8 Lessons From The First Five Years of My Coaching Business
First published on July 22, 2020
Last week was the fifth anniversary of the first time someone paid me to coach them. That moment, five years ago, was the culmination of several years' work searching for work which enlivened me and used all my gifts. And it was the starting point of an adventure of five years, that brings us today: an adventure into entrepreneurialism, coaching and focused personal transformation.
Last week, to celebrate that, I brought together over forty former clients, colleagues and family members, and shared with them some of the most important things I have learned in the last five years. Here are some of those lessons:
1) I am what I am. You are what you are. We are what we are.
My shirt is sometimes crumpled and my events don't always run smoothly. That's ok. As Robert Holden says, the next level of our success is available to us if we dare to be more fully who we are, and who I am is a man whose shirts are sometimes crumpled. The people who matter don't mind that. The ones who mind about that aren't the people who matter.
2) Celebrating is important.
I believe celebrating our successes or - as my friend Catherine once taught me - celebrating the feeling of moving towards what we want, is a key part of holding the balance between self-acceptance and complacency (although, underneath, I'm not sure those two concepts are as similar as they look). Not only that, but as Dan and Chip Heath explain in The Power of Moments, so many of the most important memories of our lives are significant moments. And so many significant moments pass by without us marking them. Marking them is important.
3) We can choose far more of our experience than we think.
As my friend Ed pointed out during the celebration call last week, that doesn't make it simple. It isn't 'just think better and everything will be unicorns and rainbows'. But it is as simple as: mostly, we have far more ability to affect our moment-to-moment experience than we think. We might find it important to remember the old Buddhist idea that really sank in for me when I heard it from Jim Dethmer: suffering is not caused by what is actually here now, but by resisting what is actually here now.
4) It helps to assume the best in others.
Rutger Bregman tells a great story in Utopia For Realists, which is something like this: studies reveal that if asked what we think others will do if they are given (say) $10,000, we think they'll gamble it or drink it or otherwise throw it away. If we are asked what we would do if we were given $10,000, we of course would use it wisely. According to Brené Brown's husband, Steve, assuming that everyone out there is a person with good intentions, doing their best, helps us see the world more clearly as it is and less as it 'could' or 'should' be. In my experience, it also helps me respond far better to others in the world.
5) When our stress response is triggered, curiosity may be the answer.
Fred Kofman tells a story I love. It goes something like his: Fred was sat in a restaurant, where an old couple were also dining and clearly having an argument. At one point, as the restaurant went quiet, the woman said to the man: "It's not about the chicken, Harry. It's about the last twenty years." Sometimes we can choose to change our experience in the moment. But sometimes we are dragged back into older experiences - from our childhood or adolescence, or even further to our evolutionary past. When retrospectively, you can see that your action is out of sync with what you're facing - when it's clearly not about the chicken - get curious.
6) Use your sense of mortality to focus on what is important.
Death shows up in life. At least, it does to me: rearing its head and saying 'Don't forget I'm here, Robbie!' Use those signs to create more of what matters to you. Ask yourself the questions: what would make me sad at the end of life? What do I want to make sure doesn't happen? And then focus them into the way you live your life.
7) If you start and then keep going, over several years magic happens.
That, of course, is the lesson of this writing practice. 12 minutes a week for almost four years, and we have over 180 pieces, a book on the way, hundreds of connections created and a man changed beyond his imagination.
As I heard Alta Starr say recently, 'We are always practising something, and we become what we practise.' So create a practice that will serve you. And then keep practising.
8) Recommitting Is The Journey
In probably the most original thought I have had during the last five years, remember that what sets apart 'changing' from 'wanting to change' is not making a commitment. Each of us has done that thousands of times in our lives. It's what we do when we realise we haven't kept our commitments. Recommitting is the rep which strengthens your change muscle. So choose, when you slip, to recommit.