Wonderful is Just a Moment Away

First published on November 9, 2018

A couple of months ago, I was in a conversation with two fellow coaches who work for 64 Million Artists on their brilliant Leading Researchers Programme. We were discussing coaching, and the phenomenon which most coaches will recognise - that sometimes sessions feel really hard. Change and transformation are not always linear, and my experience has been that often around 50-75% of the way through a coaching engagement, it will start to feel really hard. The 'easy', reflective bit is done, and the exciting external results haven't all materialised yet. It feels like no progress has been made.

My old coach Rich sometimes points out that if you're on an exponential curve, and everything feels flat, you don't know if you are right next to where everything starts to fly upwards at hyper speed. But you could be. And that's my experience in coaching: often following some of the most difficult, hardest conversations - the conversations we are most convinced we are on the flat with no change in sight - something unlocks, and there come the extraordinary results.

Sometimes, wonderful is just a conversation away.

That's what I said to my colleagues, and one of them, my friend Nina, wrote it down and said 'I'm going to remember that. It's the kind of thing you should get put up on your wall, next to whatever other inspirational quotes you have.'

This week, I learnt something more. I had a conversation with a client. It was hard. We could both feel it. We didn't have the flow or the energy of our previous conversations. We played some more. It was still hard.

And then - something changed. I won't speak about what, because that is private and confidential, but what I will say is that after a slow, staccato first half of the conversation, the second half of the conversation is one I think I will remember forever. Tears pricked my eyes more than once, and almost slipped down my cheeks. I don't know what results will happen for the client, but I could feel the power of the conversation.

And I realised that, if we want it, wonderful is closer than a conversation away. Wonderful is just a moment away.

Not perfect, not happy, but wonderful. Full of wonder. That is just a moment away.

That's hard to remember in our lives - our busy, tricky lives. It's hard to find that thing that might shift, and it's hard to shift it. Sometimes, we are on the flat part of the exponential curve, very near the Y axis, and what transformation will take is slow and steady action and thought. But sometimes, sometimes we are way right of the Y axis. It still feels flat, but we are right next to the moment when everything changes.

And here's what I think. Life isn't even as linear as an exponential curve. Because if we live life as though we are on the flat, a long way from when our change curve takes off, we stay there. But if we live life as if we are right next to the moment when everything changes, then things open up, things spread out. Things change.

That's what happens when we live life from a place where wonderful is just one moment away.