LIFE STEPS COACHING

I am currently reading the book Identity and Violence by Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen.  As you might guess, it's not especially light reading.  But i am nonetheless feeling the buzz of enlightenment coming from his ideas and inspired vision.  At the most elemental level this book is about the power of our perceptions and the importance of exercising choice and reason.  (This is fundamental stuff to coaching as well!)  Sen makes the philosophical argument that it is our confusion over the concept of identity (both how we identify ourselves and others) that has ushered in a period of global political confrontation and violence.  He says the world is increasingly seen as "a federation of religions or civilizations."  My interpretation is that he is saying we approach something as beautiful and complex and immeasurable as human identity by categorizing all human beings as members of fixed and limited numbers of groups.  Sen goes on to say that "this approach can be a good way of misunderstanding nearly everyone in the world."

Seriously.  Think about this!  This is one of the most opportunity-rich and powerful insights.  It should be demanding every individual's attention, not least of which the leaders of the new millennium.  First, think about how you "identify" yourself.  Then, think about how you "identify" the other 6 billion + people we share the planet with.

I'll demonstrate.  At some level, my personal sense of identity goes something like:  I am an American citizen, of Minnesotan origin and California residence, with Irish and German ancestry, a woman, married, a professional life coach, a yoga practitioner, a dancer, a music fan.  I am deeply committed to the learning, health, the study of vocation, and travel.  I am profoundly concerned about the environment, the value of life, and the positive transformation of our world into a place where potential is maximized not minimized. 

• How do you identify yourself?
• How expansive is your view of personal identity?

Now, how do I identify the other 6 billion people?  This is where it gets interesting, because in this world context I see the Brit, the Afghan, the South American, the Chinese, the Moroccan, the Haitian, the Turk, the Malaysian.  I also see the Muslim, the Buddhist, the Christian, the Jew, the Hindu.  I see the Western world, I see Eastern. 

• How do you identify others in the world? 
• What do you notice about the way you group the people of the world?

The first thing I notice is how unintentionally limiting I find my answers.  Sen offers up a simple "awakening" by helping us recognize that there is a way in which these cultural and religious identities are all profound mis-descriptions.  None of these ought to be taken as any human being's only identity or singular membership category!!  According to Sen, the point is that the "freedom to determine our loyalties and priorities between different groups to all of which we may belong is a peculiarly important liberty which we have reason to recognize, value and defend."  I love it!

Imagine the danger in the limited perspective which denies our "inescapably plural identities" as human beings!  Sen calls for a paradigm shift in our conceptual thinking about identity. 

• What kind of boxes do you put other individuals in? 
• How might you change the ways in which you unwittingly identify people?

As a coach, I wonder how each of us can exercise a change in our perspectives to see the "wholeness" that exists in both ourselves and others?  I return again and again to the co-active principle of seeing each client as "naturally creative, resourceful and whole." 

• How can we incorporate this perspective into the way we interact with others each day?
• How might you identify yourself as being naturally creative, resourceful and whole?

Because Amartya Sen has so exquisitely captured it, I can't help but toss in a last excerpt from Identity and Violence:  "Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when the manifold divisions in the world are unified into one allegedly dominant system of classification--in terms of religion, or community, or culture, or nation... The uniquely partitioned world is much more divisive than the universe of plural and diverse categories that shape the world in which we live... The hope of harmony in the contemporary world lies to a great extent in a clearer understanding of the pluralities of human identity, and in the appreciation that they cut across each other and work against a sharp separation along one single hardened line of impenetrable division."

I am overcome with "Amen".