Chapter 4: I'm in it and that's all I can see

We all have an inner world; a part of ourselves that is raw, delicate, and deeply personal. At the heart of that inner world lies our life purpose - often only felt as a silent whisper in those rare moments of deep connection with ourselves. This subtle knowingness of "why we are here" is perhaps the most precious gift we have, yet it is also the most fragile one. Therefore, the impulse to protect it, or even ignore it, is very natural. As Being Entrepreneurs, we are compelled to listen deeply to this inner calling and then, little by little, express it through our entrepreneurial initiatives into the world.

Having been coached, I learned a lot about myself but I also realized that this was an art that I naturally embodied throughout my life and now it was yearning to express itself in a more deliberate and professional way.

It didn’t take long to identify the coaching school most aligned with my values and beliefs. What appealed to me most was the deep spiritual nature of the program. Rather than focus on enhancing the Doing - increase productivity, achieve goals, improve personal effectiveness - I was about to sign up for a coaching school with a clear focus on Being. I was going to learn how to put the Human Spirit, the yearning of the heart and the inner voice at the center of the coaching process. Over the next 12 months I would discover how this coaching methodology can reveal the unique calling, or life purpose, that lies within each one of us and support the re-building of our lives around it.

At the time I didn’t quite realize how bold of a decision this was. I truly believed that after this program I would be equipped to bring this deep transformational coaching into organizations. At the time I dreamed of (re)-igniting the collective spirit of an organization. The particularities of how I would do that and whether or not people even wanted it seemed irrelevant at the time. I was discovering that this was my life purpose, my mission in life, and simply trusted that eventually everything would fall into place. Trying to plan it all out in advance was not going to work - this much I knew. The best I could do was take it one step at a time.

The first step was clear: a week in San Diego immersed in the 5-day in person part of the course. It was exhilarating to dive deeply into both the personal journey and the skills aspect of this learning experience. I was good at it and could see infinite ways to experiment with all these new skills on Monday morning when I returned to work. The rest of the 12 months course unfolded online. The timing of these webinars was 17:30 to 19:30 pacific standard time, which was 2:30 to 4:30 am for me in Europe. My love for this work was such that getting up in the middle of the night on a weekday was effortless and somehow infused me with so much positive energy that it easily sustained me at work the following day. In fact, there was no better way for the newly acquired coaching concepts to flow into my day-to-day activities.

My world was now coaching and that was all I could see (and do). The inner world that, until recently, was private and protected had been released. My passion was now visible to all and many people around me were intrigued. I was fortunate to have a very open-minded boss at the time. She not only admired my newfound passion, but she was also one of the people who intuitively understood the benefit of deeper personal work. So, when I proposed to facilitate a “discover your true self” session during an upcoming team off-site event, she agreed without fully knowing what it would entail.

It was a huge opportunity for me to take this group of 10 business colleagues through my newly acquired visualization exercise. This included a deep meditation guiding them to a point in time, five years in the future. There they would meet their future self who had grown into his or her greatest potential. In this deep meditative state, they could experience what it feels like to have grown into their future self, even asking him or her for guidance to take back into the present moment. After the 30-minute exercise we took quality time to share our experiences and, in the process, got to know each other, and our aspirations in life and work, in a much more intimate way. We had collectively crossed the boundaries of what it meant to be colleagues in a business environment. Having glimpsed into each other’s souls we knew that our future working relationship would be impacted, but how was not yet clear. All we knew was that at the time it felt great and for me it was a major breakthrough in closing the gap between the two parallel lives I had been living.

I was ready for more. I could see the tremendous possibilities to impact the business by coaching people at the individual and collective level. In my mind all of the typical interpersonal challenges people experience in the business context could be resolved if only we spent a bit more time deeply listening to each other and looking at the challenges with fresh eyes. I also understood that any shift in perspective we have towards others must first start with a shift in our own thoughts and belief patterns. This was so obvious to me and I naively assumed it would be relatively easy for others to acknowledge as well. A new world had opened up for me so why couldn't it open up for all of us.

In my mind, coaching was clearly the solution to all of life’s problems and I was perfectly positioned to support the business in this new capacity. So, while continuing to fulfill the requirements of my consumer research responsibilities, I became an active advocate for transformational coaching amongst my colleagues and anyone else who crossed my path at work. Clearly some people got it. They happened to be younger and generally struggling to find their place within this large, highly competitive organizational environment. They too were feeling a disconnect between the yearning of their heart - meaningful work in collaboration with people I like - and the reality of the current culture - race to the top.

