Intro Path 10:
The Second Portal
This coaching is only going to work if you give me permission to coach you, and if you agree to be coachable.
You and me, we have a problem. I can't solve it, but I talk about it, so that's what I'm going to do.
The problem is, coaching can sometimes, and maybe even often, be a pain in the ass.
The thing is, being a "pain in the ass" is part of the inherent nature of effective coaching. Sometimes, it can be difficult to be effectively coached. You are likely to find yourself pissed off, impatient, confronted, challenged, angry, pushed, worn out, and perhaps even troubled, disturbed, and offended by the coaching that you will encounter as you proceed through SkyVillage.
The difficulty that you can experience when you are effectively coached means that I can't simply come charging into your life and start coaching you. If this is going to work, you have to give me permission to coach you, and, in so doing, you have to agree to be coachable.
Now, you might have a valid response to this assertion. You might be thinking "well, hell, Coach Ellis, how can I give you permission to coach me, and how can I agree to be coachable, when I have no idea what this coaching is going to involve?"
Well, even after you've given permission, you can always quit, of course, although for most folks, that would be a mistake.
But you can also click forward from here and check out this coaching as, shall we say, an observer. That's an OK thing to do. Once you've checked things out to the point that you recognize that you are interested in this coaching, then, at that time, you can come back here, give me permission to coach you, and agree to be coachable. Then, you can start afresh down these pathways, this time for real.
But unless you do this--unless you give me permission to coach you, and agree to be coachable--then this coaching is not going to work. In other words, to the degree that you embark upon these pathways with nothing more than the intent to observe, and to check things out, while still keeping your figurative distance, then this coaching is not going to work. You have to dive in and authentically engage with this stuff. You have to give a shit about it. You have to care. Only then is it going to work.
You understand. This makes perfect sense.
You might still have a question: what do I mean when I say "agree to be coachable?"
Good question. Let me answer it for you.
As you travel the SkyVillage pathways, you are going to be presented with a series of ideas. Many of these ideas will be unfamiliar. Some of them might even occur as strange, weird, odd, or eccentric. From time to time, you might even find yourself disturbed, unsettled, troubled, and made uncomfortable by the way that these ideas occur to you.
Now, let me make sure I don't set you against this at the outset. There will also be times a-plenty when the ideas you encounter herein are going to occur as interesting, engaging, exciting, invigorating, enlivening, promising, freeing, and give rise to enthusiasm, joy and exhilaration.
Regardless, being coachable does not mean that I am asking you to believe in any of these ideas, no matter how they occur to you. In other words, I am not asking you to agree with or believe anything that I am setting forth herein. In being "coachable", you don't have to yield, surrender or be dominated--not at all.
See if you can get this:
In asking for you to be "coachable", I am asking for you to adopt an attitude in which this coaching does not show up in a context of "agree" or "disagree" or "believe" or "disbelieve."
That last sentence expresses an idea that can be unfamiliar. Not your fault. Just the way it is.
So, do me a favor, and read it over again, and this time, see if you can get it with a bit more understanding.
In asking for you to be "coachable", I am asking for you to adopt an attitude in which this coaching does not show up in a context of "agree" or "disagree" or "believe" or "disbelieve."
You see, that way of looking at things isn't going to produce the kinds of results that we are trying to achieve.
Adopting this attitude is not going to be easy.
It's not going to be easy because you and I have been trained from birth to drape every damn thing that shows up in our realm of awareness with value judgments; that is, right/wrong good/bad agree/disagree believe/disbelieve and all the rest. That means that, according to how you have been trained, your current way of dealing with the ideas that you are going encounter here will be to say "yes, I agree with that", or "no, I don't agree with that".
The thing is, to the degree that you don't agree with a particular idea, you will have a profound tendency to slam the door in it's face, and "that will be that" in terms of you considering the validity, usefulness, and effectiveness of that particular idea.
Problem: if you "slam the door" in the face of certain ideas, without authentic consideration, then you are not being "coachable."
One of my former coaches used to ask his participants to hold the ideas that he was presenting "like a brick in your lap." You don't agree with a brick, and you don't disagree with a brick. Bricks aren't like that. They are just there.
That's pretty good. You can use that, if it works for you.
To be coachable, you need to consider the ideas that I am going to present to you. You need to turn them over in your considerations, look at them, study them, and try them on for size, so to speak. To be coachable, you need to give them a chance, so to speak.
Over a workable period of time, the goal is to see if these ideas resonate with you. See if they have an impact. See if they move you. See if, in trying them on for size, they make a difference in the quality of your life.
That doesn't mean that you have to agree with them, or believe them. But that also means that you can't simply stop at disagreeing with them, or disbelieving them, do you see what I mean?
Now, if a particular idea doesn't work for you, then, following workable consideration, you can abandon it. Not every nugget of coaching contained herein is likely to work for you. This coaching is flexible. You are going to tailor it to work best for you.
But, get this: the test that you need to adopt isn't "agree/disagree" or "believe/disbelieve". The test that you need to adopt is "works/doesn't work."
Adopting and relying on a "works/doesn't work" test with regard to these ideas, rather than one dependent upon "value judgments", is what I mean when I ask you to be coachable.
And here we go again:
Read that sentence once more for me, if you would, because it contains an unfamiliar idea, and a second reading is going to help you understand it.
Adopting and relying on a "works/doesn't work" test with regard to these ideas, rather than one dependent upon "value judgments", is what I mean when I ask you to be coachable.
That's good. It's a bit difficult, but you get it. (We'll talk more about these ideas down the road.)
So, when you are ready, I'm going to need you to repeat, out loud, the following declaration.
"I give Coach Ellis permission to coach me, and to be my life and career coach. In accord with this, I promise to be coachable. By this I mean that I will consider the ideas that Coach Ellis is presenting to me in an open, fair, workable manner, and if I find them to be effective, and if they are in accord with my personal values, then I will implement them as I work to craft a life of the highest quality."
OK! Well done! If you declared that, and if you meant it, then we have successfully negotiated the Second Portal.
Click here, and we'll tackle the challenge of the Third Portal.
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