Week 11 Reflective Entry

By Noora Haraholma

I found presencing rather difficult at first. However, after I got more comfortable with just sitting down and reflecting myself, I felt that presencing was extremely relaxing. It made me appreciate more what I already have and what kind of person I am while it also gave me a more clear vision of what I want to be in the future. 

As mentioned in my previous post, traveling makes me feel more aligned with my authentic self for two reasons: first of all I get to learn something new and secondly I am able to see my everyday life from another perspective when I am far away. While I was talking with Muriel I came up with a third reason: abroad I can be whatever I want. Usually when I go outside of my home country, nobody knows me. Being free of other people’s expectations helps me to behave in away that is more aligned with my authentic self. Traveling also helps to break the routines that prevent me from being the person I want to be. This is due to the fact that from far away it is easier to see and change those routines. With Phuong we also came to a conclusion that traveling teaches us a lot about ourselves since we have to survive on our own without the safety net that we usually have.  When we are alone we have to have more faith in ourselves and we can learn something new  about our personalities and capabilities.

I also talked a lot about other people’s expectations with Phuong. Both of us think a lot what the others want from us instead of concentrating on what we want ourselves. I could really relate when Phuong told me that he is really helpful by nature and he is now working on learning to say ”no” to people. I think that is really important because even though being helpful defines our authentic selves, being too helpful at our own expense is not good for anybody. It can prevent us from pursuing our other goals and thus make us more anxious and less aligned with our authentic selves. Sometimes it is good to be a bit “selfish” and think what is best for us in order to be the best and most authentic version of ourselves.

All in all, I think that precensing was a good experience. Nowadays people are too busy with their lives and there are so many distractions that people do not have time to think about what they want from life. Instead they just pursue things that other people expect from them (or it might be more correct to say  that they pursue things that they assume that the other people expect from them). I would say that people have a tendency to think too much the opinions of others instead of concentrating on the needs of their authentic selves. In my opinion precensing is a good reality check that helps us to deal with our problems and concerns. It provides guidance and helps us to find our inner strengths. I believe that everybody should try to practice precensing once in a while and as a result we would have a lot less stress and unhappiness.

Week 11 Coaching Assignment - Reflective entry: Presencing

by Muriel Guillod

First of all, I have to say that week after week, these coaching assignments have been pushing me further and further out of my comfort zone. The challenge of this week’s assignment was that I fully opened my heart, and thus became vulnerable to some extent. I shared very personal moments of my life with my team mates, who I only know since a couple of weeks, which is something quite unusual to do. They’ve probably learned more about myself and definitely much quicker than most of my friends and family.

As a coach, Phuong pushed me to further reflect on my memories and my experience during my presencing exercise. He challenged me concerning my previous experience at work, by asking me if it would be something that I would do again, and I had no hesitation answering him that yes, I would always stick to my values, and would rather loose a job than working for someone whose values and behaviours are so much in dissonance with mines. I told him, that already earlier in life, I made choices to avoid being in such a position where I couldn’t be aligned with my values. Indeed, when I started my studies, I considered becoming a lawyer, because I believed in social justice and wanted to defend the poor and the oppressed. Going through adolescence, I lost some of my idealistic visions and realised the world was full of injustice, and it were not lawyers who would bring that back on the right path. I’m not judging here or putting all lawyers in the same category, but I know that as a lawyer you could be court-appointed to defend a criminal and never ever would have I been able to do this. This is the main reason why I decided to embrace another field of studies and not study law any further.

Phuong confessed that him, similarly to me who was willing to be a bird, had once wished to be a fish. Whereas I feel more at ease in the air, Phuong’s element is water. We found many analogies: both birds and fishes are of various types, sizes, functions… Even the smallest bird or fish as an important part to play in the bigger picture, such as the little fish cleaning the back of his bigger fellow. Both birds and fishes are part of this world and live in harmony with their environment, adapting to it, and taking the best of it. None of them are insignificant, and all of them have their part to play in the life chain and in this world. We found that it was a perfect metaphor of how we felt the more authentic, each in our own way.

When having Phuong as a coachee, I listened carefully to his story and I was surprised that his reflection went in a completely different way than mine. Whereas I focused more on myself to define who I really am, Phuong also considered the opinion of others, his surroundings, such as family and friends. He compared the way he saw himself with how others perceived him and he found that the people the closest to him were not the ones that have the more accurate vision of him. They judge him according to their expectations, thus always being a big more critical and severe. For me, it was a real cultural difference. I know for instance that my parents will never compare me with others kids to judge of my successes and failures, and not even with my brother. They are proud of both of us, no matter what and they support every choice we make, as long as we make it sensibly and take time to think about it.

