In her
book The Artist's Way (1992), Julia Cameron recommends an exercise to people who
are trying to find their creativity. I suggest the same exercise to coachees to
help them develop their self-awareness.
Every
morning, as soon as she gets up, the coachee should write an A4 page of
long-hand. It is just stream-of-consciousness writing — 'oh dear another day at
least the sun is shining wish I could stay home. But there's that meeting — what
on earth shall I wear — I can hear the motorbike next door, must be eight
o'clock...' and so on. The text is for no one else to read, and indeed the
writer should not reread it for at least a couple of weeks; if they do, they
start to become self-conscious about what they are writing and how they are
writing it, and that counteracts the purpose.
The
purpose is to bring to consciousness one's preoccupations, and so learn more
about what is really driving us, what we really hope for, and what is going on
in our inner world. Read what you have written a week and a month later; or just
continue the morning pages indefinitely and see what emerges.
One
senior executive, for example, became newly aware through her morning pages of
her sense of humour, and her ironic 'take' on everyday events. She realised that
she had rather a serious persona at work, and was not actually being herself.
She started to bring much more of her dry wit into her work, and enjoyed her
working days more, and also discovered people enjoyed working alongside her
more.
