Hero’s Journey

I’m learning to listen. To really listen. Of course, coaching is all about listening and so I could say I’m a trained professional listener and that’s the end of it, but then I wouldn’t be listening anymore – listening for what there is to still listen for.

The movie Tornado is a story about a guy who learns to sit through the night, listening to a horse, and through his listening, he becomes healed, and heals the horse. I’ve been practising this, with my son, with myself – sitting up, not all night, but some of it, and listening, really listening. It’s amazing what has come up. Most of us are so busy trying to solve the problem that we don’t listen for the solution. Coaching has taught me that we all know the answer to every problem, we just aren’t listening to ourselves.

They measure the depth of the ocean by dropping a sonar beam, and measuring the time it takes to hit the ocean floor and return. The way to listen to yourself is to drop a question, let it fall all the way down to the bottom, and see what comes up. Repeat, until you have your answer, or your next question.

Listening requires courage, and the willingness to face what comes up. When we’re afraid to hear, we actually turn up the volume of our own internal noise. So you first have to be willing to face what comes up. Then when you become still, and really listen, and then listen some more, the answers will come to you. Good coaching is about getting the client to hear himself. It’s the art of listening.

If you can’t hear yourself, and you want to, then find someone who can help you listen: find a good coach.

One of the greatest realisations that people get from attending workshops is the realisation that they’re not alone. For most of our lives we keep our cards to ourselves like poker players; the energy compounds, and we feel worse about our ‘situation’. Just sitting in a room with other people, hearing the presenter say something that applies to you and that you realise applies to everyone else in the room already halves your worries. The guardedness you arrived with starts to fall away. If the process has rules that make it a safe environment, then people open up automatically.

I was in the presence last weekend of men sharing themselves authentically and it was a privileged place to be. ‘The future is now,’ is a phrase coined by the guru Jiddu Krishnamurti. It means that you bring ecstasy into the moment as soon as you live committed doing the thing that would make you ecstatic. In other words, it’s the journey of commitment that brings you the ecstasy, not reaching the destination. It came alive for me last weekend while presenting the first Authentic Success Program for Men: I saw that there is nothing else for me to be doing. This is it. This is my purpose and what gives my life meaning. There is no ambition for wealth or for some option out there that will make me happy. This is it.

What a place to be, and boy have I been lost and unhappy and searching for long periods of my life. To see other men find that space, or the possibility of that space, was humbling and awe-inspiring, and I look forward to doing it with thousands more around the world.

I bought a book many years ago because of its title: How Shall We Then Live? It was a Christian social manifesto, with plenty of validity, but it didn’t answer the question for me. Instead, the title, which had resonated in the beginning, stayed with me: I knew that it was the central question of my life. I wasn’t fulfilled, and I wanted to be. I didn’t feel free; I could see that people weren’t free, and I was determined that we should be.

I’ve since learned that if you ask a question in the right way, and you keep it open, you eventually become the living answer to that question. Rather than telling people the answer, the things you do and the way you live provides the answer to anyone who cares to look. Well, if being ecstatically present and energised all the time is an indication, then I could say I’ve become, in some small measure, the answer to that question. I know how to live in order to be fulfilled and happy, no matter what’s going on around you.

The beauty is that it was the very climb from confusion, misery and despair that has revealed these answers to me. If I’d always been happy, I wouldn’t know what makes a person happy, I’d have nothing to share, I’d have none of my current value, meaning or purpose.  

So how shall we then live? Live the question – put your life on the line for an answer – and you will find out. For the fast track, you come see me, I show you!

Words are an instrument for me to get you to see what I’m seeing. Until someone – using words – explains a Picasso to you, it’s a bunch of cubes; Mozart, a bunch of very pretty sounds. Enough words, and the form starts to make sense, or take on meaning.

It’s by the words that I use that I see myself too. I describe myself to myself using words. If I change the words, I change myself. But I can’t just change the words, because I don’t know which words to use, or how to order them. I can pull big, fancy words out of the financial press, rearrange them and string them together, but it won’t make me any the wiser about money. I can rephrase words I use about myself – many do, they’re called mantras – and they won’t make me any more happy or successful. I need the right words, in the right order. I need a word mechanic, just as a diesel truck needs a diesel mechanic.

Coaching is a specific language; it’s words ordered in a specific way to make a difference to the way you describe yourself. Done correctly, it can give you the meaning of yourself; it can turn all your lights on.