Sometime back I read a book – The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. The Four Agreements are as follows:
Agreement 1 – Be impeccable with your word
Agreement 2 – Don’t take anything personally
Agreement 3 – Don’t make assumptions
Agreement 4 – Always do you best
During coaching sessions, after asking the client a question – the guideline is to give a pause so that client thinks through and then responds. There are many a times client gets into deep thinking with a long silence. After the long silence, client feels refreshed, full of energy and goes on a flow to find his/her own solutions.
The other day, I saw a 6 year old kid at the library. The kid was taking a lot of books, keeping them back without selecting any of them; her mother was observing from a distance. After a few minutes, mother said to the child take a deep breath and start selecting the books you like to read . The child took the deep breath and picked up the books. Within a few minutes child picked 2 books of her choice and went away. This is probably a way of silencing the mind chatter . After the books were chosen, mother said to the child – good job in selecting the books.
In day to day talks with friends/family/colleagues, it so happens that one person keeps talking and the other person is silent without much of expression. There is more silence without a dialogue, more like a monologue.
Now what’s the relationship between the silence , the 4 agreements and coaching sessions and the child.
When I encountered these bouts of silence during various talks, I got reminded of these 4 agreements . I translated in my mind –
Agreement 1 – Follow SCARF, be kind, inspire through my talk; (Be impeccable with your word)
Agreement 2 – not to take silence as disapproval/disrespect; (Don’t take anything personally)
Agreement 3 – not to take silence as my words are not making any sense; (Don’t make assumptions)
Agreement 4 – continue to inspire – be focused on the relationship (Always do you best)
Coaching sessions are meant to get the client think, reflect to get solutions on his own. Especially when there is Silence – What happens in the process – called the ‘aha’ movement, the person gets better, improves self-confidence as he/she is finding solutions on his own.
Silence has lot of potential please explore, calm down the mind chatter.
Keen to hear what does Silence mean to each of you (needless to say – being Silent by not responding also is one way of responding)