Playing chess against the Universe

December 15th, 2020 Posted by happiness, heaolu, õnn 0 thoughts on “Playing chess against the Universe”

One story that I shared at Coaching Conference 2021 was as follows:

One of my coaching clients once said ‘I’m playing chess’.

I asked ‘Who are you playing chess against?’

He responded ‘Against the Universe. Every challenge is a new game’

I find it an interesting idea. The Universe is not against players, but challenges us to learn. Every challenge teaches us something. The Universe himself is also constantly leaning. The difference is that the Universe is playing with ca 7,9 billion human beings at a time. It means the Universe is much more experienced and is learning much faster than any other player. No single human being can be as smart as the Universe but the Universe is a great sparring partner to everybody. It’s worth listening to the Universe and learn from it how to better cope in this world.

How is it all connected to coaching and supervision?

In coaching, a player and coach are partners in playing against the Universe. Then occasionally the coach goes to supervision to reflect together with a supervisor how to be a better partner to the player. In supervision the coach may discover what hidden dynamics is in play between the coach and the player, e.g. some power games, transference and counter-transference, some loyalties etc. Becoming aware of the dynamics in supervision will bring about a change also in coaching and in the game of chess that the player is playing.

That is one way of looking at supervision and coaching.

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