Have you ever noticed that certain stories or story lines keep returning in your life? Sometimes these returns are developmental, e.g., as with the notion of karma and the integration of shadow elements we’ve discarded along the way. Sometimes these returns are intentional, e.g., the final stage of the heroic journey as we return ‘home’ with the gains from our passage. I see this all the time with clients who keep circling back through a series of stories—all revolving around a similar theme that slowly crystallizes and the heart of it becomes clear. It is from this clarity that the deepest sense of their calling becomes apparent . . . and they now know what must be done.

Finding our way

The goal as narrative-based coaches is to be patient and present enough to let clients’ stories flow, gently guiding them along the path as it emerges.

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
(Lao-Tzu)

In the busyness of our lives, it is so easy to overlook these often subtle rhythms and patterns. As part of my own discernment process these past few weeks, I’ve been slowing down to think about the purpose of money in my life. One outcome of this process led me to Frederick Marx, a documentary film maker most well-known for his role in Hoop Dreams. In doing so, I realized that I had lost touch with the importance of place, of home, of sanctuary to me. Is not that in some ways what the innate drive for “return” all about?

Making new choices

As a result, I’ve decided to make a serious donation to help him finish his next film about Zanskar, the last remaining Tibetan Buddhist society with a continuous lineage (dating back thousands of years). The story is about two monks who are instructed by the Dalai Lama to do everything in their power to insure that Zanskar’s culture, language, and religion survive. This is a movie about their journey back to Zanskar. You can read about the 17 paths here.

What stories are cycling back into your life these days, carrying with them messages for you? What “mud” needs to settle in your life settle so you can more clearly see the next right action on your journey?

As the United States approaches the election of a new President later this year, it is clear that there are no easy solutions to our ill-conceived and ill-fated intervention in Iraq. I use this picture in my narrative coaching workshops to explore with people the power of symbols, the cognitive and narrative patterns that shape our reactions, and the role of power in being able to tell our stories.

I learned a key lesson about power in the early days of my training business. I was doing a two-day program on leadership and coaching for 100 new managers in a federal social services program. 98 of the participants were women, the majority of them were non-Caucasian, and many of them had started out as low-income parents in the program. While I intellectually recognized the disparities as a upper-middle class Caucasian male, I didn’t fully grasp what that meant until part way through the first day when I realized that the program was not working well. I stopped the session and explored with the group where they were experiencing the disconnection.

In the end, I came to realize that many of the leadership theories, models and admonitions about leadership were written by and for people like me—and implicitly assumed a sufficient privilege and access to power. As a result, I dropped the rest of the design for the workshop and asked these women to talk about who had power in their communities, what enabled them to have this power, and how they used their power. We used these stories to develop some new models about what effective leadership and coaching would look like in their programs.

Much of the work in narrative coaching is to help people discern and transform the often unexamined boundaries of their narration. I work with coaches to get clear on the ethics and implications of narrative work. I am reminded of the work in this area by my colleague Paul Costello. I close here with a quote from Salman Rushdie as a reminder of the role of power in being able to tell one’s story.

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.