Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Most of the powerful, unguarded conversations we have as practitioners happen behind the scenes. This podcast was created to bring those conversations forward. It’s a space for real talk about client work, presence, creating powerful containers for waking others up, embodied change, and the ways we continue to grow and meet our edges as we guide others.
Barb Patterson (01:08)
Hi everyone, welcome back. This is Barb. Today I wanna talk about what's available to us. What are we making ourselves available to during a session or when we're leading a training with the client? There's a quote by Quincy Jones that I heard years ago and recently was reminded of it. And it says, you have to leave space
for God to walk through the room. And the idea being that you wanna leave space for what's gonna happen organically, unexpectedly in the moment. He was known to tell artists to get out of the way and.
listen to the song, to let the song speak as it's coming forward. And as I talk about him, I'm reminded of a news story I saw with Rick Rubin, who was the author of the Creative Act and also a really well-known music producer. in this news story, they showed him working. And when the artist, the musician was
know, laying down a track, Rick laid down and just closed his eyes and when the news reporter asked him about it, he said, ⁓ I'm listening, I'm getting a feel for what the music is telling me and where it wants to take me and.
He said, I'm learning about the artist and I'm learning about them. And when he said that, I thought, oh, that's kind of what I do. Like we tune in, I tap in, there's a way of listening inside our sessions or when we're leading a group that isn't just the mind tracking what's being said. It's like a taking in, being available for all of our
senses to be impacted by what's happening. You know, there's the spoken, of course, but then there's tone and there's pace What's their inner climate? What's going on there?
There's a way that in a session we make ourselves available for more and we allow those invisible forces, those invisible senses to have space and room to guide us. And the other piece is that we know that cannot happen outside of the moment.
There's no prepping for that. There's no prepping for being available to what's arising in the moment. when we show up to a session, we become available to what's present now. How can I?
take them in in a fresh way? How can I let go of preconceived ideas to see what I might not have seen before? as humans we are these constant fluid natures which are shaping and informing the way we show up. And so in a way we're never showing up exactly the same. And if we know that, then how do we as coaches, practitioners,
make ourselves available to see and hear what's fresh or what's in the moment. Do we surrender into the moment? Can we surrender into it and see what's possible? And often, it's in those moments that we see something surprising or something helpful,
And this idea of preparing, there's no rule and there's no either or here. For instance, when I have a workshop I'm gonna do inside of a company or I'm facilitating a team meeting or I'm starting with a new client, the creative potential of the mind is available in the preparation.
as you know, Isla and I are just getting ready to kick off a five month journey and we are thinking through the five months and the first weekend we go to LA and we're thinking about what we want to do there and what makes sense
what we're interested in, what we're seeing, what we think might be helpful. We're taking in all those data points But ultimately, our goal and the goal inside of a session is how do I then hold that lightly and still leave space, as Quincy Jones said, space for the unknown, space for God to walk in, space for
the creative intelligence for new awareness How do I hold that space for them so they can also see something new? I remember talking to a client years ago that
was getting feedback that he was not a good listener, he was closed minded, he was abrupt.
And what I realized in working with him was he put an immense amount of preparation into those, which of course makes sense because he has to report numbers and then he's trying to tell a story with those numbers. but that preparation started to become a problem
He was so focused on what he had prepared and the points he had made and what he was trying to get across that he was not available to what was actually going on in the room in the moment. he was missing cues. questions look like interruptions, he had to hurry and get back to his point to get through everything.
he wasn't noticing what was on people's mind And all of this was happening at an unconscious level. Cause the truth is it wasn't that he didn't care. It wasn't that he was necessarily a bad listener.
What was happening is because he was so gripped by what he had prepared by trying to stick to it and get through it and believing that that was the sign of a good session, a good presentation, of course his mind was full in a very simple way. His mind and focus and attention was so full that he could not take in anymore. He was not available
So when we started to look at that and talk about there's preparation, yes, but then how do you also make yourself available to what's arising in the room, to follow the conversation, to pay attention to discussion points so that little bit of reframing about
being less attached to the preparation, to his idea of what would be good, allowed him to start to loosen up inside those meetings and get more aware and more interested in really what was actually happening in the meeting and then how his presentation could support the conversation. when we're inside sessions,
it can feel a bit shaky. to not have a sense of where you want to go or what's going to happen. And yet what you discover is something always occurs. Now you may have a wobble, you may have a moment of like insecure thinking, but something always comes forward.
you realize, I can let go of the grip of constantly having my mind focused on where I'm gonna go, what next, what to say next, you can relax into a deeper level of listening and more available to the spaciousness because you trust that that clarity, that knowing emerges.
You don't have to put your mind on the task of staying one step ahead. But we don't know that until we give ourselves the experience of it. the first time I did a four day intensive, I remember like thinking, what am I going to do? just feeling really
nervous those four days look like four years in my mind. and then after doing it, I realized, you get clues in a session, you try things, you say things, you go down a path and it leads somewhere beautiful, you go down another path and it
doesn't. So you come back, you circle back, you start to realize how mutual that process is, whether it's one on one or in a group. There's a collaborative mutual process happening organically in the moment. And so if we can let go of the illusion of control, or that we have to stay ahead or be prepared.
If we can let those things go, let those ideas loosen a bit we start to discover, yeah, things occur. We pick up on things We know how to dance with what's coming forward.
There are times even today and I've been doing intensives, for 15 years now, but there are still times in a session where I'll have the thought, boy, it's only day one. This feels like it's a problem. But I know, I know it's a temporary thought passing through and if I don't,
bear down on it, if I just let it move on, what happens is, things occur to me to do, including take a break. Sometimes the space that's needed is an actual break.
So this idea of coming back to how do we leave space inside of ourselves so that we're available to what's there, to the unknown, to those invisible forces that can inform us, to those whispers, those nudges. We hear something, we see something, we hang out with someone long enough in that mutual process and trust that
We see more. We learn more. We...
follow. We follow what's there and it takes us somewhere.
Today, earlier, I was speaking with one of my mentees and she's doing work inside of an organization. there are these two employees that are having a lot of tension between them and it's becoming noticeable outside of the team she's being brought in to work with that.
we were talking about a day format and
She, had this moment of, what will I do with them for a day, and the mind wanting to plan out the full Agenda, and we got into this discussion. always leave space for the unknown. We want to be available to the unknown.
We don't have to just learn to survive it. We wanna be available to it and let it inform us and let the magic appear. Let the creative intelligence behind all life guide us. We want to discover new, our clients. We want to see where conversation takes us, Are we available? Are we taking note of
what's happening for them, inside them, around them. Are we allowing our full selves to be available to the conversation? And we can rest in that. that when we're available and open, things occur. We see more, we hear more, we learn more.
today in your sessions, in your work, in your conversations, know, whether maybe it's not with clients, but it's with potential clients or family or friends. What's possible? What is possible for you by letting go of the grip of being one step ahead in the conversation and just dropping in fully and becoming more available to the hidden invisible forces.
play to what's being said beyond content to move at the pace of the conversation versus feeling like you constantly have to be the one to direct it and drive it. What if you let it take you somewhere? Where does it want to take you?
And this is when clients realize the level of presence we're giving them is different. This is where we get to see things say things that often they haven't seen.
But it's not because we're brilliant at preparing and having all the perfect words. It's because we've made ourselves available. We've left the door open. We've left enough space for God to come into the conversation, for the creative intelligence to come into the conversation.
As always, thank you so much for being here and I look forward to the next time.