Another 201 Course preview today. You can get the 101 course here.
Here’s a quote I saw from a famous coach:
“Being a manager, you’re either under siege or it’s coming.” - Ange Postecoglu
At face value, I think many of you would agree?
But have you gone a layer deeper and asked yourself why you agree?
I’ll challenge you to pause and do that now. Then come back…
Ready?
The thing about ‘disconnecting’ or coming out of the coaching world for 3 years is you begin to ‘see’ a lot of things you never did when you were ‘too close’ to it.
The first time around in coaching, I was ignorant, self-important, unaware and overwhelmed by small things because each time something happened, it was the first time it ever happened. I also thought the hard times were going to be permanent for that same reason. There’s a great analogy in this podcast, if you’re so inclined…
Okay, so back to this quote.
Here’s the thing about it.
No matter what you are under… You put yourself under it.
Under pressure
Under attack
Under siege
Under a microscope
“But Drew!” Stay with me, I can feel your anger coming on…
“Spiritual progress is based on acceptance as a matter of free will and choice, and thus everyone experiences only the world of their choosing.”
-David R. Hawkins
They are all illusions you’ve made true for yourself. You put things in your life that you want.
I’m gonna repeat that…
You put things in your life that you want.
You chose.
You want to feel under pressure.
Attacked.
Watched closely from above.
That is the reality you are choosing to see.
Why?
It’s part of what makes you feel important enough to take a job like that to begin with.
But, big but…
None of those things are truly there.
How do I know?
I went from being very attached to coaching as my primary identity to an Uber driver who writes about coaching online until he one day may get another opportunity to coach again.
I got OUT.
What perspective does that give me?
What have I learned since being a coach that made up illusions that weren’t there to boost is ego and self-importance?
I’ve learned and practiced non-attachment.
The best way to practice this skill is to stop coaching, something I needed God/The Universe/Quantum Field/Who or Whatever else you believe in to allow to happen.
After 2 years with the junior hockey team, I was going to move up and coach in the NAHL in 2020. Then the team I was supposed to work for resided in Illinois and that state took 3 years off existing… So I didn’t get to keep coaching. Best thing that ever happened to me in this regard. I wouldn’t have learned this stuff otherwise.
I was now on the outside of coaching looking in for someone to hire me. And then nobody did. For 3 years. And counting. I couldn’t control any of that.
Through this newsletter, I call writing therapy… Any good therapy is just changing one’s self-concept by the way… And some additional inner work, I’ve fully embraced the teaching of non-attachment.
When you begin to have conversations with coaches when you’re on the outside, you realize they have the same thing you had when you were ‘in it.’
They care so much about everything. And it all affects them. Some are even addicted to the ‘stress’ they say they ‘want’ to get rid of…
Where you invest attention is where you invest energy and most coaches are spread thin because they invest attention in everything. And we are fully attached to outcomes because that’s what we are ‘judged’ on… When you’re with the wrong organizations.
All of this to say, we need one more analogy.
We think our house is worth more than the cookie cutter, same layout, same updates, next-door neighbor’s house.
Why?
Because it’s OUR house. The attachment adds value.
Attachment to what is yours leads to illusions being created in real-time.
You don’t want peace in your coaching job because you don’t value it. The stress and the perception of being ‘under attack’ is there because you invited him inside, made him a plate and had dinner with it. You love it. You feed it. You give it energy and attention. You nurture it so it keeps coming back. You showed stress love.
You don’t value peace because you’ve been programmed that coaching is ‘stressful’ or that ‘coaches are always under siege’ or whatever else floats around out there that you grab onto because there is nobody out there suggesting there could be another way…
I completely understand if you’re not ready for this message, but that’s why this platform exists. If it doesn’t challenge you enough to give it some thought, it’s worthless to consume anyway.
If you don’t want to take my word for it, maybe Neville Goddard resonates more with you:
Just as a branch has no life except it be rooted in the vine, so likewise things have no life except you be conscious of them. Just as a branch withers and dies if the sap of the vine ceases to flow towards it, so do things in your world pass away if you take your attention from them, because your attention is as the sap of life that keeps alive and sustains the things of your world. To dissolve a problem that now seems so real to you all that you do is remove your attention from it. In spite of it seeming reality, turn from it in consciousness. Become indifferent and begin to feel yourself to be that which would be the solution of the problem.
-pg 43 of At Your Command
To have peace, value peace.
To value it, place your attention on it.
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