1. Point-B Coaching
Paul Duba, NCC, ACC
pduba@point-be.net
609-575-3545
Paul Duba, ©2015, p. 1
Assessment, Story, and Action:
Exploring our Ability to Observe
Differently and Change our Future
Introduction: This white paper is a brief explanation of how our perception of reality is
always a construct that we build and maintain to help us efficiently make meaning of, and
engage in, the world as we see it. This “lens” works well for us, often for a lifetime. But at
other times the lens itself can be a problem: our understanding of how the world works, as
“True” as it may seem to be, may be inadequate to help us understand our world as it
evolves. The assumptions that have helped us live in harmony with a world that we “get”
may prove to be inadequate, or even counter productive, to our need for growth. In times of
change, this can leave us holding space for two competing realities, a “breakdown” between
an old way of seeing/being in the world and a change we are ready for that requires us to
revise our assumptions about how our world turns. Breakdown can leave us with
ineffective choices like resentment, resignation, and anxiety. But, they don't have to. When
our worldview gets in the way of evolving personal aspiration, we can challenge our
assumptions, change our story, and be transformed as we live into new perspectives for
what is possible in our future.
Making meaning: the stories we tell ourselves. We make up stories about everything
that happens. These stories help us make sense of things and give us a context in which to
place ourselves with the things we see happening. Sometimes the stories we come up with
are accurate/useful. Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves are inaccurate but nonetheless
useful to us. Sometimes the stories are neither accurate nor useful. For the sake of
continuity, we’re going to include all of these under the umbrella of “making meaning from
our observations.” The fact that it is us that make meaning of our experience of the world
suggests that we can and do explore alternative stories about our observations. That we
might do so with awareness is a premise of this paper and a powerful invitation to explore
change in our lives through coaching.
We live in the Story that we tell about the assessments we make. When something
happens, we make meaning from it by creating an assessment of it. This judgment allows us
to take new information and place it in the context of our values, experiences, preferences,
and prejudices. The assessment cues a Story that is in harmony with our way of being in the
world. Remembering that our being (“ontology”) can be understood through our state of
Body, Emotion and Language, we can also say that a Story shows up in Body, Emotion, and
Language. (I have capitalized Story, Body, Emotion, and Language as ontologic concepts in
this paper.)
Definition of Story. When we tell a Story, it includes a Body disposition, an Emotional
state, and the Language of our inner narrative. When we use Language to say to ourselves,
"I am lucky and so grateful," we can't do so without also feeling the Emotion of gratitude in
that Story. At the same time, gratitude shows up in our Body as a physical disposition. So,
when we talk about Story, we are talking about our whole response to being in the Story.
Another way to look at it is to say that the Story we live in often has us (instead of us having
the Story). This is because our Story shows up as an ontologic state; in our Language (the
narrative we tell ourselves), Emotions that reflect our narrative, and the way our Body

2. Point-B Coaching
Paul Duba, NCC, ACC
pduba@point-be.net
609-575-3545
Paul Duba, ©2015, p. 2
Assessment, Story, and Action:
Exploring our Ability to Observe
Differently and Change our Future
holds that emotion, e.g., feelings of lightness or tightness, the focus of our eyes, our posture,
our breathing, etc.
We make meaning so that we can do something. Story, while clearly our own
interpretation of how we see things, could not feel more real to us because it is how we
make sense of all things that we observe in the world. We are meaning makers and, while it
is possible to make meaning that includes the recognition of ambiguity (I think that this
thing I just observed could mean either this or that), this is not how we survived those first
millennia coming out of the trees on the Savanna to match wits with saber-tooth tigers. We
draw conclusions from our observations, sometimes quickly, so that we can begin taking
action. In this sense we can say that Story predicts our future. This long chain of causality
starts with assessment and ends with action. Or said otherwise, assessments open up (and
close down) our possibilities for the future.
Keeping alternative possibilities open. To reiterate, we make this stuff up. An example is
to see something we find exceptional, say an attractive urban landscape. We perceive
beauty and find our judgment to be not just our truth but also “the Truth.” It is based on our
values, experience, preferences, and prejudices. However, someone else may see the same
scene and perceive destruction and loss of vital animal habitat. The assessments of these
two people result in two different Stories and two different paths toward action. A) How
beautiful, this inspires me, I feel an opening to make a difference! B) This is terrible, this
disgusts me, and I feel angry. I resolve to make a difference! The actions that these two
people then take are remarkably different. One is going to volunteer to be on the
neighborhood arts council and the other is going to join a march for animal rights. Each
action is a legitimate response to different observations of the same building. The
difference is in the assessment (meaning making) that is made of the same observation. In
this example, our two subjects will be unable to see the other’s point of view while they are
in their respective Stories. We can thus see how our assessments are our blind spots. In
order to see another Story as equally possible (what the Buddhists call equanimity), we
need to be open to alternative assessments.
The BEL Model as a way to see into our blind spots. Implicit in our ability to consider
alternative Stories is that reality is what we make of it. We can tell ourselves different
Stories about the same observation, e.g., this landscape fills my heart with joy vs. this
landscape fills my heart with sadness. However, we enable a different Story (and a different
future) only when we allow ourselves room for equanimity. The BEL model gives us this
power. We know that a shift in our Body, Emotion, or Language also shifts our ability to
observe. When we shift our Body (listen to music, skip down the road, and hold ourselves
differently) our perceptions change. We can change our Emotions and get a similar result
(challenging persistent moods and deciding to feel differently). Finally, we can use
Language to tell ourselves a different story (shift old narratives, recognizing those that may
have served us in the past that are actually barriers to learning and growth). Any of these
ontologic domains may serve as an entry point to change our sense of being. In doing so, we

