Rubí Tuesday Blogue, in which Rubí donkey starts a new career as a Life Coach.
The Peasant was movin the old rusty donkey trap at the weekend and it has not been used since we used to live at Elca Seriu where Morris was bein trained to pull it. Morris got quite maudlin about it – seein the trap bein moved – and he asked the Peasant why he is no longer bein taught carriage drivin. Morris tried to persuade the Peasant to give him another go at it.
He said, “Even the old dead Duke of Edinbugger used to be keen on drivin carts, prolly in order to get away from his wife for a while, as she spent all day fumin and swearin about how the country had ‘gawn to the dawgs’ after Brexit. Can I have some more driving lessons?”
But the Peasant said no: “It’s because the narrow winding mountain roads here are too dangerous and cars, cyclists and everyone comes round blind corners too fast.”
So Morris, still saddened by knowin he would never be pullin the donkey trap again, went on the internet and started daydreamin, lookin at pictures of donkey traps and carriages. Eventually he typed “coaches” into Google. He snorted and walked off, mutterin, “That’s just a load of rubish!” So I walked over to see what he had been lookin at. Luckily, it was a video, as I don’t do readin. It was, “How to be a Successful Life Coach, Part 1.”
Amazinly, people pay other people to tell them how to live, because they don’t know, or maybe they just forgot. If you are muddled or simply bonkers, you just phone up and make an appointment for expensive sessions with a Life Coach, and this helps improve your fortunes, except of course that it reduces your bank balance. But that’s the client’s promble, not a promble for the Life Coach. Well, this seemed like just the kind of thing I would be very good at, so I watched Part 2 aswell, and then Part 3…
Since Morris never came back and was just standin lookin sadly at the old rusty donkey trap, I watched all the video series, so I became a qualified Life Coach.
“Hello, Aitana,” I said.
“Wot?” she replied.
“Would you like some life-coachin?” I asked, in a cognitive behavioural tone of voice and a cultured American accent, that I had been practisin while watchin the videos.
“Life-wot?” said Aitana. “I’m just trying out some new dance steps. Look, my front hooves are more pointy after the farrier’s visit last week. I think I could have a go at Swan Lake with a bit of practice.”
“So, what I’m hearin you say, Aitana, is that you’d like to be a dancer,” I said, adoptin the way she was standin, to mirror back to her my listenin mode.
”That’s what I already said, you cloth-eared fat burra,” she said, clearly in some denial about her need for effective life-coachin.
I tried a new approach that I had learned from How to be a Successful Life Coach, Part 9:
“Soooo…” (It is important to frequently begin sentences or responses with a long ‘Soooo…’ because that soothes the client, creates positive expectation and willingness to co-engage.) “We might look at the way this dancin theme has emerged in your life and ask if you feel others have propply affirmed your dancin.”
“Would you just go away please?” said Aitana. “I can’t hear the Tchaikovsky music in my head with you banging on about ‘positive deforestation’ or whatever it is you’re on raving on about…” She tried a short leap and landed in a pile of poo. “Now look what you made me do!”
“Silly horse!” I said, usin unprofessional language that was not in my How to be a Successful Life Coach course, but justifiable in the circumstances. Clearly, Aitana needed to do the video course in How to Be a Successful Client before we could make any further progress today.
I wandered over to the back of the Peasant’s house, where Morris was lookin at the old donkey trap.
“Sooo…” I began, with a non-judgmental Jungian tilt of my head, with ears forward. It was time for a subtle variation on the Rorschach ink-blot test. “What do you think that rusty old piece of scrap is tellin you about your life?”
Equus Asinus 