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I am sitting here at my computer. It’s early morning. I have been up already 2-3 hours. And have done many things, and yet nothing got done.
I am preparing myself for my 2:15 pm ‘coaching call’ with Heather. Heather is my ‘coach’ from the course building course I just paid for.
I find myself crying.
It doesn’t feel great, but crying is a good sign. It says to me that I mean business. That I mean when I say: I’ll do it or die trying, that I meant what I said.
Even if it means, doing it alone. Even if it means being poor for decades. I’ll do it or die trying.
It also means that when I feel discouraged, I’ll work my way out of it and come back ready again. Like the Phoenix bird that dies and is reborn from the ashes.
This course promised to make six thousand dollars income or they refund he tuition. It is probably gross income. Gross income from the course a student builds using what they learn in this university…
I am sure I won’t. I ask too much of students.
When I look who is an ideal client for the course I want to build, I don’t see people lining up to take it.
I see that my ideal client is someone who is willing to go back to zero. To hit bottom.
So from there they can now build a life on a different foundation than their current life sits.
I have not met many people who were willing. Who were willing to go all the way down, to let go of what they had built, and build something worth building from the ground up. Maybe the same. Maybe very different.
Everyone I know is afraid of hitting bottom, of losing what they have. and thus they will have, continue to have a life on the foundation of a hurt they experienced as a toddler.
The mess of men live in quiet desperation. resignation really. Resignation to a life of no love, no fulfillment, no self-expression.
Some are lucky and get to lose everything. And no, bankruptcy won’t take you back to the ground, no matter how many marketers brag about it…
You need to lose the validity of your picture…
the picture you imagined for yourself. The validity of your self-importance, your entitlement, your complaints and their validity.
If someone was lucky and it happened to them, they didn’t have to generate hitting bottom themselves…
I was one of those. When suddenly I could not be an architect any more. I know, I know. I say ‘I left architecture’ but it is factually true, and yet it’s a lie. The truth is that I wasn’t allowed to practice architecture any more…
That forced me to hit bottom. It forced me to look that I didn’t have to do what my mother wanted me to do. That I was a person on my own right. Worth keeping…
I was a mess for quite some time. Doing nothing with the opportunity. Licking my wounds. Depressed.
There seemed to be nothing in my future…
I did the seven stories exercise in the What Color Is Your Parachute. Why? because I saw that I was like the humans Landmark talked about: dumber than mice. I was still trying to be an architect even though I couldn’t.
I really thought that I had no other skills. That I was not good for anything else, but that.
The exercise and the skills grid in the book told me a different story. It told me where my joy was, and where my success might lie. Interestingly the overlap with architecture was virtually nothing.
The skills I enjoyed using were Putting ink on paper and communicate. Write and talk in essence.
So I decided one way to use those skills is to become a publisher. And I put that in my new future. and rebuilt my life. On the meaning: ‘I have something to say‘.
And make sure that I have something to say. That I can live a life worth writing about.
How is that quote?
‘If you would be remembered, write a book worth reading or live a life worth writing about.’
My medium is not a book. Why? because I need the thinking between what I write. and I assume that that is the way to read what I write: in bite size chunks. Maybe I am mistaken about that.
Anyway, knowing what it takes, I am quite clear that I am not going to make six thousand dollars with what I learn.
But…
But just being forced to look, look through questions that I wouldn’t think myself to ask is worth the tuition.
The course is sold as if there were coaching.
At the end of a section, they call it milestones, you can schedule a call with ‘your coach’. It’s 15 minutes. I think you get six calls total. Each coach has 100 participants.
I feel sorry for these coaches. No amount of money can compensate for being a machine. A machine has no experience of co-creating something worth creating. Because that is what makes coaching so yummy. That you can cause bigger results than one person could ever, through your clients.
Having 100 clients means that you, at best, suffer through 25 hours of blips…
No time to think. No time to connect. There is no time to go deep. No time to feel like a person.
So I am afraid. And I feel ripped off.
All I ever wanted is to be known, to be seen as a person… It is likely never going to happen.
We live in a world as objects in a world of object… craving being treated like a person. My coaching gives me being the one who treats others as persons.
But, of course, providing coaches, real coaches, would cost an arm and a leg, and a course like that should cost 10-20K… I am certain there are not many, and definitely not 800 experts in some area of life, each year, who are willing and able to wing that kind of money.
Back to me, back to my business…
When I look back, it is clear that unless you can go back to the beginning, nothing can change, or not really.
You’ll experience the ITCH that you decided was missing, the NEED you decided wasn’t fulfilled when you were about 3 years old.
And you’ll try to get that ITCH scratched by others unsuccessfully.
And that is what is the motivation for everything you do.
Unless you have what it takes to go back and allow yourself to see that only you can fulfill that need yourself, no one else is able, even if they are willing. And start doing that well, get good at it… unless you can and do do that, the life you build cannot change.
And although you may have a lot of money to pay me, I won’t like coaching you.
When I prepare for this coaching call with Heather, what I feel coming up is that ITCH, whispering that this is an opportunity (or not) for that ITCH to be scratched.
Without knowing it is my job, and without knowing how to do well, I could become, again, miserable, for a long time.
So, in my case, I need to give myself what the ITCH wants others to give me.
If I am not for me who is for me?
Let myself know that I know that I am worth to get to know. That I am worth keeping. That I am worth listening to. And let go of the compulsion of trying to force my contribution on anyone. Including but especially a teacher or a coach. Make sure that I know that I have nothing to prove. That it is not only not necessary, but it will trigger my racket. (The I don’t matter racket)
Sigh. Big big sigh. I just released the breath I didn’t even realize I was holding.
OK, now I am ready for that call. And I can continue my life’s work without interruption.
I’ll continue developing the final format of this work in my What’s Missing workshops.
These short workshops are for me to experiment how to produce the seven different components of the eventual course… The course that will promise to take someone from wherever they are to The Promised Land.
It looks that the process has seven parts. What part will be in the workshop you attend? I don’t know. It is always triggered by the composition of the attendees… We are working most on the connection between the first incident and your life now…
If you don’t ACHE for a bigger, more meaningful life, don’t come.
Don’t attend. That ACHING is essential for ME to be able to work with you.
At this point I only have two students who have that ACHING.
I’ll keep working out issues in my articles. I am not going anywhere…
On another note: It seems that what I am saying about the Big Bundle and that it’s life insurance in a world that is hellbent to kill you… that notion is starting to sink in.
I hope you get it.
Its cost is still very affordable.
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