Chapter 10: Guidance and Human Flourishing: The Contribution of Spirituality Exploredthrough Mentoring and Life Coaching Available to Purchase

Mentoring and life coaching are relationship-based helping and guiding processes. When these processes foster a spiritual journey in response to someone’s searching, clients uncover a higher order of living that enables them to flourish. This spiritual journey is a more sustainable journey in the long term; this journey is not defined by, or reliant upon, destination or attainment only. In this paper we explore how a life-direction or noble purpose, drawn from a spiritual framework and integrated into all areas of one’s life, orients human existence to one of meaning and significance beyond oneself.

We live in an era that promotes success mainly through the pursuit of high performance and perfection. Success is often perceived as high attainment in five areas: prosperity, prestige, position, power, or pleasure (Jensen, 2002). High attainment in any or all of these five areas is not inherently negative, but it nevertheless has considerable impact on whether people flourish. To flourish is to thrive through growing vigorously and reaching a heightened level of development or influence. Yet one can be accomplished in any or all of the five areas and not feel or experience the wellness, hope or even satisfaction with everyday life and living that is associated with flourishing. Attainment and accomplishment without development or influence often leave people searching for more. Hence attainment in itself does not confer flourishing, but may initiate the search towards flourishing. One vehicle that people use to enhance attainment and flourishing is life coaching.

Today, life coaching is one of the fastest growing “helping professions,” evident in the significant number of new coaching businesses established each year (30,000 in the last ten years, according to Burkes, 2008) and the number of qualified counselors re-establishing themselves as life coaches. At the same time, mentoring is experiencing a strong resurgence both in community and organizational settings. More and more, people are being thrown onto their own resources in order to thrive amidst today’s increasingly complex life-pressures. Institutions have proven to be less concerned with an individual’s struggle or circumstances (Bowsher, 2007), or in providing a nurturing environment where spiritual growth and thriving may occur. People have become disenchanted and lost confidence in institutions (Klein, 2000). Spiritual direction, however, is inherently personal and very individual. Human thriving, therefore, may best be addressed through processes that remove the pressure of an institution, its agenda and/or its inherent power structures.

The pursuit of success in terms of “how much I do” is unsustainable in the long term. It is unsustainable because achievement in something usually leads people to recognize how much more remains to be attained. The authors propose that spirituality, including spiritual intelligence, is an essential element in human flourishing.

A life that embraces spirituality at its core moves beyond a focus of attainment in the five areas (although these may be a by-product of the journey). Instead people flourish because of the progressive realization and internalization (Jensen, 2002) of who they are and how their “being” is part of something greater beyond themselves. This spiritual journey is a more long-term sustainable journey, not defined by, or reliant upon, destination or attainment only.

In this chapter, the authors propose that a sustainable journey is most profound when individuals are conscious of the dimension of spirituality. The thesis is that guiding individuals through the helping processes of mentoring and life coaching (Schein, 1999) can shape someone’s life direction and leadership and accelerate their discovery of spirit and human flourishing. First, the importance of the practitioner’s perspective is discussed, followed by an analysis of the meaning and importance of spirituality for one’s life journey. Next, processes of mentoring and life coaching are described. How spirituality can be incorporated into guidance processes is then addressed. The chapter concludes with some comments on the transformative power of mentoring and life coaching.