In my coaching session with Noora, we together realized that we’ve been to some extent, if not practicing presencing in the strict sense, at least asking ourselves some of the fundamental questions that we’ve reflected on during this first presencing session. For example, we’ve been questioning ourselves about the sense of our lives, what we wanted to become, who we really were, what our true values were and how we wanted to implement them in our lives. Reflecting about ourselves is not something either of us is used to, but rather something we would do in moments that are particularly favourable, such as when travelling abroad. What we’ve actually realized is that, being abroad actually helps us see our lives more clearly, as we’re taking some distance with the daily routine we’re used to (and sometimes stuck in) when we are in our home country. Becoming conscious of all this was for both of us probably the start of a new process, of a whole new journey. As discussed in class, what is important is to open the door a first time. Once this step is done, it will be easier to do it in the future. It’s like when you’re learning something new for the first time: it requires time and effort. But if you encounter the same thing again later on, it will be much easier to handle it.

All in all, this exercise of presencing made me realise that it is not the destination which matters, it’s the journey. And we just initiated the process, the road to discover who we truly are is still long, and the path will be changing over the years, according to the choices we make and the routes we take and those we decide to ignore. Taking time to reflect on myself actually was a discovery. In this world, where everything is always so urgent, we barely take time for ourselves anymore. I found it not only interesting, but crucial to also allow ourselves to take the time to actually take care of ourselves.

Reflective entry after coaching session_Presencing

 Chi Phuong NGUYEN

This week, Noora was in Colombia, so our trio team changed the coaching way. Due to the conflictual timetable, we had seperate coaching sessions, I had the face-to-face coaching with Muriel on Wednesday and a Skype coaching with Noora on Friday. On Wednesday coaching session with Muriel, we were in the cafeteria. Other people were present near the table where we sat but we didn’t found any difficulty to share our intime thoughts. It can be resulted from the fact that we become good friends after several coaching sessions and feel at ease to share your thinking and emotions. I started talking about my experience and it was a little bit long but Muriel was really patient to listen to my whole story. She summerized my experience, pointing out certain aspects that she found interesting in my experience and asked me certain questions about my parents’ expectation and how it could affect to the way I would bring up my child. Their expectation and comparison come more from the social context. Indeed, in Vietnam, people are intent to ask others more about their personal matters such as how many kids you do have, how much money you gain as your salary, what position you occupy in your company, what your kids ranking at school is…

In her experience of Solo Presencing, Muriel had clear images of people who influenced her life (her grandmother, her close friend), her favorite animal : a bird, the North edge of New Zealand where the oceans meet.   

It was interesting that all of us chose the Solo Presencing to practice for this week coaching assignment. And I could find a lot of similarities with the experience of both Muriel and Noora. With Muriel, she mentioned about the image of a bird with freedom. That image reminds me of my favorite imagination in which I imagine myself as a fish swimming in the deep blue ocean. When we were a bird or a fish, we wouldn’t feel anymore the pressure or the gravity to keep us from doing what we could do or going to where we wanted. I wonder if the gravity in that case refers to the social pressure or prejudices that we have in our daily life. I love the deep ocean because the origin of life on Earth started from the ocean hundred of million years ago, and there were still so many things that we couldn’t understand or discover yet in the deep ocean. We both agreed that face to the nature, human, was too tiny, but each tiny individual played a certain role in this life.

Her story about her close friend also reminded me of my soulmate friend. I think that everyone has a special friend with whom we feel to be ourselves, we don’t need to make any effort to be someone else but be ourselves. Someone with whom we can share everything in life without being judged, someone who supports us, who listen to us whenever we want. Someone who helped us to realize our values, our strengths, our valuable existence to others. And that special friend was my ex-girlfriend.

Noora and I had a similar concern about the stress of the person that we wanted to be, to meet up the expectation of others for ourselves and how ambitious both of us were. Noora finally found out that she was happy with what she is doing now. She didn’t have a particular person that influenced her much like Muriel had (her grandmother) but she spent a lot of time talking with her sisters and shared a lot with her sisters.

