On Monday afternoon I go to my kick-boxing class. I'm a little nervous. It's been a few weeks since I was last able to go, and I worry that I won't have the stamina I need to get through.But, today, there's a second student in the class. She's older than me, stiffer, less fit, and clearly a beginner. I find the anxious part of myself relaxing.I catch myself in the act. There's nothing much different here from my expectations. I'm the same person I was on my walk to the dojo, with the same limitations that had worried me before I arrived. And yet, in the light of there being someone who'll have more difficulty than me in the class, I'm settled. My sense of self and my possibility, I realise, is largely being shaped by the narrative of "I'm better than you". My energy and commitment lift. This is going to be just fine.And I begin to see how often I prop myself up - without paying much attention to it - with this kind of comparison. How I manoeuvre myself, subtly or overtly, to give myself a sense of superiority over others when I'm feeling anxious or unsure. How I can speak and act in a way that puts others into second place so I can be first. The subtle put-downs I can engage in. And, most importantly, the impact it can have on the people closest in, the people I say I most care about. The closer I look, the more I can see, and the less attractive this way of feeling good at the expense of others seems.I'm struck by how easy, and how habitual, the ways in which we bolster self-esteem can become. How invisible. And how they may be silently shaping many or all of our relationships with others, perhaps at enormous cost to intimacy, trust and our shared sense of possibility.
Learn with me in July and September
Another opportunity to learn integral development coaching with me over two days is coming along on July 14-15 2014, or on September 1-2, in London. All the details are here.And the Professional Coaching Course, which I'll be leading, begins in September.My colleague, teacher and friend James Flaherty at New Ventures West has just published the article below about the coaching methodology we practice and teach and what it aims to bring to the world. If you're familiar with coaching at all you'll see it's quite distinctive in intent and approach.I hope some of you will be able to join us in July or September.
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50,000 Life Coaches Could Be Wrong: The Importance of Development in Coaching by James Flaherty (from the New Ventures West blog)
Entering a six-month coach training programme on the suspicion that life coaches are glorified confidantes who charge a lot of money and that coaching is “new-age nonsense,” the author of a recent Harper’s article finds lots of evidence to support her hypothesis. The irony of the piece’s title, “50,000 Life Coaches Can’t Be Wrong,” becomes quickly apparent.Her skepticism is not unwarranted. There are, however, ways of coaching that offer more than what the popular trends promote. Coach training and the work of coaching itself may encompass goal-setting and happy-making, which is a good starting place. However, coaching can be more than being a good listener, giving advice or helping someone get what they want. These are all great things, of course, but they don’t necessarily address true development.The modality that the author learned, along with her research that went as far back as the human potential movement begun in the 1970s, all speaks to horizontal development. In other words, there is something out there – a goal – that I want. To be happier, more productive, thinner, richer … we all know what goals are, and we know the ones that are common in our culture.Integral Development Coaching, the methodology we practice at New Ventures West, is far more concerned with vertical development: helping the clients grow in ways that have them actually live in a different way, not just solve the problem in front of them. Coaches can certainly help clients attain their goals (and how wonderful that they do!). But when we understand why we’re doing what we’re doing—when we’re attuned to ourselves—the goals themselves change. In Integral Development Coaching we are interested in supporting clients in developing the capacity to respond to what life hands them and to understand “for the sake of what” they want what they do—what is their true longing? What is it only they can bring to the world?So much of this information lives in the body, an aspect that is often left out of coaching. Attunement and resonance, capacities that are essential in supporting someone as a coach, are developed on the level of physicality. Our physical bearing often correlates to how the rest of