The general belief among coaches is that clients to come to them rather than to psychotherapists because “I’m not sick–I just feel there’s something more to my life.” Yet to be fair, many psychotherapists see their practice as helping people live their lives more fully, and solution-focused therapy (Berg, 1994) helps people apply previous solutions to new problems. Taking a broader perspective, in North America, coaching emerged along with increased restrictions by health maintenance organizations on reimbursement for psychologists and psychiatrists. In some cases, humanistically-oriented psychotherapists saw coaching as a more appropriate rubric under which to pursue their developmental and strengths-oriented practices (Williams & Davis, 2002). Furthermore, some clients may seek coaching rather than psychotherapy not because their presenting issue is different but because of the social stigma that associates therapy with mental illness. Nonetheless, coaching is seen primarily as an expression of a desire to accentuate the positive. Nowhere is this desire pursued more vigorously than in the new field of positive psychology.

Positive psychology was initiated by Martin Seligman (2002), during his term as President of the American Psychological Association, to investigate what it means to be truly, authentically happy and fulfilled as a human being anywhere – not just in North America or Europe. Seligman gathered a team of researchers including Mihali Csikszentmihalyi (1991), Ed Diener and Robert Biswas­ Diener (2008), Barbara Fredrickson (200 l), and Chris Peterson (2006). The team searched without success to find a body of research on happiness in existing psychological literature and ended with creating its own, based on three types of happiness: the pleasant life based on hedonic satiation; the good life based on developing and utilizing one’s abilities and interests; and the meaningful life based on connecting to values beyond oneself (Peterson, 2006). Positive psychology research on the meaningful life hearkens back to Adler’s “social interest,” or having an interest in the interests of others.

Research conducted by pos1t1ve psychologists has provided evidence to support coaching assumptions. Just as importantly, positive psychologists have applied their theories to the benefit of coaching, such as in Biswas-Diener and Ben Dean’s (2007) book on positive psychology and coaching. Further, research into resilience provides techniques for coaches to help people bounce back in the face of disaster, trauma, threat, or long-term stress (Stoltz, 1997). The findings of emotional researchers reported by Daniel Goleman (1995) have corrected an over-emphasis on cognition and rationality in helping people achieve more of their potential.

But if we apply the understanding of systems to the question of how to fulfill our potential, we recognize that potential is not a stable target. Complex systems move toward goals defined within a particular set of circumstances, but those circumstances change partly because of the effects of the system’s movements. This is called “co-evolution” in complexity theory. For an individual, when we move toward  a  goal  we  believe  we  are  capable  of achieving, we change our very capacity. Physically, when we use a muscle without damaging it, it becomes stronger. The more often neurons in our brains connect, the stronger and more automatic their connection. As we strive toward what is now the limit of our capacity for fulfillment, that capacity increases. As an organization achieves its sales targets, this changes the market for its goods or services. How can we take this into account in our desire for a good or meaningful life or a profitable business?

Neuroscientist Steven Rose (2005) worries that we are still to some extent trapped in a “mechanistic reductionist mind-set” that makes it difficult to understand and integrate the complexities of the questions we are asking. ”Imprisoned as we are,” he says, ”we can’t find ways to think coherently in multiple levels and dimensions, to incorporate the timeline and dynamics of living processes into our understanding of molecules and cells and systems” (Rose, 2005, p. 215). A solution may be to recognize the tendency, at least in English, to make static, thing-like nouns out of dynamic, ever-changing processes. For example, we say “fulfillment” as if it means checking off items on a grocery list. When it comes to striving for goals, we are rather engaging in a process of “fulfilling.” Instead of expecting to achieve a static “potential,” we are always “potentiating;” Although it may seem awkward to substitute “potentiating” for “fulfillment of potential,” the effort reminds us that we are engaged in a process, not a thing.