In conclusion, this exercise of Solo presencing was very interesting and valuable for us to help us find out about our meaning of existence, our values. Certainly, I’ll practice this exercise of presencing more often. And I think that the presencing is also precious for facilitating the communication, help members in a team/organization to realize his/her strengths, interactions with others.

All of us agreed that travelling helped us to discover ourselves better, to see our authentic selves more clearly. Indeed, when we go to a new country, a new environment, we have to change our routines, change our mindset, we don’t have enough help from people or relationship that we had established before in our home country. We have to adapt to the changes and those changes trigger our hidden abilities. And in that context, we can discover our authentic self.

Week 11 Coaching Assignment

By Noora Haraholma

I actually realized only now that I have been practicing some kind of  solo presencing since I was young. Whenever I feel that I am stuck with my life and I need to figure out what I really want from life, I go walking in the nature. Walking has always got my ideas flowing and it helps me to explore options outside the box. However, this time I followed the instructions given in the assignment and did not go for a walk but instead sat down. The presencing exercise was a bit challenging for me this week since I had to do it in Medellín which is a huge city that never sleeps. However, I was able to find a spot close to the nature in my hotel’s garden. I started by closing my eyes and tried to ignore all the noises around me. The weather was really sunny and warm and I was feeling happy because of that.  I am rather bad  at staying still and away from my phone but after trying for a while I was able to start thinking about my authentic self. 

One of the characteristics that defines my authentic self is ambition and a need to  become a better version of myself. If I feel that I am not doing well enough I feel anxious. Ambition is also related to my willingness to learn new things. I am rather curious by nature and learning something that I did not know before is really interesting for me. I think that it helps me to understand the world and other people better. One of the things restricting my curiosity is that sometimes I am afraid to take a leap and go out from my comfort zone. I also think that my authentic self is related to  the wellbeing of other people and I want to feel that I am contributing to the others’ lives in a positive way. Though at the moment I feel a bit inadequate since there are so many  things that I could do to help other people but I am not able to do them yet.

Most of the time I am too busy to be present and to think about myself. I stress too much about what the other people expect from me and forget to think about whether I am actually heading to a direction where I want to go. Luckily often when I am abroad I get these sudden feelings of inner peace that help me to realize that I am almost the person that I want to be. I feel that traveling helps me to connect with my authentic self because of two reasons. First of all, I am able to learn about new cultures and countries, and  therefore it fulfills my curiosity and need to understand the world. Secondly, going far away from home gives new perspectives and it also enables me to see many things that I do not realize at home. I guess being too close to home makes me blind to my everyday life. One of these traveling moments when I felt like myself was in Croatia last summer. I was floating in the sea and suddenly felt really calm. I knew exactly who I was and where I was going. My goals crystallized in my mind and I was full of happiness and motivation. I felt that there was nothing else that I would rather be and I think that in that exact moment I was aligned with my authentic self.

Reflecting on my authentic self made me understand that I should probably stress less about the other people’s expectations and be more forgiving to myself. I am already on my way to become a person that is aligned with my authentic self and I just need to have more faith in myself. I will keep on traveling in the future since it makes me feel happy and like myself. I should try to practice presencing once in a while also in the future in order to check that I am heading to a direction that is aligned with my authentic self.

Week 11 Coaching Assignment - Presencing

By Muriel Guillod 

Cape Reinga, Where oceans meet

I tried my first “presencing session” as suggested in this week’s assignment. I went outside, and actually sat in nature for a while. The day was mild, the sun was shining and there was a little breeze, but it wasn’t too cold, so that I could stay and actually enjoy being outside without shivering. I looked at the trees around me, at the flags that were moving in the wind, at the snow which was resisting the warmer temperature and still present on the grass. Then I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. I noticed how I was inspiring and expiring slowly, and how my chest and stomach were moving up and down. I focused on myself, on my body: I felt the cold on my bare hands, the breeze on my cheeks, which made my hair moving, and the sun warming up my face agreeably. I also noticed how I was sitting, i.e. carefully in a position which was taking care of my back while still being comfortable.

