Convictions that withhold you
The iGROW process is on the move now. The goal has been set, and well thought of. The past is the best predictor of the future, so look at your goal and reason with yourself - and mentor - what held you back in the future to reach your goal. The experiences in the past can be seen as a trail, best to image if you think of a old fashioned cart with big wooden wheels. These wheels carve deep small channels in the ground. This is you path in live, the way you do things in live. They get deeper while growing older. It is almost as if your behavior is on autopilot. For a lot of reasons this is not alway a bad thing. If you have to be conscious about all you do, you will be a busy person. So this is good, except when you are not satisfied with where your live is heading. You need to find a way to ‘step out’ of these deep carved channels. How do you do this? And maybe first of all: How do you know you are heading in a direction that is not bringing you where you want to be?
In the introduction to mentoring, I have talked to you about the importance of Attention. The attention in this case is directed to yourself, and is one of the hardest things to do. Later on attention will be directed to others. Really seeing that you are heading in the - for you - wrong direction, needs triggers. Signs, confrontations, feelings, energy drops to give you insights that something is not yet going like it should. This is where the role of the mentor can be very important. You are triggered by something, and you do not know what is happening. Real attention and open questions will bring you back to your self: to introspection. The main function of a mentor is therefor to activate ‘Attention’, the awareness of what is happening. And in this context the present, the REALITY in the broader sense about your goal. Together with a mentee you look at the reasons why the goal was chosen as described by yourself in the first part of iGROW. Remember that it is no problem to go back to GOAL and review. iGROW is a flexible structure, it guides and gives you a structure. Don’t be rigid while using it. This stage Reality is about confronting the mentee to see the past in a much clearer sense then ever. Why wasn’t the goal achieved in the past? What were the reasons for ignoring signs? Signs coming clearly towards you, but you still didn’t react. How do you see your goal in connection with this reality?