life shows up for us. For instance, how much can you infer about someone who is slouching and folded in on themselves all the time? Or a person who can’t stop fidgeting?Most importantly, practices that occur on the level of the body are the ones that bring about this vertical development and longer-lasting change. Repeated action actually rewires our nervous system. If we train ourselves through repetition to move in a different way (breathe, shout, lift weights, relax, stretch, chant, kickbox – whatever fosters our intended growth), it goes to follow that our experience of the world will change.We also must remember that we are so much more than our ideas. Insights are fantastic but unless they are grounded in practice it’s possible that they will never become realised. In addition to our thoughts, we are embedded in a world of relationships and culture. We operate in a particular environment and use tools and technology. Without taking into account the unique matrix that makes up each person we are not seeing the whole picture, and we may not be making adjustments in the most appropriate domain.Apart from differences in coaching methodologies, coach training programmes vary widely in terms of requirements, rigour, and outcomes. The Coaches Training Institute, where the author of the Harper’s article did her training, and many other popular programmes offer modules that are likely to fit in a student’s life, certify them and get them working more quickly. A valuable approach.Integral Development Coach certification takes one year, plus a two- or three-day prerequisite. That is barely enough to fit in what happens. It is a deep dive into one’s own life, ideas, presumptions, relationships, biases, patterns. It’s all unearthed, examined and worked with in the interest of building what we call the body of a coach: a body that is present enough to let life through, that is free of bias, that can meet the client where they are. There is no one way to be an Integral Development Coach except that those qualities come forward in interactions with anyone—not just clients. As such this work finds its way into places other than entrepreneurial coaching practices (i.e. it’s far more than a way to market oneself). The certification process not only asks you to demonstrate your aptitude in the methodology. It looks at how present you are—how much you’ve come to know your habitual tendencies, how consistently you catch yourself acting from the patterns that aren’t serving you. These skills and qualities are essential to fully support another person in their vertical and horizontal development. It’s not an easy process, and it’s not for everyone.The result, however, is a person who knows herself and can attune to others on a level that is not commonly seen in the coaching industry. When the question shifts from “what do I want” to “what is life asking of me?” we encounter a different human being. And that is the question into which we, as Integral Development Coaches, are inviting everyone. For some this is a lofty inquiry: there are plenty of people whose life is a series of emergencies and who are looking to calm themselves enough to be able to sit in conversation with someone for longer than five minutes or learn to take a deep breath. So we start there. We start wherever the client is, and we invite them into deeper, self-generating development.Regardless of the kind of training or coaching one does, how wonderful it is that there are so many people in the world who want to make a living by helping improve the lives of their fellow humans. On that level alone we can probably agree that it’s by no means a racket, a ruse or a moneymaking enterprise. Hooray for the people who are learning to be better friends, helping people attain their goals, wanting to make others happy. It’s an industry that was born of a collective understanding that there has to be something more to life, and that we have a right to endeavor toward greater meaning, whatever form it takes. We celebrate that so many people want to train as life coaches. Power and luck to them. 50,000 people who are up to that really can’t be wrong.What we’re up to at New Ventures West is something different, though we haven’t yet found a name for it that lives outside of the very broad category known as coaching. The methodology and the training go deep, and people emerge forever changed: set on unexpected spiritual paths, reconnected with a passion long since forgotten, suddenly understanding what is theirs to do in the world (which may not, in fact, be coaching).There aren’t 50,000 of us doing Integral Development Coaching … more like 2,000. But we’re out here, and we invite you to explore what’s possible.