After a few minutes, I started to think about what was defining me as a person. How I was seeing myself. What my authentic self is. The first things which popped in my mind were childhood memories. During these happy moments, the person I was the closest to was my grandmother. She taught me so many things, and transmitted me some of my inner values. We used to go for walks every time we could, in summer, fall, winter, spring. No matter. We would walk up the hill where we both lived, throughout the forest, or by the lake, on small paths, and sometimes we would go off the trails and explore. She was really close to nature, and passed me her passion and respect for all living things. She was an accomplice really, and I miss her every day since she passed away. After those images of my early life, I saw more recent ones, pictures and films of my trips around the world, especially about the time when I was in New Zealand. I went back in memories to places where I’ve already experienced some kind of meditation, when I was alone, in beautiful landscapes, with nothing else than the wind whispering at my ear and nature around me. One specific image which appeared in my mind was when I was at the very North edge of New Zealand, the most Northern point of the North Island, Cape Reinga. To go there, it requires to drive hours on a one-way road. Nobody lives there, there’s not much around. Thus it requires a certain will to do the trip, but the destination is worth the time and effort. There, I found a peaceful place, favourable to meditation. Nobody around, and just a small lighthouse, cliffs, and the two oceans – The Tasman sea and the Pacific ocean – joining together but not actually mixing. A wonder: there is no other word. This memory as well as others were peaceful images, coming and going into my mind, and I could still feel the same feelings that what I experienced at that time: this sensation of entirety, of being at peace with myself. These moments were favourable for self-inquiry, and already then I would go into deep questioning, about the sense of life, my goals, my place in the world, what role I had to play. When I think about my authentic self, I usually think of moments where I actually was at peace, meaning that I was aligned with my values and I was being my true self, without judgment, or without any filter of any kind.

This allows me to do the transition towards times in my life where I’ve actually fully experienced my authentic self. As a matter of facts, the first image which appeared in my mind when I asked myself this question, was the face of a very close friend, who became really important in my life, as we share a lot together and have a lot in common. I actually met him not so long ago, only around a year and a half ago, in my master studies. At first, he was just a good friend and fellow student, but as weeks passed, we realized that we had many interests in common and chose the same courses without even talking about it, just because they appealed to both of us. We thus became the best team in every group work we had to do and spent all our time to study together, which meant a lot of long hours at the library or at each other’s place. I would always go to him for advice, and he would listen carefully and answer mindfully. His opinion really does matter to me and I would take into account his comments and integrate them in my work or in my life in general. But we would share more than our studies: we both left the region where we grew up and did most of our studies to go to another city, at the opposite side of Switzerland, for our master and wanted to live this new experience wholeheartedly and entirely. We would share both happy as well as hard moments together, parties and laughter on the one side, hard studies and sometimes failures on the other side. Whatever happened, we could count on the support of the other. We never fought together. Even the only one time we were close to have a small argument, we actually never really entered it. We directly handled it by discussing openly about it and actually found out that the reason we felt hurt in our friendship was a lack of attention of each other, which actually was never meant to be. Well, in short, dialogue with him were always and still are natural, easy, and uncomplicated. To sum up, I could really say that I found my soul mate in friendship.

There is another story which came to my mind as when I truly was myself. I already talked shortly about it on some posts on the forum, and will try to make it short and simple here. At my previous workplace, my boss was bullying one of my colleague without any good reason. She was just a mean and nasty person, and probably had some kind of complex and needed to feel superior. In any case, she was tyrannising quite a lot of people around her at work, but this very specific colleague suffered more than any other. As a consequence, I decided to support my colleague, not only by listening to her and being there as a confident, but by publicly taking her defense and going against my boss. What was happening at work was just unbearable for me and I couldn’t stand doing nothing, seeing someone suffer and only watch: that is against my values. I needed to align my behaviour with my inner and profound beliefs. In that situation also, I was my authentic self, no matter what it could cost me.

Finally, the feelings that I experience when I’m being authentic are similar to the feelings of flying. I love being in the air so much, that I wish I could be a bird sometimes. I’ve experienced flying in many ways: skydiving, paragliding, hang-gliding, or in really small planes. When you’re up there, nothing is impossible. You look around, and you see the world more entirely, you have a better global vision of what happens around you. Furthermore, you sense this freedom, there are no barriers, and you are light, so light, released from any burden which could hinder your movements in every-day life.

Well, this might have been a bit long to describe, but here is what I saw and felt when meditating. I wouldn’t say I totally and truly experienced presencing, as I think it requires more than only one try. What is important though is that I opened my heart to this new exercise and would always be able to go back there and continue practicing to fully open it to the world.

