Choose a Story That Sets You Free
📖📖 My new book, The Power to Choose: Finding Calm and Connection in a Complex World is out now! Get your copy here: https://geni.us/powertochoose
—
Years ago, I was coaching the CEO of an entrepreneurial small business with visionary ideas. I found myself picking up an energy from her as she talked about the possible ways forward for her in her career. As she outlined one option - stepping up more publicly, taking more of the influence that I could see was there for the taking if she wanted it - I felt something.
Or at least, I thought I felt something.
I reflected it back… something fairly gentle like this: I’m noticing when you speak about one of these ways forward, I feel much more energy moving.
The leader pushed back pretty hard, suggesting that there are other ways to create impact than by public speaking and writing books.
And I wondered, in my supervision practice: was it her energy for that way forward that I was feeling, or mine…?
It made me more cautious in future - no bad thing.
It was a foundational building block of my practice for several years, in the way that other mistakes or spiky moments (in my coaching and my life) often guide me as I try to step forward skilfully and honourably.
And then, years later, at a social event, I was talking to the leader again. And she explained that she had been talking to her current coach about what to do, and she had said, ‘Oh no. Robbie was right.’ She said it with a rueful smile.
And I saw that - unknown to me - the same story and reflection had been rattling around in her head for years, too.
But perhaps for different reasons.
Hearing her reflect this was one of those instant paradigmatic shifts, where suddenly a whole part of my life - in this case my work - looked different.
Instead of a veneer of doubt being layered onto my intuitive guidance for my clients, I could add a veneer of confidence, instead.
That in this case I had been listening honourably to the client, and my intuition and listening had picked up some truth for her.
And the pushback had been… something else.
Of course… I was lucky. I don’t always hear back from people years on.
We can never know, really, how others see the events that we use to form our worldview.
That’s why the power to choose matters - we can choose how we tell stories about the past.
We can squint and look differently at something that is right in front of us or something that happened years ago.
When I coach or mentor people on sales and they often ask something like, ‘What do I do when I haven’t heard back from a prospect?’ I’m always reminded of something I read in a Steve Chandler book years ago:
‘What does it mean when you hear nothing from a client? Well, it means NOTHING.’
Humans love to attribute meaning to what is happening in front of us: we create simple stories, as Jennifer Garvey Berger might say, made up of heroes and villains. When the truth is far more confusing, far more grey.
When we’re in the whirlwind it can hard to remember this, but a good rule of thumb is the Robert Holden idea: the next level of success is available to you if you dare to be more fully who you really are.
That’s what I write about in Chapter 4 of The Power to Choose: no one can compete with you at being you.
And so when in doubt, choose to be you a little more.
Even after hearing that I was right, this story with the leader carries a tinge of regret. It isn’t the regret that I used to have: that I might have projected my desire to be more visible onto her… it’s the tinge of regret that I let one story with a client hold me back - even slightly - from the possibilities in the most powerful depths of coaching.
So: where are you holding back from being you?
And how could you choose a story that sets you free?
—
PS My new book, The Power to Choose: Finding Calm and Connection in a Complex World, is out now! Get your copy here: https://geni.us/powertochoose
This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.