Whether or not you have actively considered getting a coach, this points out some of the research from psychology around why we can all benefit from coaching. Skeptical? Please read on:)

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As you can see in this video, we miss a startling amount of information that enters our visual field, and which is not consciously registered in the brain. The reason for this in part is that visual processing is neurally demanding, with large areas of brain real estate and energy facilitating vision. We actually only see with high acuity a small area of what we are focusing on, and the rest of our peripheral vision is quite low resolution. Only when something dramatic calls our attention (such as a car backing out of a driveway that could cause you to have an accident) is the focus pulled towards the novel stimulus.

 

Attention itself is also a finite resource, and is one reason why it's hard for novice drivers to have an in-depth conversation while driving, but easy once driving as been mastered and is largely under subconscious control. This is one reason why focusing on the basketball passes automatically tunes out focusing on who is doing the passing, or intruders on the scene. We focus on what we think is relevant, or what grabs our attention, and miss a ton of other information.

 

So how is this relevant in the coaching sense? Well, vision is an allegory for the brain's processing of information, whether visual or cognitive. When you are focused on a specific target (e.g., problems you are having in life), sometimes it makes you blind to the solutions. The more closely you study the leaf, the harder it is to see the forest. Microscopes and telescopes are both useful, but for very different purposes. Coaching allows for an outside perspective, and this can be particularly effective if that coach is trained as a psychologist that understands human thinking, behavior, and cognitive neuroscience. Just as you might use a mirror to see yourself in ways you can't without the mirror, a coach or therapist can facilitate insight into the hidden parts of yourself. This differing perspective, along with the expertise to know what actions to take, are part of what can allow a coach to get you 'unstuck' from issues you have been mired in for years or even decades. It is also notable that before you can solve a problem, you need to be able to identify it and understand it! Otherwise, you just run the risk of suppressing the real issue, and treating symptoms rather than causes.

 

One other area of relevance here that I think is important is the notion that we are probably, as a species, genetically wired more for threat detection than reward detection. This is because from the ancestral hunter-gatherer perspective, if you go out and don't find food, the worst thing that might happen is you go to bed hungry that night. But if you aren't vigilant for what might be hunting you as food, you could die and your next meal is irrelevant anyway. This might also be part of the reason why folks get so 'stuck' in anxiety and depression - the brain is naturally focused on the threat to the extent that it misses out on all that is safe or good.

 

This phenomenon is also explained in part by the fact that we are trapped in our subjective experiences and biases. We can't know what it is like to be another person; empathy allows us to bridge the gap, but it does not close it entirely. You can see this to some degree with synesthesia, where folks have too much overlap in distinct brain regions, such as for processing color and taste. These folks may taste cherry when they see red, and they aren't doing it intentionally - it is just part of their life experience. They are often quite surprised to find out that almost no one tastes colors in their own life experience! So brains are highly unique from one person to the next, and our own complexity makes it hard to understand ourselves, especially since many of the foundations for the beliefs we hold today were laid subconsciously as children, without the cognitive sophistication to understand them at the time. So again, the role a psychologist or good coach can play here is seeing these things from a different vantage point, and providing an objective, fresh perspective on where you might be stuck, and why you can't 'see' your way out of your problems. Then, with expert guidance, you can begin to forge a new path, perhaps one you had not even been able to consider because it was just so out of your awareness, and enjoy a new path to success.

To find out more about these concepts and how they might apply to you, please reach out here for your free initial consult:)