Confession Time: I have been complaining. A lot. I know what you are thinking, or maybe I think I know: "How can a coach, one with so much to share and who seems to hate complaining, be complaining?!" Well, it happens.
I caught myself at the gym. Sulking on a weight bench, feeling sorry for myself, having just spent the whole morning ruining someone else's with my lamentations and my woe-is-me. And now I felt worse. Sitting there wondering what the hell was wrong with me. So I sent the text. "I am sorry for being a shit this morning." A mea culpa that fixed nothing and told me everything. Something was about to change.
One of the more interesting parts of being in the positions I am in is the self-awareness that comes from helping people, specifically very successful people, navigate the tumultuous waters of transition, life, and meaning. I am forced on a nearly constant basis to wrestle with the ideas I teach and how to live them most effectively in life.
Which is why today, for all of you, I am choosing to be honest. I will not tell you what I am complaining about, as that would be more complaining, and I am making at least an attempt to knock that shit off and move on.
Honesty, at least in my opinion, is at the heart of personal growth. Well, that and suffering. Among the hundreds of men I have worked with, not one was honest with themselves, and many more were not honest with the people around them in ways both nefarious and seemingly harmless.
So what is this letter all about? Blame.
Friedrich Nietzsche said, "All complaint is accusation... No one accuses without an underlying notion of punishment and revenge, even when he accuses his fate or himself."
Me First: So who was I accusing in my blame? The algorithm. The economy. Mercury in retrograde. Any of the usual suspects that come to mind when things don't go exactly my way? Sounds about right. Sure. But the reality was, I was blaming myself.
I was leaning hard into the narrative that I am inadequately prepared to meet the challenges before me, and rather than seeking resolution, I sought to make it about something or someone else. I was doing that when I should have been blaming myself for the lack of courage, or dare I say the cowardice, to face the problem head-on, slinking meekly behind a tree to not be seen.
The root of all mental illness, says Scott Peck, is the avoidance of legitimate suffering. And since all people attempt to avoid suffering, we are all more or less mentally ill.
What am I avoiding? I told you at the top I wouldn't say. That was the avoidance talking. So here it is.
The book is launching. The business is changing. The way I have worked for years, the thing I know cold, the thing that feels safe, has to change. I have to build something new. Something bigger, more fun, a lot more dangerous, and yes, riskier. The whole picture is coming soon. But I have known for a while it was coming, and I have been finding very creative ways not to face it.
I have been hiding behind the safety of the known when what I crave is the adventure, and the honesty, of the unknown. So instead of changing it, I complained. I made it about everyone but me and called it a bad morning.
I have seen this before, in myself, in many clients who, at what they believed was the apex of their career, started to fizzle out, only to find they had more gas than they realized and kept pushing.
And the ones who don't? They knew—not thought, KNEW—they had more to offer. They just refused to take the steps to make it real. So it dies on the vine. They never see their name on the CEO's door. Never make it to Tuscany. Never let themselves have the ice cream on a Saturday night, because God forbid they're not in a caloric deficit. They never start the business. Not because they can't. Because they won't face the fear.
So in my confession today, I have an ask of you. Answer these four questions:
- What am I avoiding that looks risky but I know is right?
- If I assumed the risk, what would I have to do?
- Where am I hiding?
- What do I need to do to come out into the light?
This is the process I take people through. This week I took myself through it. Your turn.