Showing posts with label Life Coaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life Coaching. Show all posts

Monday 1 February 2016

Character study

I am immersed in what I hope will be the final edit of my second novel. At this point in the process, I am trying to look at the 'arc' of the story, while also teasing out some of the underlying themes. It's structural work, quite different from the nitty-gritty detail which has occupied me up until now. The question I keep pondering is what my central character - a young wife stuck in a dysfunctional marriage - has learnt about herself over the course of the novel.

Lily James as the charming Natasha Rostova
Credit: BBC / Mitch Jenkins
Last night, watching the latest instalment of the BBC's excellent War and Peace series, I witnessed the sad decline of the charismatic Natasha, as she struggles to reconcile her sexuality - her lapse in judgement regarding Anatole - with a greater sense of purpose. Within the confines of a novel, characters are usually obliged to travel in some metaphorical sense, during which journey they undergo a kind of moral or spiritual transformation. Tolstoy's War and Peace is no exception.

Thursday 6 December 2012

Coaching Anna Karenina

Imagine the scenario for a moment. A Russian aristocratic woman meets with a life coach. Note that the light has been extinguished from her grey eyes.
Coach: Hello - thanks for coming. What brings you to coaching?
AK: I have no cause for joy. Laughter jars on me painfully.
Coach: What is it you would like to achieve from this session?
AK: I need to escape from my troubles. I am conscious of my own humiliation.
Coach: If you were to tell me a story about yourself, what would it be?

Where to begin? Earlier this week I attended a discussion on the philosophy of personality, organised by a life coach as part of his training. In an hour and a half, we covered nurture versus nature, identity versus behaviour, the plasticity of the brain and our need for reflection. There were about a dozen people present and almost as many views on the formation of personality. 

Keira Knightley arriving at the UK premiere of Anna Karenina
Did Anna Karenina need a life coach? 
© Featureflash | Dreamstime.com
The basic premise of the discussion, however, was that human beings have an innate desire to self-improve. Life coaching exists as a form of counselling to help us to realise our potential and, if necessary, change direction. Since civilisation began, human beings have used all sorts of practices - religion, exercise, drugs, education and even surgery - to enhance their attributes and abilities. Life coaching joins that list.

So what has Anna Karenina got to do with all this? Self-improvement, or character development, is also the engine that drives most novels. All those great protagonists - Pip of Great Expectations, Jane Austen's Emma, Madame Bovary - set off on a journey to self-discovery, or ultimate self-destruction, depending on their fate.