"Experience is not what happens to you, it's what you do with what happens to you."
Aldous Huxley
Events happen in our lives, but each person processes and experiences any event uniquely.
There is the objective reality of what happens and the subjective reality of how what happened is seen, interpreted, and given meaning.
A person is a point of view.
Each person you meet is an artist who takes the events of life and, over time, creates a very personal way of seeing the world.
This is why the second subjective layer can sometimes be the more important layer, and one that I focus on in my coaching conversations.
The crucial question is not, "What happened to this person?"
Instead, we should ask:
"How does this person interpret what happened?
How does this person see things?
How do they construct their reality?"
We really want to know this if we want to understand another person.
An extrovert walks into a party and sees a different room than an introvert.
A person who is an architect sees a different room than someone who works as a nurse.
Good conversations start with stories about specific events or experiences and then go even further. I don't only want to talk about what happened but also how the other person experienced it.
One question I find valuable
"Tell me a story about some experience that formed who you are today."
When you were called into your boss's office and laid off.
What was your dominant emotion? humiliation, disappointment or even relief?
What do you realise now that you weren't aware of then?
In each story you start out as one version of yourself and end as something new.
Thinking back, was getting laid off a complete disaster, or did it send you off on a new path for which you're now grateful?
Sometimes things that are hard to live through are very satisfying to remember.
It's a coach's role to allow the thinker to draw out what lessons they learned and how they can use these in the future.