I had an incredible experience on today’s session with one of my clients. As a coach, I got coached myself by coaching my client this morning.
My Executive client is an intelligent, driven, inspiring and thoughtful lady. While she’s having a successful career as an CEO of a fast growing company, she’s also a caring and devoted mother of 2 beautiful girls. She started with talking about her daughters before coaching session and slowly we moved to coaching. It was a great session with her. At the end of session she kept thanking me for the session and saying she was brought onto a different level today to know a better self during the coaching. She even gave me a huge hug that nearly broke my bones, you know what I mean. When I was just about to step out of the door to leave, I got called up by her “Catherine, can I ask you one more question? Sorry to hold you back”
So I sat down again and listened to her question. She asked “I’d like to ask for my daughters. If my daughters just do one thing to be happy, what would be the one thing you could advise them to do?”
I was totally struck when I heard her question… What a question! Also, this is not in coaching anymore so it’s not a coaching topic but rather a personal question that would like to have my opinion. Yes, what would you do in order to pursue the happiness of life if you only do one thing? What would I do in order to pursue the happiness of life if I only do one thing? Do I have the answer to her question? No, I had no straight answer at the moment of hearing her. What advice can I give to the her beloved daughters? How shall I advise the 2 beautiful girls? I started asking this question to myself “what one thing would you do to be ultimately happy?” Lots of things were passing through my mind and then being filtered by my heart. I started to deepen understanding of myself. At the end of fast self brainstorming + heartstorming it was ‘Love’ that stayed and not filtered away.
I was struck again, but by myself this time. Love, that’s my answer- yes, I would just love to pursue the happiness, to love to be happy, by loving people, loving the world, just to love.
Then I was very sure about my answer, so quickly said to her “thank you for asking me this great question. It’s incredible to have you ask me this. I’m not an expert on this kind of topic but this’s just my own philosophy that I’d like to share with you, which is I’d just love in order to be happy, to love my loved ones, to love people, that’s the one thing I’d do to achieve the ultimate happiness.”
She quickly got caught by my words as I noticed her eyes turned moist. She held my both hands firmly shaking for more than one minute before she let me go.
You know people often ask me about the secret of feeling fulfilled for my career, I think this’s what it is. The power of coaching- you empower others but you’re empowered at the same time.