So, I started to attract my first clients. As I was coaching them mainly during business hours there was of course no question of charging for it. For me it was simply a way to be of service and gain valuable coaching hours needed to complete my certification. I could start to see where this might go. If I could show enough impact with this new line of work, then surely it would catch the attention of management and eventually a new position of “in-house coach” would be created. I was on a path of creating my dream job.

This vision was so appealing that I started to give more and more energy to the people I was supporting. I was so invested in their reality that I could no longer distinguish between what was theirs to work through and what was mine. The boundaries of a healthy coaching relationship were blurring and, although at the time I was not really aware of it, I was starting to lose myself. I was carrying the weight of other people’s problems and lost touch with my own needs.

My sleep was the first thing to get affected. I can remember spending many sleepless nights “playing around” in my mind with the challenges of the clients I was supporting. At first it would yield some great insights that I would excitedly share with them the next day. Although it felt I was supporting them, my insights were not their insights and therefore would rarely stick. In my effort to be a great coach, I had lost touch with the first rule of coaching: the client is infinitely resourceful. They will learn what they need to learn when they are ready to learn it. I cannot do the work for them.

Sleepless nights became a pattern and soon enough it started to impact my mood and concentration. At work I was barely able to meet the minimum job requirements and at home I was feeling disconnected with my young family. It was a very confusing time.

One client relationship in particular had gotten a hold of me. Not only did we share a deep connection, but she also worked for me. Coaching somebody under these circumstances is of course far from ideal. At first it was exciting to share in such a profound way but soon it became clear I was treading on dangerous waters. I was no longer in control of my rational self and my behavior became increasingly reckless. I didn’t realize at the time, but I was under a sort of spell and some very strange and scary things started to happen to me.

One incident still gives me the chills when I think back on it. It happened on my drive back from work. I remember having had an intense conversation with this friend / client / colleague. We had reached the stage where I could no longer be the person she had gotten to know over the past months. Our relationship had transcended time and space. We knew each other’s deepest thoughts, fears and aspirations. At this stage I was completely unprotected. All energies - good or bad ones - had unlimited access. I had lost touch with my boundaries and as a result with my sense of self.

So that evening on my drive back from work, all of a sudden, out of thin air, a car appeared in my lane driving at high speed directly towards me. In that instant I was looking death in the eyes. In that same instant, I was overcome with another force that took control of my body and miraculously helped me veer off into the other lane to avoid the imminent head on collision. All of this happened in a fraction of a second and when I looked in the rear-view mirror, I saw nothing. The black speeding car had vanished back into thin air. The only remaining proof that something had happened was the pounding of my heart.

That incident was my wake-up call. It was the gift I needed to see how far I had drifted from my own being. It was a slap in the face that brought me back to my senses. The spell I was under was losing its grip. However, this was only a part of the awakening process.

A few months later I was diagnosed with cancer. After the initial scare it didn’t take long to start connecting the dots. The pain and shame of living this double life had accumulated to such an extent that now it was manifesting as a cancer. I knew that the medical procedure was only part of the healing process. The rest would have to happen at an energetic level.

The next few months felt like another layer of coming out. First it was my newfound passion for coaching and now I had to stand in my truth about this disease. What’s interesting is that the source of the cancer was so clear to me that I never felt like a victim. Instead I quickly accepted that it was a natural physical reaction to the turbulent nature of my energetic state over the previous months. This was not a random assault on my health, and I was not an innocent bystander. Although unintentionally, I had created the conditions for this to happen.

Instead of beating myself up for it, I was able to channel this awareness into the healing process. With some people I could share all the parts of the unfolding story and with others I would simply talk about the disease as a teacher, bearing some valuable lessons at this stage of my life. Being able to speak so freely, and positively, about my cancer was empowering me. It was also the key to breaking the spell and re-grounding the foundation of my life. Within a few months I was back on my feet with the profound realization that as a coach, and highly sensitive person, I would need to get better at maintaining healthy boundaries with my clients.

Having learnt this lesson the hard way was perhaps the only way for me to avoid these kinds of messy coach/client relationships from repeating themselves in the future. For this I am grateful to all the people who walked this path with me. It has prepared me to commit even more fully to my purpose. The next step was now becoming clear.