The Practice of Creating Space

Sooner or later, if we want to feel what it is to be alive in a Universe that is alive, we will have to empty ourselves, open our hearts, and listen. ~ Mark Nepo

Partnering with a life coach can feel like giving yourself a supportive holding structure wherein you can feel safe and begin to allow previously disavowed parts of yourself into more conscious awareness. In multiple ways, our inner and outer worlds are filled to the brim with thoughts, feelings, activities, tasks, commitments, and details of day-to-day living. Before you can expect to easily uncover new insights or self-awareness, it is essential to create an opening or space where such can be revealed. Author Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s words echo this truth exquisitely:

For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms. A candle flowers in the space of night…My life lacks this quality of significance, and therefore beauty, because there is so little empty space. There are few empty pages in my engagement pad, or empty hours to stand alone and find myself. I am not the only one who has ever felt lost and fragmented, asking how to remain whole when we are pulled off center by the centrifugal force of an ever-widening circle of contact and relationship.

When you partner with a coach for personal or professional growth, you are taking a step toward allowing something new to enter your life. The coach, not having an agenda or set plan, but rather just being there in the moment with you, is creating and holding a space for your growth and development. Author Dawna Markava, in her book I Will Not Die An Unlived Life, describes retreating alone to a tiny cabin as refuge “because it is a safe place in which to tell myself the truth about how I feel.” In a similar way, a coach, by simply being present without judgements or expectations, but instead believing in your ability to self-discover, creates a very spacious log cabin of sorts within which growth and a reclaiming of the self can occur. You are given the space to begin really listening to yourself. And how does one listen? I just love author Mark Nepa’s description. He says it is…”by emptying ourselves of noise so that we can hear the sacred pulse of things…by listening with all of who we are, we are briefly illuminated, like stained glass, letting every thing move through us in those privileged and enlightened moments.” A coach, and the practice of creating space, helps the vessel be emptied, as it must be, before it can be filled!