Entry for Week 11 Coaching assignment: Presencing

Chi Phuong NGUYEN

I chose the first option Solo Presencing as it allows me to answer certain questions about my authentic self. From the day I arrived to Canada, I realized that I spent time thinking about pursuing different objectives that I set out in life such as getting a degre, doing the paper to ask for the PR, finding a job, making money… And all those preoccupations took up my mind and didn’t let me to have time for myself, going out to the nature with a free mindset. That’s why the exercise of Solo Presencing is a perfect opportunity for myself to get rid of the daily issues, to refresh myself and my thinking. I went out to the park Myrand near Universite Laval at around 10 a.m.  It was a warm day after those long winter days, the temperature was -7^oC. Spring hadn’t arrived yet but fully presented in that day. I could hear a lot of birds talking with each other on the trees’ branches (were they calling each other to go for a late breakfast?) The snow wasn’t anymore freezed on the branches like it was last week. The snow melt and left the pavement with black salt but clear way to walk, there was still snow around the park. Near the park, there was a café named “Café au temps perdu” with a big hanging clock. The café gave me the feeling of nostalgic, thinking about the old days in the past. An old man sat on a chair with a table on the cafe’ yard. He smiled at me when I looked at him. I smiled back and nodded my head to salute him. There was a playground for kids with a children’s slide, a colorful house, some seesaws in the park but children were still busy in the kindergarten or school at this time of the morning, and there was no child in the park. Closing my eyes, the images of the green park with grass cover, full of children’s laugh, and people lying down on the grass, reading books appeared in my mind, I was imagining the park in the coming summer. After looking at the scene surround me, I took a deep breath, relaxed my body, lean myself backward and closed my eyes again. The first thing I felt was the cold of the bench that I sat on. I felt my body and my legs more clearly, my feet were on the ground. There was an invisible link between my feet and the ground, but my mind and my imagination flied from the actual context. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to ask myself but I felt relief, freeing my mind from the workload, upcoming deadline and exams.

I started to ask myself about who I was. Did I define myself in the qualities that I possessed, what I had done or realized so far or should I define myself by the relationship with others, my family, my friends, my colleagues, my former colleagues, and how others perceive me? Or should I define myself by values that I brought to others? I drew an image of myself. I am a person that is helpful and was always willing to help others if possible. I find it hard to say “No” when a friend asks for my help even though I do not know that friend so well. I’m learning to say “No” to certain things to focus more on my objectives. I like spending time with my family members, my friends to talk about several subjects in life, from a favorite destination to go for vacation to antique clocks, certain challenges that our society is facing with. I am an ambitious person, wishing to do many things in the same time. I like to challenge myself, putting me in several contexts to adapt with the changes. I am far from a perfect person, sometimes I push myself to do things but sometimes I am quite easy towards myself, letting myself to give up some of my objectives. I speak Vietnamese, English and French and have spent life living in several places in France, Canada and the United States. I have many friends, some close friends and have good relationships with people that I work with. I am interested in many aspects in life and have several ideas of doing business in different fields from education to technology, telecommunication. I worked as project manager, lecturer, educational consultant and entrepreneur in the past. But I wonder how others perceive me? What did I do to others that make me become a good or bad person in their eyes? Our image of ourselves can be very different from the image that others perceive us, sometimes contradictory. And in case of a significant difference of perception, it can lead to issues of communication or misunderstanding, affecting badly to relationships.

And I realized that my perception of myself was more aligned with the image of myself that others perceive in the social context than in the familial context. In other words, people that I work with or meet and my friends have a perception about me that is closer to my perception of myself than people in my families do. It might result from the fact that my mother or my wife often compare me to others. And when we compare one person to others, we often have a high expectation. I should be a successful businessman, a model husband (for my wife) and a good father (for my daughter), taking responsibility for my whole family. And I am conducting my life to meet up with that expectation somehow. My future plans, my objectives or my future image of myself reflect that expectation. That finding made me feel really more comfortable as I understand the root of my preoccupations. It was a feeling like relieving a big stone in my mind. Certainly I have also expectations for myself and those expectations become motivation for my to achieve my objectives, to improve myself and a source of curiosity for me to learn and discover new things in life. However, bearing the expectations from the family sometimes becomes a hindrance for me. I didn’t feel comfortable and tried to delay things that others requested me to do. I have never asked myself about my authentic self before and the exercise of Solo presencing really brought a new experience for me, helping me to find the answer of a question that was always burdened in my mind. In order to improve myself in life, I have to focus more on my values, strengths and also weaknesses instead of comparing myself to others.