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Outsmarting ourselves
I'm walking on the beach at Mar de Jade.It's early morning, and the sand is still cool. A pair of tiny hermit crabs are inching their way across the sand. They pull their shells down quickly as I draw near and then, if I'm still enough, peep out tentatively before beginning their journey again. The waves are warm this morning, and I wade out until the water reaches my knees. There's a stronger undertow today. I have to work hard to keep my footing.There are no aircraft here, I realise. In London I am used to the almost constant roar and whine of jet engines passing above and the criss-cross trails across the sky. Here, the skies are silent and clear. The shadows passing overhead are the pelicans, back this time in smaller groups of five or six, flying together v-shape just inches above the water. And wherever the pelicans gather, wheeling frigatebirds follow, high. They keep airborne with hardly a movement of their wings, turning in graceful arcs.A larger group of pelicans, fifteen of them, cross the bay in a line. And all the while, I realise, I'm hardly here.I could be paying attention to the warmth of the water on my feet, the tug of the tide, the bright sunlight and - beyond all of this - the intricate wholeness of this place, and how it's all impacting me. I could be noticing this, in all its exquisite beauty, before I head off to the airport and hours of travel home.But instead I'm thinking, mostly about what's not here.I think about what I'll write today, and how to write it; about clients I'm due to meet next week, and all the preparation still to be done; of my family and all they've been up to; about things to be done around the house; about far-off projects only just coming into being. I think too already of how much I'll miss this place, and wonder if I can bring any part of the experience home with me back to London. I think of what of my week here I'll forget, and try hard to grasp onto it.And then, momentarily, I catch myself in the act.Our extraordinary capacity to think means we often outsmart ourselves, us human beings. We can think ourselves away from any situation. And in doing so, we miss so much of what's present just here, as well as the wisdom of our bodies and hearts that have so much to say that can be different from our thoughts. We do this not just on the beach, but in our work, in our family lives. And in doing so we miss out on a a vital aspect of our own intelligence.And so, for a while, I see if I can settle and just allow myself to be in the middle of it all - to be a witness to the wholeness of what's happening here, both on the beach, and within me.
Photo by Justin Wise
Of sand and stars and time
I’m sitting on the beach at Mar de Jade on the Pacific coast of Mexico.
The sun is setting, fire-red, turquoise, slate. The stones and sand, still warm. About twenty feet from where I’m sitting I can see the occasional silhouettes of fish leaping from the water. And further, westwards, a group of pelicans are circling, sharp against the twilight. Each, as if taking turns, chooses a moment to furl its wings and dive into the waves before climbing, fish-laden, to join the others. I sit for nearly an hour, as the sky darkens. The pelicans wheel to the south. The tall lights of distant boats come into view.
This moment, with its tender joyful sadness, sings to me of sand and stars, of friends who are here with me, and of my family far away and back home on another side of the world.
I remember the feeling of such places from my childhood - the easy feel of being swept up into an endless and timeless landscape, wondrous and vast. And today, in my forty-fifth year, the same wonder tugs at me.
But from this part of life it’s different from before. I can already feel the inevitability of losing all of this, one day and who knows when, for another kind of timelessness.
Photo by Justin Wise
Aliens, part 2
Next time you're in the midst of a fight, you could imagine the alien of yesterday coming to visit.The alien takes no sides, and knows no history. All it can do is look at the situation from the outside, and say what it sees about your part in it all.You might like to consider what the alien would have to say to you.It could be quite different from the way you see things.Especially so when you're sure that the other person is wrong, and that you are right.
Photo Credit: Nick Kenrick . via Compfight cc
The Alien Game
Here’s an illuminating game you can play.
Imagine that an alien comes to watch you at work (or with your family) for a day. The alien has perfect command of your language but no understanding of your culture. Your practices, tools, systems and relationships are all new and strange to it.
The alien’s part in the game is to be deeply interested in each thing that you do, the way that you speak with people, the meetings you go to and the processes you follow. It asks you, at every turn
“What is it that you’re doing? And why are you doing it?”
Your only role in the game is to answer truthfully each time. But you’re not allowed to say “It’s just what we do”, or make up a plausible, but false reason. “I genuinely don’t know”, “It’s what my colleagues taught me (but I don’t know why)”, “It’s what we did in my family when I was growing up”, “it distracts me from what I’m scared of”, “it keeps me looking good” are all allowed, if true. You have to have to account, as completely as you can, for each part of your day.
The last part of the game is the most important.
Given what you've said, you get to decide whether to continue on as you are.
Or whether something - perhaps many things - have to change.
