Identifying your goals and resources
When a change wants to happen, it looks for people to act through. ―Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone
👥 Serves: 2-10 people
🎚 Difficulty: Medium
⏳ Total time: 61-120 minutes
🥣 Ingredients: A partner to talk to, “Active hope” book by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone (if you’re curious to find out more about it!)
🤓 Wholebeing Domains: Accomplishments, Awareness, Meaning
💪 Wholebeing Skills: Accountability, Ambition, Clarity, Commitment, Direction, Flourishing, Fulfilment, Goal-setting, Planning
Identifying your goals and resources
📝 Description
A peer-coaching action planning process to identify practical steps to move forward into your purpose.
The following activity has been taken from Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone’s book Active Hope: How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy. The book explores how to cultivate the practice of active hope and become active participants in bringing about what we hope for.
How can you find ways to channel your psychic energy for positive change into tangible actions in the physical world? How do you overcome the voice of the inner critic that prevents you from stepping into your own greatness? When our deepest purpose guides our actions in the world, we feel aligned and connected. We enjoy a meaningful life.
This peer-coaching exercise offers an action planning process that will help you identify some practical steps you can commit to taking in the next seven days. This exercise can be done with one other person only, with a group of people, or even with yourself alone. If you are alone, you can do so by looking at yourself reflected in a mirror.
To find out more about Joanna and Chris’s work, please visit their website: http://www.activehope.info.
👣 Steps
Step 1 – Envisioning (10’)
After choosing who will be the coach and who will be the coachee, the coach starts asking powerful questions to help the coachee envision their goals.
- If you knew you could not fail, what would you most want to do for the healing of our world?
Step 2 – Goal setting (10’)
Building on the enthusiasm and energy for change stirred up in the coachee, the coach asks the coachee about specific goals to achieve.
- What specific goal or project could you realistically aim to achieve in the next twelve months that would contribute to this?
Step 3 – Acknowledge resources (10’)
Once the goal has been set, the coach invites the coachee to reflect on what resources they already have available to support them, as well as additional resources they need to acquire.
- What resources, inner and outer, do you have that will help you do this? Inner resources include specific strengths, qualities, and experience, as well as knowledge and skills you have acquired. External resources include relationships, contacts, and networks you can draw on, as well as material resources such as money, equipment, and places to work or recharge.
- What resources, inner and external, will you need to acquire? What might you need to learn, develop, or obtain?
Step 4 – Identify obstacles (10’)
At this point, the coach invites the coachee to think about potential obstacles they may face along the way, and identify ways to overcome them.
- How might you stop yourself?
- What obstacles might you throw in the way?
- How will you overcome these obstacles?
Step 5 – Commit to action (5’)
Finally, the coach helps the coachee move towards action and commit to a small practical step to take.
- What step can you take in the next week, no matter how small – making a phone call, sending an email, or scheduling in some reflection time – that will move you towards this goal?
Step 6 – Swap and repeat (45’)
Swap roles and repeat steps 1-5.