From the moment we arrive in the world, we have to learn to fit in with the family and social situation into which we were born.Learning how to behave, and how not to behave, who to be and who not to be, is a necessary and inescapable part of our early development. But it also has an enormous cost - our separation from our own instincts. In all our fitting in with what others require of us we lose touch with our capacity to trust ourselves and to know what is genuinely good for us. And we lose touch with that which is essentially, uniquely ours to bring, that which will bring us most vibrantly to life, and perhaps make a contribution to everyone around us.And so if learning to fit in - becoming socialised into our family and culture - is a necessary part of our early development, finding ourselves and taking up our place in the world is a necessary part of our adult development. And this involves finding out all the ways we've become alienated from ourselves, from our basic goodness, and from our deep capacity to distinguish what is called for in, and from, our lives.It probably takes waking up to the basic facts of our lives to begin to take this as seriously as we need to - that life is very short, filled with uncertainty, and cannot be controlled. And that there's nobody to take responsibility for our brief stay here but ourselves.Perhaps once we begin to get a feel of all of this, we can begin the urgent work of seeing through the layers of expectation and conformity which we took on in order to navigate our early years and, gradually, uncover our essential selves once again.
Rule followers
A hospital emergency department demands that doctors deal with 95% percent of patients within four hours. And then finds that the number of people admitted unnecessarily to hospital beds has massively increased.A retail bank calls in to its branch managers three times a day to find out if they've hit their target for selling loans. And then finds out they've loaned to large numbers of people who could never afford to pay.A technology help-desk demands that all queries are dealt with in under five minutes, meaning more customers are helped. And complaints go up because problems are not being solved completely.Has it struck you that the more you try to manage us by giving us rules to follow (and this includes holding us to narrow measures that distract us from the wholeness or ultimate purpose of our work), the more you train us to be skilful rule-followers rather than people who can exercise judgement, discretion and wisdom?What else, really, did you expect?
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Story People
As well as living your life, you're always in the midst of a story about it all, though perhaps it doesn't often seem this way.Our stories quickly become transparent, invisible, in the living of them.But one evening, reading a book or watching a film, you find yourself deeply touched by the situation of one of the characters. Maybe it's the one nobody understands, the one with hidden gifts they can't seem to bring to the world, the one who seems doomed to hurt others, the one who has been carrying a heavy burden that nobody will take away, or the one who longs for some kind of resolution. You're moved. You feel seen. And you have an insight, for a moment, into the way you're constructing the story of your own life.New possibilities open when we find stories that reflect our own experience in this way. It's what the great fairy tales and myths can do. And it's how the films and books that touch us reach behind the surface of things and show us our lives.Most of us can also do with finding people who can do this for us. People who appreciate and show us, compassionately, the stories we're living. People who see the hurt and the suffering, the longing and the hope, the wishes unfulfilled, and what we've been working so hard to bring about. And people who bring what's become invisible to us back to our attention, so that we can find ourselves again.Even more importantly, we need people around us who can see beyond all the stories. Those who show us who we are that's outside all the narratives - of success and failure, joy and hurt, achievement and disappointment - with which we identify ourselves.And we need those who can bring us new stories with which to interpret our lives. Stories with more space in them, bigger possibilities, and more life-giving ways of understanding ourselves. Stories that reconnect us with the sources of dignity, courage and strength that can sustain us as we do what only we can do.It's quite a gift to come across people who can do this for us.And isn't it, in the end, what skilful friendship, teaching, and leadership are all about?
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Coming to terms
It's true - there isn't enough time to do everything on your list.And there is no final state of 'everything done' that you can reach, no matter how fast you're going.There's probably not even enough time to do everything you think is important.Would coming to terms with the messiness and ever-incompleteness of life allow you out of your cycle of rushing and give you a chance to live? And might that in turn be the opportunity, at last, to do something that really matters, because you're no longer chasing everything else?
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Shifts in understanding
What might often be quite hard to see is that your understanding of the world is much more expressed in your practices - what you're doing again and again - than in what you say about yourself.You could look into this topic by studying your relationships with others. What is it that you take to be true about you and other people in relationship? And what understanding is embodied by what you actually do?Often, in my work in organisations, I come across leaders who sincerely wish to treat those around them as capable, responsible adults but who consistently embody in their practice an orientation of 'better than you'. Despite what they say, this orientation can't help but come out in the way they speak, in the way they intervene to fix things, and in the requests and (more often) demands that they make.Genuinely relating to other people as capable and responsible requires a whole set of interlocking practices that include both giving others the space and freedom to act, and sharing with others one's own uncertainty and incompleteness. In contrast, 'better than you' involves acting as if you have all the answers, and subtly or overtly controlling others' behaviour. And despite what we might say, most of us have - at least to start with - a strong 'better than you' understanding of leadership.What is also often quite hard to see is that we don't shift our understanding just by declaring our intention to be different - because our ongoing practices are our understanding, embodied in action. In other words, our practices don't just express our understanding of the world. They also bring it into being.And so a change in understanding always requires a shift in our actions, if it's going to be a change in understanding at all.
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Quiet time
At some point in your life you're going to need to include a practice of regular quiet time: time by yourself, letting your life sink in, being still, allowing yourself at last to feel it all.Does it occur to you that without this, you run the risk of living a full-tilt life that you never, quite, manage to touch?And a life that is never, quite, allowed to touch you in return?
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On self-care
Self-care:Getting enough sleepEating healthily, and often enough to sustain yourselfExercisePlayQuiet time - to read, ponder, think, walkBeing with the people you love, and who love youTouch
Too many of us have decided (how did we decide this?) that self-care is optional, marginal or even a sign of weakness.It's a huge misunderstanding of what it is to be human.And an ever bigger misunderstanding of where our capacity to do good work comes from in the first place.
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Better than you
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