~Bushido Life Coaching

 

Intelligence

Life coaching is a relatively new method of teaching people and helping them achieve their goals. Some use it for business while some use it for personal gains. Nevertheless, the endless pursuit of human achievement and contentment has proven a very important thing to ponder.

Man has ever been in constant inquiry of what to do in life, finding a reason of existence and using words of wisdom to live by. Sages and wise men have sprung from the center of civilization, imparting declarations of thoughts for other men to inculcate in their way of living.

One of these wise men is Takeda Shingen, a well known samurai of the mid 16th century. He focused on the mere existence of a human being as a thinking being. In one of his famous lines, he said “Intelligence is the flower of discrimination. There are many examples of the flower blooming but not bearing fruit.”

This gives rise to a concept reaching beyond mere intelligence of man just being able to think clearly and do the right responses in adherence to society. The intelligence he speaks of is a proactive intelligence, a type of intelligence in which humans are able to go the extra mile in using his mind. This is the kind of intelligence wherein man is capable of applying his knowledge and having that imparted thought bear fruit.

Man here is tasked to have an objective of being productive. Many people think well and think fast and straight, but many fall short of thinking why he is thinking over something. Had it been that people use their minds and help others think better as well, then it becomes quite different. There is now a co-active coaching done and that both help the helper and the beneficiary in terms of learning from each other.

The Modern Samurai

Whenever someone thinks of a samurai, one can not help but conjure a thought of lightweight armors, sword fighting, and honor system, all of which is in preparation of the upcoming battle. The enemies are always present to bother and pester, but the thought of being prepared for battle and meditating that each day is a day to die makes the samurai a strong person emotionally and spiritually. 

Modern times include all the people from all walks of life, living in this contemporary setting where almost everything is automated and makes manual labor almost non-existent. Because of this, the people are pitted to use their minds in order to survive this competitive world where even friends have the tendency to out learn and outmode other friends. 

A modern man who thinks that he should only interact and complement the society’s demands definitely needs proper intelligence to communicate. That man may have thought of the right idea, but the real question now lies as to how they would implement it in their lives and to be good sharers as well. 

Like a samurai who is a servant to his master. He is guided by his principles to maintain his honor. The modern samurai is a person living amidst technology, serving his own type of master: himself. Without application of his intellect, he will still be able to serve others but will not be able to find any meaning to his existence and why he is doing something for others.

He should first learn how to serve himself to know that the self has been taught. How can someone coach others if he cannot learn to coach himself first? That is the way of the modern samurai – learning to teach the self to be aware what to teach others. That is bushido life coaching.