Seeing Things As They Are vs Seeing Things As You Are

From time to time, I get asked what life coaching is. Well, basically, coaching in any niche is really about transformation, creation, and perspective. Life is a process of transmutation, renewal, and discovery.

I often ask my clients at the beginning of their coaching journey if they are ready to change the way they see. Not just see different things, but to see differently.

When we embark upon a Life Coaching journey, neither myself as the coach nor my clients really know where it will end. I’m a strategic planner as an entrepreneur, but as a coach, you can’t even plan for a session, because you don’t know where the coaching conversation will lead.

I often ask my clients at the beginning of their coaching journey if they are ready to change the way they see. Not just see different things, but to see differently. There’s a big difference between the two. It’s the difference between opening your eyes and looking around you to see things you’ve never seen before, and…changing how you know what you see. I’m a firm believer that we don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are. I have never met a person where that truth does not apply.

Our mental models play into everyday life. Yes, every person has a mental model. Mental models are simulations of the world that your mind constructs when you think and reason. According to Princeton University professor, Philip Johnson-Laird, and University of Dublin professor, Ruth M.J. Byrne, “Mental models are based on a small set of fundamental assumptions (axioms), which distinguish them from other proposed representations in the psychology of reasoning.” (Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 1991)

If I’ve been walking around staring at the ground, I will see what’s on the ground, but I will be missing out on a lot of other stuff. And if I lift my head up and look around me, I will see things I’ve never seen before.

But what if I could change what I see? Like putting on a pair of new eyeglasses. But there could still be a problem with that.

If my eyeglasses are obscured by the dirt of negativity, I can try and squint through the dirt, but I will always have a gloomy view.