We use the term ‘meta-view’ in coaching when we ask clients to either step back and view their whole lives or ask them to zoom out beyond the immediate challenges and issues and look at their lives from above. To aid the visualization we will often ask the client to imagine looking down on their life from an aeroplane or hot air balloon and to explain the expanded view that they see… this is a very effective tool during those periods when we just can’t see the wood for trees and yearn for clarity.
While in NYC at the beginning of this week I was fortunate enough to have stayed in a 51st floor corner room where I had quite the view from above. I could view people walking purposefully around their offices while others popped out onto the lower roof gardens and balconies to take a quiet break, I witnessed the rhythm of deliveries to local businesses and restaurants and watched the tourists amble along distractedly whilst the bustling locals exercised their right to the ‘New York minute’ by spilling into the oncoming traffic to navigate around them.
I was transfixed sitting at that window on the world, watching and learning, considering the natural pulse of the city, reading the oversized billboards telling me about retirement funds, Broadway shows and the upcoming remake of 90210. Noticing that with M&M’s world and Hershey World positioned on opposite street corners their presence is a dominant one, I would imagine that any family with children would indeed find it hard to make it by without a purchase and the fact that yellow is such an essential color for Manhattan. But as I observed the architecture and activity the majority of my thoughts converged around the notion of how connected we all are.
From hundreds of feet above I could see relationships between people that the folks below who were merely inches apart were probably not even aware of and I could follow the flow of traffic and see how the sticking points could have been avoided if only the drivers had known I was watching and had the ability to read my mind! From my vantage point way up in the sky I had a new perspective on a much broader picture and found it both refreshing and useful to view things in this way; choosing to keep the experience front of mind as I take the elevator back down to street level to meet the throng below.
What might a meta-view offer you today?
Candice
© The Red Barn Cooperative – Working together to nourish lives
A Red Barn Coaching initiative www.redbarncoaching.com
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