Alan Cohen is an inspirational writer and author of The Daily Dose of Sanity. I read a page a day from the book for, as the blurb on the book says, my "five minute soul recharge." I find every thought inspiring and often profoundly insightful. Today's 'soul recharge' was about how a participant at one of Cohen's seminar asked him for a good spiritual community to join. The lady appeared very interested and also took notes of the details Cohen gave her. Later that night, one of the seminar sponsors asked him whether the lady had inquired about spiritual communities, when Cohen replied in the affirmative, the sponsor told him that she has been doing this for years, and she doesn't follow up."She just likes asking," he concluded.
The lesson Cohen draws from the incident is, while the lady certainly craved community, she had more of an investment in the question than the answer. She symbolized the part all of us have that would rather seek than find.
Quite like one of my coaching clients, let us call him J, who was more of a planner than a doer. In the course of every coaching session, he would get some brilliant insights into some aspect of his life or business, and he would duly note it down as an action point. Come next session, when I would ask him the status on the action points he had noted the last time, he would always say that he hadn't attended to them. After several such incidents, I finally asked him if he ever, even referred to the notes he so enthusiastically made at every session. His reply was another "no!" No wonder it took him one year to recruit a person for a critical position - he would call the same person time and again and never be able to take a decision!
My coaching lesson was that some of us have a greater emotional investment in the intellectual exercise of planning than in the uncertainties of the results of the execution of the thought.
