The Skill of Creating Awareness is one of the most foundational – and also one of the most powerful – that you can use with clients.
Creating Awareness is literally the act of:
— supporting your client to see something about themselves and their situation that they were not previously able to see;
OR
— supporting your client in being able to acknowledge and accept something about themselves and their situation that they were not previously able to acknowledge and accept;
OR
— supporting your client in being able to more deeply embrace something about themselves or their situation that will help them become more confident, more clear, more able or more open.
Creating awareness is also a strategy that allows your client to feel seen, heard and loved even more deeply…and this is something that we value highly in the Sacred Depths methodology!
When I teach Creating Awareness Skills, I really break it down into a number of different sub-skills including Reflecting the Truth, Acknowledging, Honoring what Is, and Celebrating. You want to use each of these sub-skills at different moments with different clients.
One of the things that I love about Creating Awareness (when it’s done well) is that it can help create a breakthrough in an instant. Take a moment and think on if this has ever happened for you – someone (a coach, a friend, a colleague, a family member) has reflected a truth back to you, and in an instant you could see & understand so much more than just moments before. It’s as if you’ve been able to take in a integral piece of information that can shift and change so much for you.
But as a practitioner, here is one of the crucial things you need to know about the skill of Creating Awareness (if you are interested in doing it skillfully, artfully, effectively…and going to the more advanced layers of it):
Sometimes Creating Awareness is hard and if not done correctly it can create discomfort or resistance from your client. This is especially true when you are Reflecting the Truth around some harder truths: while you always want to create awareness ONLY around the things your clients are ready to hear, they may have some difficulty at first fully taking it in.
This is where some coaches may disagree with my coaching philosophy: I think that it’s crucial as a coach to reflect hard truths to your clients. Even if they’re not going to like it at first. Some coaching philosophies don’t believe in rocking the boat, but in my Sacred Depths Coaching Philosophy, there is are sacred and powerful times and spaces for rocking the boat. Your clients ultimately don’t want you to coddle them (even if they think they do); they desire to be stretched, challenged and opened at the right moments.
So if you, as the coach or practitioner, have any discomfort around clients getting temporarily angry or upset with you, you’re not going to be able to Reflect the Truth this properly, powerfully, effectively and with love. You end up getting too scared and not sharing what you see. Or you’ll end up sharing it awkwardly or too tentatively. Or you’ll end up sharing with too much boldness or not the right energy.
That’s why you want to make sure that you not only possess the best skills for Reflecting the Truth, but also make sure that you’ve done the inner work required to be totally, 100% comfortable at delivering harder truths with love, courage, articulateness and ease.
Here are few self-reflection journaling questions to go deeper with your ability to Create Awareness and Reflect the Truth masterfully:
- What fears come up for you when you consider sharing truths as you see them?
- What fears come up for you when you consider sharing controversial opinions with others?
- How often was truth named in your family growing up?
- How was the truth shared in your family growing up? Was it supportive or not supportive?
- How do you take in, receive and respond to feedback or hard truths that others share with you? Do you respond or do you react?