3. Point-B Coaching
Paul Duba, NCC, ACC
pduba@point-be.net
609-575-3545
Paul Duba, ©2015, p. 3
Assessment, Story, and Action:
Exploring our Ability to Observe
Differently and Change our Future
become different observers and can see our Story from alternative perspectives (with new
possibilities to consider) instead of something to which we are subject (the Story has us).
When assessments don’t serve us. Assessments are relative and subjective. As such, they
are neither right nor wrong but they can be grounded or ungrounded (more useful or less
useful). In the case above, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the city lover and see an animal
rights march coming down our street. There is one particularly enthusiastic protester with
a big banner and we assess that he is nuts. It is hard to maintain equanimity once our Story
gets going, furthering our conviction with additional assessments. “That protester is wrong
and makes me uncomfortable. I’m going to avoid people like that.” We’ve just predicted a
future that might be fine if we never saw that guy again. Except, he just showed up as the
new-hire in the cubicle next to us at work. While we may be able to ground our assessment
of love for an urban environment, our assessment of the protester as “…one of those wacko
animal rights nut jobs” is not grounded (see below) and may leave us in an unproductive
ontologic state.
Similarly, lets put ourselves in the shoes of the animal rights marcher as we recognize the
woman in the next cubical at our new job. “She was the person I saw on the day of the
march. She was hanging up posters for an art walk… on the new mall!” We recall thinking,
“she is one of those wacko, pro-development nut jobs. She is wrong and makes me
uncomfortable. I’m going to avoid people like that.” Sometimes our assessments don’t serve
us and we must figure out how to open up alternative perspectives in order to explore a
different future.
Grounding assessments. To ground an assessment, we need to first recognize that we
have made it. Several questions then help us uncover any problems there may be with the
story we have told ourselves. Put yourself in the shoes of one of the characters above and
help him or her ground their assessment.
1. Can I state the assessment clearly? (That guy/gal is wrong and needs to be avoided.)
2. What future does this assessment predict and who is the observer that is already
living in that Story (my Body, Emotion, Language)? Will I be able to be effective – the
person I want to be – in that Story?
3. In what context is this assessment true? In all cases or just in certain parts of life?
4. According to whose written, verifiable standards is this assessment true?
5. What assertions of fact can I make that support my assessment?
Upon consideration of these questions, we may determine that our assessment is
ungrounded when we find that…
1. There is an ineffective future in our Story
2. Our assessment leaves us in an unproductive ontologic state
3. There is limited context for our assessment
4. There are little or no verifiable written standards in support of our judgment
5. There are little or no fact assertions that corroborate our conclusion

4. Point-B Coaching
Paul Duba, NCC, ACC
pduba@point-be.net
609-575-3545
Paul Duba, ©2015, p. 4
Assessment, Story, and Action:
Exploring our Ability to Observe
Differently and Change our Future
Is the assessment in the observer or the observer in the assessment? What happens
when we are tired of the result we get, say, being stuck in anger with an ungrounded
assessment of someone’s character? We first need to recognize that “the Story has us” and
by doing so, invite ourselves back down the food chain of meaning making to the source,
the observer that we are. Ontologically speaking, we know that our Body, Emotion, and
Language can shift (change the observer we are) and allow us to make different
assessments. And, we also know that our ontologic state (Body, Emotion, and Language) is
a direct expression of the assessments we make. Thus, I hold that it is equal to say the
following:
1. I shift my assessment when I shift my ontologic state
2. I shift my ontologic state when I shift my assessment
Shifting our Story for different outcomes. From a coaching standpoint, this helps us
explore new assessments, Stories, actions, and outcomes in two different ways.
1. I can analyze my assessment, grounding it (or not), as a point of departure for
examining myself as an observer that made that assessment. If I can’t ground the
assessment – it does not hold up to scrutiny – I will find an assessment that is
grounded and square my ontology to be an observer that can make this grounded
assessment. With a different Body, Emotion, and Language, my ability to make
meaning with the grounded assessment results in a different Story. This allows me
to take different action and get a different result.
2. Or I can look to shifts in ontology as a point of departure for shifting the observer
that I am. If I decide that my current state of being – Body, Emotion and Language –
is unproductive, I can shift to an ontology that I believe makes me more effective in
my life, say, from “resentment and anger” to “acceptance and peace.” In doing so, I
observe differently, make different assessments, tell a different Story, and create
openings that lead to different outcomes. The result is similar in both cases.
Ontology as a means to second order learning. “First-order” learning happens when we
take feedback from an unsatisfactory outcome and experiment with different approaches
to getting the result we would like – all from within the perspective of a single Story.
Changing the observer that we are invites a different kind of learning. Ontologically
speaking, a fixed frame of reference (blind spot) may be what is keeping us from seeing
other possibilities. The power of Body, Emotion, and Language as ontologic domains gives
us the ability to change the observer we are and in doing so, make different assessments,
and ultimately project ourselves into the future with a different frame of reference, one
that allows us to take action more effectively. This is “second-order” learning and the real
work of coaching/being coached.