Design Environments

The purpose of designed environments to bring ease and sustainability to the expanded awareness gained in step three of the coaching process.
Let's begin with a common experience that points to the essential relationship we have with our environments.
Remember a time when you attended a workshop of some kind and completed the event with BIG ideas and insights - "I can't wait to get back home or to the office. Everything is going to be different". Then a few weeks later... nothing has changed. In fact, quite often the workshop seems like a distant memory.

What happened?
This common experience reveals an essential - and often unnoticed - part of human life. We are in a constant bi- directional relationship with our environments. What this means is that at the same time we are both designing our environments to be a reflection of us AND we are adapting ourselves to our environments.

Our environments are a mirror of our inner world. By environments we mean the physical space like your home and office, your relationships with family, friends and colleagues; your finances; your body; your network of communities; your access to nature; and the memetic environment of books, television, Internet, magazines etc.

If you want to know someone, observe their environment and you know exactly who they are.
At the same time...We are always adapting to the environments around us.
Put yourself in a new office and you will begin to act and think like your new colleagues. Stay in a new country for a few weeks and you will start to adopt new habits. We are naturally adaptive creatures.

So what does this mean...
When you go to a workshop you are in a unique environment that temporarily changes your world. (The coaching relationship is a unique environment as well) The insights you have are a product of that environment. When you return to your "home" environment you will begin the natural adapting process to the environment that was a mirror of the old you!

Unless you take immediate steps to re-design your environments to match the insights you had in the workshop environment - the NEW you - the environments of the old you will pull you back to the way you were.

As a side note: this is why coaching is such a powerful new force in the training industry and why our mantra at CoachVille "Training without coaching is entertainment" is so relevant.
The job of the coach is to bring learning to life in the coachee's environments. This is the only way to sustainable results.