Critical Q: What’s happening today?

Bridging where you are and where you want to be starts with getting some clarity about what you really want right now, which in turn leads to more clarity about what you need now. Once you have the essentials, like food, shelter, clothing, needs may be less urgent, always in flux.

Change is the constant. Needs change, so you might want to ask yourself, “What do I need right now?”

A licensed mental health professional or other clinician, or personal development advisor may be qualified &/or credentialed to provide both coaching and counselling services. Understanding the difference between coaching vs counselling is crucial in selecting the right service for your current needs. When you work with someone who is qualified to provide both types of services, together you will create a contract, where you sign off on an initial agreement for services. When the contract you create is for coaching services, the service provider may document why coaching is a better fit for you currently than counselling. The coach will help you assess & pinpoint what you need now during the coaching conversation. The contract might include a written distinction between coaching & counselling services and might include a statement that if the need for counselling arises you will have to seek an alternate provider for that specific role. In other words, a coach will not simultaneously be your counsellor and a counsellor will not be your coach.

And while we readily acknowledge a measurability of the proficiency of our other five senses we turn somewhat in the opposite direction when it comes to the ‘sixth’ sense. Thus concessions are granted for those who may find themselves ‘challenged’ to one degree or another in the realm of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. However, we barely acknowledge intuition’s existence outside of the ‘intuitive superstar’ category. And in that realm there’s often a negative connotation. If our intuition is not conditioned out of us, we may have a tendency to keep it hidden or even to deny it.

When we’re being lied to we often ‘sense’ it. But rather than feeling empowered out of trust in our inner knowing we are more likely to feel vulnerable and defenseless. Being lied to can leave us in a state that might be described as ’emotionally ambushed’. Confused, disempowered, chaotic, and inadequate, are characteristic emotions that might ensue.

Some ways to regain our emotional equilibrium and regain contact with our own power source might be found in the following:

• Becoming still and going inside for guidance one could pose the question, “What is the opportunity here for me to find?
• If there are current feelings of ‘loss’ showing up try to take an unbiased observer perspective to discover whether or not there really is a loss. Perhaps there is another way to view how you are feeling.

• Ask yourself how this person who is lying might be reflecting back to you some ways in which you might be personally in a ‘stuck’ place of rigidity or inflexibility.

• How might retaining this ‘relationship’ as it currently is, be keeping you separate from your deeper intuitive connection to a universal intelligence or energy?

• What can you do to affirm your connection to this source without giving power to the person who is lying? By handing over your power to another, you are also acting as a vehicle for your own disconnection?

• You can ask yourself, “Was there something about the messages that the person lying was giving you farther back in time from this incident that you might have intuitively questioned? And had you paid attention at that time would have constituted honoring your deeper self.

• Asking for help in managing your state can be beneficial. Most people will recognize the disempowered and disorienting state of mind that can result from the experience of being lied to. They can usually relate.

Try to remember that when you find the way to truly honor your deeper self in this situation you will more easily transition into a forgiving and detached state with roots in your empowered self. From this deeper place the actions of another have a tendency to not really impact you at all.

R.D. Laing, from Self and Others, 1961 tells us that “Truth is literally that which is without secrecy, what discloses itself without a veil.”