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Becoming human
Four ways of dealing with the anxious feeling that you're not completely in control of your organisation:
give someone a poor appraisal (blame someone else instead of facing that there are limits to own your power)
invent some targets for people to hit (if you can think of something measurable you might be able to avoid talking about all the uncertain, difficult to understand aspects of your work)
restructure (much easier than actually talking deeply to people about what's going on, from which who knows what trouble might happen?)
or go the other way and try to do it all yourself (keeps your heroic image going and allows you to show people how much you suffer for your role)
Or perhaps you could give up 'looking good' - which gives rise to all of the above - as the primary task of leadership.Owning up to your uncertainty and your anxiety, and to your limitations, allows you at last to become a human being to those around you, so that they in turn can be human themselves.
Photo Credit: Infinite Jeff via Compfight cc
Categories of experience
How do you label your experiences? Can you even see that you're labelling them at all?How do you decide what kind of experiences you label as welcome and unwelcome, acceptable and to-be-avoided-at-all-costs?And which labels do you give to joy, calm, fear, surprise, confusion, anxiety, delight, guilt, shame, love, uncertainty?Most importantly, can you see that the particular categories you have become used to are only one possibility? That your categories are not fixed truths, but are something you've been taught or have taught yourself over time, and solidified through years of practice?If you were prepared to loosen your certainty about all of this, you might find that the experiences you're most dedicated to avoiding hold hidden treasures and possibilities. Which, as long as you're avoiding them, will never be revealed.
Photo Credit: Jeff Kubina via Compfight cc
Your part in your mood
Opening the door to gratitude is not easy.But when you find out how improbable it is that this (whatever this is) is happening - that anything is happening at all - it can liberate this moment, and the next, and the next, into a new-found amazement. And wonder and amazement, even at the mundane everydayness of life, are the ground from which gratitude arises.Gratitude, resentment, cynicism, resignation - all involve no small measure of choice on your part.Which are you in the midst of choosing today?
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Wellspring
Yes, I know, you're really busy.But would you take some time to sit still for a while? I mean really still. Twenty minutes of not doing anything.Sit upright, alert, awake to yourself and your life for a while, and see what you find.Don't go to sleep (though you might quickly find once you've been sitting for a few moments quite how tired you actually are).Quite soon you might discover how difficult you find it to be with yourself (could this be why you're quite so busy as you are?). And how much is going on even when you're doing nothing.Thoughts crowding in. Ideas. Plans. Judgements. More plans. More judgement. Your inner critic chomping away. Feelings - irritation, anxiety, fear. Perhaps flashes of joy. Maybe love. Maybe gratitude. But, for many of us, mostly anxiety and irritation of one sort or another.But if you do sit still for a while, and if you do it regularly, you might start to catch glimpses of something that's behind your familiar whirling thoughts and feelings, behind all the stuff that you habitually take to be you.Maybe the first thing you'll encounter is a more expansive you than you ordinarily know. A you that can observe all of the activity, judging and fearfulness, and know itself to be bigger than all of that. A you that doesn't need to be needed. A you that isn't so invested in running away into busyness. A you that's able to experience whatever there is to be experienced.And then, given enough careful attention, and with much waiting and stillness, you might discover something even beyond that. A background aliveness from which all of the you that you experience arises. An aliveness that's deeply engaged in everything - for it is life itself - but not caught up in it. An aliveness that's content with simply being alive, amazed at it even. An aliveness that finds joy in the simplicity and sheer unlikeliness of being here - in breathing, in the beating of your heart, in your capacity to see, hear, love, hate, grieve, act, sleep, rest, eat, move, speak, listen. An aliveness that is not trying to get anywhere at all but which is fiercely, actively committed to life itself.We forget this part of ourselves because finding it also requires us to find so much of ourselves that we can't tolerate. But we would do well to remember it once in a while, because it's a source of deep love, deep commitment, and vibrant, generous, living possibility.And to be sure, we could all do with some of that in our frantic, over-stretched lives.