Many coaches are finding that as they meet their participants as whole people, they encounter a spiritual dimension
that is barely touched upon in the NewStart literature. Nonetheless, Life Skills and spirituality are connected
in some important ways. Three that I've identified are personal growth, problem solving, and personal leadership.
Personal Growth
Smith and White, as quoted by Allen, Mehal, Palmateer and Sluser (1995), say that in a Life Skills group, responsibility
for personal growth rests with the client. "The coach's task is to help them learn" (p. 11). Coaches
act as facilitators, guides, role-models, trainers, teachers and counselors (Allen et al., 1995). NewStart Life
Skills may be considered to be a counselling process, in that
… counseling is directed to helping clients deal with their immediate problems and improve their life situation. And the attitude of the counselor is that of one individual interacting with another, on more-or-less equal footing (Belkin, 1988, p. 24).
Coaches encourage students to "develop belief systems which support their rights and the rights of others"
(Allen et al., 1995, p.39). Personal growth, counseling and developing belief systems are all part of encouraging
psychological growth. Psychological growth must be considered to be a primary goal of Life Skills.
Helminiak (1996, 1998) makes a strong case for the inter-relatedness, even near-equivalence, of psychological growth
and spiritual growth. Many other psychologists, philosophers and theologians (e.g. Buber, 1923/1958; Emmons, 1999;
Frankl, 1959; Campbell and McMahon, 1985; Dreher, 1990; Hinterkopf, 1998; Kornfield, 1993; Kurtz, 1990; Peck, 1978;
Reed, 1996; Richardson, 1996; West, 1998) support the notion. Wolman (2001) considers the drive for spiritual self-improvement
to be the same thing as the desire for self-actualization. Self-actualizing people provide Maslow (1987) with his
benchmark for psychological health.
From this perspective, Life Skills, in its support and encouragement of personal growth, is involved with supporting
and encouraging spiritual growth.
Problem Solving
Life Skills are " . . . problem-solving behaviours appropriately and responsibly used in the management of
personal affairs" (Curtiss and Warren, 1973, p. 1). In his work on identifying and defining intelligences,
Gardner (1993) states " An intelligence is the ability to solve problems, or to create products, that are
valued within one or more cultural settings (p. x) . He has since clarified with "I now conceptualize an intelligence
as a biopsychological potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems
or create products that are of value in a culture (Gardner, 1999, pp. 33-34).
Building on Gardner's work, Bowling (1999) and Emmons (1999, 2000a) have proposed the concept of spiritual intelligence.
Emmons (2000b) identifies a minimum of four core components of spiritual intelligence:
(a) the capacity for transcendence; (b) the ability to enter into heightened spiritual states of consciousness; (c) the ability to invest everyday activities, events, and relationships with a sense of the sacred or divine; and (d) the ability to utilize spiritual resources to solve problems in living (p. 63).
Zohar and Marshall (2000) call spiritual intelligence "our ultimate intelligence" (p. 4). They define
it as:
… the intelligence with which we address and solve problems of meaning and value, the intelligence with which we can place our actions and our lives in a wider, richer, meaning-giving context, the intelligence with which we can assess that one course of action or one life-path is more meaningful that another (pp. 3-4).
Wolman (2001) defines spiritual intelligence as " . . . the human capacity to ask ultimate questions about
the meaning of life, and to simultaneously experience the seamless connection between each of us and the world
in which we live" (pp. 84-85). He sees spiritual intelligence as "the ground on which morality stands"
(p. 115) and as being applied in making moral choices and solving moral problems .
Life Skills, being focused on matters of problem-solving and effective behavior change through choices of action,
and also being concerned with matters of morality (Himsl, 1973), invokes the exercise of spiritual intelligence
when problems of right and wrong are resolved and when decisions about moral courses of action are made.
Personal Leadership
There is a growing body of material that supports the idea of a spiritual approach to matters of leadership. Short
(1998) makes the connection that to live is to lead. He sees us as the centres of self-created organizations that
are made up of the people and relationships that we bring into and maintain in our lives. How we use, delegate
and abdicate responsibility and control of our organizations is up to us. Short's view is supported by Fox (1934),
who says "Man is the ruler of a kingdom, although in most cases he knows it not. That kingdom is nothing less
than the world of his own life and experience" (p. 86). We are the leaders of our own organizations. In that
light, NewStart Life Skills, which focuses on developing balanced self-determined (i.e. assertive) individuals,
is a leadership training program.
Current thought in leadership development is reflected in the words of Picard (1999): "So, as people and leaders,
how can we afford not to invest time in spiritual development (p. 7-5)?" Meier (1984), in a similar vein,
says "The term professional development can never again denote only the acquisition of external skills and
knowledge, but must include developing the full range of internal mental and spiritual skills as well" (p.
26). NewStart Life Skills, then, in order to come into line with current leadership thinking, needs to pay attention
to spirit.
Summary
Three connections between spirituality and NewStart Life Skills are suggested.
References
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