“LIFE COACHING” AND RUSSIAN FOLK TALES. Introduction. I apologize, my dear readers, that when starting my story about the possibility of using Russian folk tales in the field of psychological counseling in solving everyday problems, I have to use the English term “life coaching”, but it quite succinctly, in my opinion, expresses the area of ​​healthy counseling a person, a person without psychological problems, who simply wants to optimize his efforts in order to achieve better results in his daily life. “Life coaching”. And so, “life coaching”. The objectives of this area of ​​counseling, as I have already said, are to help a person in his desire to realize himself in some important area of ​​life, to teach a person to find and use his hidden resources and his potential, which he has not previously used. This task, to some extent, determines the consulting algorithm in the “life coaching” mode: 1. Finding and specifying current problems and areas of dissatisfaction.2. Identification of stereotypical ways of life that lead to similar results.3. Determining the desired result.4. Identification of resources, both internal and external, that can be used to achieve the goal.5. Determining steps to achieve the goal.6. Determining the “price” that the client is willing to “pay” for his goal. The algorithm is approximate. Each consultant's algorithm may be slightly changed, although the main direction of consulting remains the same. It can be noted that each point of the algorithm determines the topic of consultation, one or more, depending on the depth of elaboration of the topic and the client’s readiness for such elaboration. And at each meeting, the consultant, with the help of questions, clarifies the client’s internal attitudes and experiences, analyzes them together with the client, and motivates the client to draw conclusions. The consultant does not give advice, he only motivates the client to study himself and find ways within to solve his problems, motivates him to try new ways of acting in life. Based on the described features of consulting in the “life coaching” mode, the requirements for the client themselves are determined: - the client must be sufficiently motivated initially to change (colleagues - psychologists probably smiled sarcastically at this phrase - “you’ve seen a lot of motivated clients”); - the client must have a fairly developed skill of reflection (again, I assume the smile of colleagues); - the client must be able to talk through his weaknesses, admit his mistakes (yeah, “I’m normal, this is how life is”). “Fabulous counseling.” Understanding the almost complete absence of such clients, the consultant in real practice will have to solve these problems. And here projective counseling techniques, long known and widely used in classical psychological counseling, can come to the rescue. In my practice, I began to increasingly use Russian folk tales, both in reading them and in composing clients’ own fairy tales using “story cubes” or their modification of the “fairy tale cube” (a Rubik’s cube with pictures from the story cubes pasted on it). To explain the advantages of such “life coaching”, I will first give a consulting algorithm, and then I will try to explain the rationale for its use, taking into account the expectations that I place on it. And so, the first meeting. The topic of the meeting was “What doesn’t suit me? What problems do I have? What brings me to such problems? I give the client a “fairy tale cube” and ask him to collect pictures on one of its faces for the “fairy tale of his life.” When a client puts together “his fairy tale,” I ask him to write it down and read it to me. Sometimes, and to be honest, quite often, clients find it extremely difficult to compose a “fairy tale of their life.” Then I invite them to work with illustrations based on Russian folk tales and choose one based on them.story that, in their opinion, most clearly describes their life, write it down in your notebook and read it to me. Next we work with the client’s “fairy tale of life”, analyzing it. The client is asked to answer a number of questions in writing: - Which of the fairy tale heroes do you like, why, what qualities of the hero do you like and which ones do not? - Which of the fairy tale heroes do you not like, why, which of his qualities do not satisfy you, and which are acceptable for you? - What goals did the hero you like set for himself? What did he do to achieve them, which of his actions were successful, and which interfered with the achievement of the goal? - What did the unpleasant hero in a fairy tale do, in what ways did he interfere with the achievement of the goals of the hero you liked? - What events and circumstances of your life does your character remind you of? fairy tale? - How is the hero you like similar to you? - What methods of his activity are inherent in you? Which of them prevent you from achieving your goals? - How is the hero you don’t like similar to you? - What methods of his activity are inherent in you? Which of them prevent you from achieving your goals? - After analyzing the “fairy tale of your life”, formulate your problem, what you are not satisfied with. After the first meeting, the client is given a task at home to keep a diary of observations of his life, noting in it his stereotypical methods of activity, the result to which they lead, and satisfaction with such a result. I took this homework technique from cognitive behavioral therapy technologies and allows the client to “shatter” the significance of the behavior stereotype, forcing him to re-evaluate his behavior. The second consultation begins with a check of the client's diary, with his conclusions regarding the profitability of his usual methods of activity. The main topic of the consultation is “Defining the desired result and how to achieve it.” The client is invited to put together a fairy tale in which the hero the client likes achieves his goals. The composition techniques used are the same as at the first consultation, the “fairytale cube” and illustrations for Russian folk tales. The analysis of the resulting fairy tale comes down to the following questions: - What goal in life can your hero’s goal achieved in the fairy tale symbolize? - How has your hero’s behavior style changed? What possible changes in your behavior in life may be indicated by changes in the behavior style of your hero? - Think about what was really the goal of your fairy tale - achieving a result or changing the style of behavior that led to the desired results? - What is more important to you - the result or consolidation of a new effective style of behavior? However, another style of working with the “fairy tale of purpose” is also possible, especially if the “performance” of the hero he likes does not suit the client. The client may be asked to choose another hero, possibly a negative one, who, in his opinion, is able to more effectively achieve the goal suitable for the client. And then the analysis of the fairy tale will look like this: - What goal in life can the goal of your new hero achieved in the fairy tale symbolize? - What are the distinctive features of your new hero’s style of behavior? What possible changes in your behavior in life might these features of your new hero’s behavioral style indicate? - What can you do in life to consolidate these features in your behavior? How in life can you behave like your new hero in accordance with his image? Perhaps you could use some kind of accessory that would remind you of your new hero and “make” you behave like him? At home, the client is given the task of using the new hero's accessory and acting like the new hero. All observations on this matter are recorded in a diary: what he did in a new way, what results it led to, how satisfied he is with the results. Like the second meeting, the third meeting begins with work on homework and a diary. The client says what he succeeded, what he didn’t, and determines his satisfaction with the new styles.».