Often the choices we are faced with are challenging: They involve choosing between competing needs—between our growth needs and our safety needs.

Happiness, meaning and fulfilment are not synonymous. What makes us happy is the satisfaction of our ego’s needs, and what gives our life meaning and fulfilment is the satisfaction of our soul’s needs.

The process of breaking down the bars of the prison you have constructed for yourself is called individuation. The process of rebuilding your life to reflect your unique self is called self-actualisation. Fully embodying your unique self so you can discover your full potential is called self-realisation.

An evolutionary coach needs to instill five qualities in their clients to support them on the journey to full self-realisation—adaptability, emergent learning, the ability to bond, the ability to cooperate and the ability to manage complexity.12 These qualities are the basic requirements for evolution. Without these qualities, evolution could never

Adaptability: The ability to take things in your stride—maintain internal stability and external equilibrium when your internal and external environment changes. This implies being able to manage your emotions and taking care of your body in your framework of existence so you can stay fit and healthy. Emergent learning: The ability to learn by tria

Viktor Frankl noticed while he was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp that those who saw meaning in life, or who gave it meaning, demonstrated a surprising degree of strength and resistance. Finding this meaning proved to be of decisive survival value.3

Evolutionary coaching is also about performance, but performance with a big “P”. Performance with a big “P” is about human emergence; not just helping people become more proficient at what they do but helping them to participate in their own evolution and get better at being as well as doing. This is the domain of the leadership coach, the executiv

the meaning of these four words, growth, development, emergence and self-realisation in a human context. • Growth suggests progression: in particular, the continuing ability to demonstrate increasingly higher levels of maturity. • Development suggests learning: in particular, staged learning where each new stage expands on, and adds value, to what

Anyone who hires a coach who understands the process of human emergence—the development of the ego, the blending of the ego with the soul, and the emergence of the soul—has a significant advantage in life.