the hood of the way in which we talk to our self about ecology. I think the main way-just dumping data on ourselves-is actually inhibiting a more genuine way of handling ecological knowledge (…).We are like people caught in habitual pattern, going along repeating the same thing, without even realizing it.”
(T. Morton: Being Ecological; page 12).

There are many other connections between my understanding of coaching and redefining our relation to Nature. These connections show also that real justice and solidarity with humans has to apply these values in our relationship with Nature. It’s about coexisting and accepting human and nonhuman beings without judging. Challenging, but possible and may be the only way to get out of the destructive circle we are in as Humans and Nature. Maybe Humanity would need a good coach who asks the right questions and who helps as acting in the right direction.