Separating the Outcome from the Topic

You Don’t Need to Memorize Every Story

Jane was exhausted from trying to keep up with everything. She felt like she had to remember who said what, all the different scenarios, how they all connected. And every time something new came up, she felt like she was falling further behind.

I totally get why that happens. I shared with her — I’m not likely to recall the specifics of the graduation party, the 200-meter race, or the work situation that means she is going to have more responsibilities. That’s just not what fits in my short-term memory for the duration of a conversation. I might make an exception if the story is so memorable that I can’t forget it, and I do have a few of those.

But, truthfully, in any conversation what I can hold onto is the outcome, in this case, the idea of being present. And a few of her own words about what presence means to her — like the feeling of her body relaxing, her chest opening up, not having that tight, anxious feeling. Those are my anchors. Not the stories themselves.

Your Vacation Photos versus My Vacation Photos

This is where I find the vacation photo analogy really helpful, and it’s one I’ve been using a lot lately to explain the importance of partnering with thinkers in coaching and therapy sessions.

If someone shows you their vacation photos, they might be beautiful. You might enjoy looking at a few of the best ones, you might even want one for your wall. But you don’t feel them the way they do. You don’t have the lived experience or memories attached to that picture. You can appreciate the photo, but you’re not in it, literally or figuratively.

When you look at your own vacation photos, though, it’s totally different. You’re right back in that moment. You can almost feel the temperature of the air, remember what you were thinking, who was standing next to you, the feeling of the sand beneath your toes, or the wind on your face. The whole experience comes flooding back. The photo isn’t just an image — it’s a doorway back into something you have a memory and somatic experience of.

That’s what we’re trying to help thinkers do in a coaching session. It’s part of the reason we need a solid agreement, so that we can invite the thinker to lead us through what’s important in support of their getting to what is important to them to get to. And, along the way they are going to tell stories and process how they are experiencing all the things that get in the way of their having the outcome they want. And this is, one, normal, and two, super valuable. We are not just moving through a conversation for solutions, but actually taking snapshots along the way — moments where they stop, notice something, share a success like being okay with making Stouffer’s instead of adding the Martha Stewart Cheesy Mac recipe to an already packed day, and support them to anchor each insight that belongs to them along the way.

Because here’s the thing: if I summarize what the thinker figured out and hand it back to them, those are my photos. I took them. They might look pretty to the thinker, but they don’t have the same emotional weight as the ones the thinker needs to be invited to take for themselves. The thinker can nod along to my summary, but they won’t feel it the same way. It won’t stick the same way and as a result, the lasting change that might have been possible, isn’t.

So, when Jane’s thinker was telling the mac and cheese story — and in the middle of it she started to realize that things don’t always have to be perfect, that sometimes good enough is actually okay — that was a moment. That was her making an insta-worthy photo moment. Instead of just moving along with the plot of the story, that was a place to slow down and ask something like: “What does this insight mean for your ability to be fully present?” Or, “What are you learning about yourself as you share this idea?” Those questions aren’t about the mac and cheese. They’re about what the mac and cheese story is pointing to as it relates to what they want.

And that’s the difference. The story is the vehicle. The awareness underneath it is what we’re actually after.

The Questions That Keep Us Out of the Story

In our session, Jane and I landed on a few questions that would have helped her stay connected to the outcome without getting pulled into tracking all the narrative details:

• “What did you just discover or remind yourself of as you shared that?”
• “How does what you’re now sharing impact your understanding of what’s required for you to be present?”
• “What about this experience is important to what we’re looking at today?”

These questions are short and to the point. They’re completely focused on what the thinker is working toward. And what they do is invite the thinker to make her own connections, take her own pictures, snap, snap, snap, rather than the coach trying to figure it out for her and show her the coaches pictures..

The thinker is the one who as they are taking their own photos, they are doing the work. That’s the whole point.

Jane had actually already picked up on a lot of what was happening in the session — the perfectionism coming through, the tension in her thinker’s chest, the struggle between “good enough” and feeling like things had to be done just right. She was hearing it. She just wasn’t quite confident enough to name it and connect it back to the outcome they were working toward.

I think that hesitation happens a lot when we’re not totally clear on what the thinker wants or is trying to achieve. When you have a solid sense of where the conversation is going, it’s much easier to trust what you’re noticing and speak to it.

When You Feel Like You Don’t Know What You’re Doing — And You’re Actually Closer Than You Think

You know that feeling of unease that creeps in maybe ten minutes into a session? Where you start thinking, “We’ve been at this for ten minutes and I still don’t know what we’re doing here”?

Jane named it for herself. She said “My mind started racing right around the 10-minute mark.”

What I want to say about that is — when you’re in a session and you feel lost, it’s not always because the session is off track. Sometimes it’s because you haven’t gotten clear enough or anchored fully on the outcome yourself yet, so you’re not grounded in the directionality of the conversation. And the fix usually isn’t to push harder or make more of your own connections as you try to sort it out. Instead, it’s to pause, get curious, and check in. The thinker usually knows what they want, even if they haven’t said it cleanly yet. Ask them. Create enough space for it to get clarified, “Given what you just shared, how does this fit with what you want to get to today?” Often, we will get enough context to remind us of the outcome. But, again, confirming and reconfirming the outcome early in the conversation will save you that lost feeling.

Here is the other thing I noticed with Jane — she was already hearing the underlying themes. The perfectionism, the physical tension that came with it, the way her thinker kept conflating being present with making “all the right choices.” All of that was coming through. Jane was picking it up. She just wasn’t trusting herself enough to say it.

And I think that’s where a lot of coaches find themselves — right on the edge of the insight, but hesitant to name what they are noticing. This week several people said, I didn’t want to name that because I didn’t want to lead the client/thinker. But, this is part of our 1. Being present to what is happening in the conversation, and 2. Sharing our observations without attachment.

And there’s a version of coaching where you work really hard to manage the narrative, stitch everything together, and hand the thinker a pretty package of what they said and what it all means. And there’s another version where you trust what you’re noticing, speak it in service of the thinker’s outcome, and then ask a question that puts the meaning-making back with them. The second approach is more fun, honestly. It’s less work. And it tends to allow our conversation to go deeper, leads to more ‘aha’ moments, and they get stickier outcomes, because the thinker is doing the work in their own words, out of their own experience, making their own connecting memories.

We let them take the photos, snap, snap, snap, and now they own them.

Credits

Photos: All created in Canva as double exposures.

All Photo copyright retained by photo owners, everything else ©2014 - to present Lyssa deHart