Learning to be supported

• I hired a somatic energy coach last year during the trauma class who has been vital for me in letting go of these unhelpful beliefs, which had remained despite years of therapy. For me, the difference was that these childhood part beliefs were preverbal, embedded at a lower level of the brain that wasn't accessible by words, so addressing them required a nonverbal experiential approach. With my coach's help, I've been learning to process those preverbal patterns and blockages, allowing me to operate with more freedom in now seeking support.
• I started going to a local gym, Functional Lifestyles, even though I "knew" how to do all the exercises myself. But working with trainers twice a week who put me through full-body exercises has shown me which parts of my body were weak and underdeveloped (especially my core and mobility), and their feedback has improved my technique so that I work in alignment with my body rather than muscling around those weak areas. Plus, instead of dreading exercise and doing it because I "should" as an obligation, I enjoy my time at the gym with other people, and push myself harder than I would alone (check out this video of me swinging a 55kg (122lb) kettlebell).
• I've struggled with meditation for years, and I ended up avoiding it because my struggles to do it "right" made me feel bad about my competence as a coach. A couple months ago, I talked to Sasha Chapin, a dedicated meditator, who suggested Henry Shukman's book, Original Love, as a meditation guide. That reminded me that I'd heard Shukman on the Tim Ferriss show, and, as a promotion from that, had gotten 30 free days on Shukman's guided meditation app, The Way. So I opened it up. I used to hate guided meditations because I (by which I mean a childhood part) resented being told what to do because I (the childhood part) saw needing guidance from others as being weak ("I should do it myself without needing any help!"). But this time, Shukman's guidance on meditation has been a welcome support. I've appreciated his lessons teaching me techniques that help bring focus and clarity to meditation (and to address those struggles directly). I've now completed 50 sessions and am consistently sitting for 20 minutes each day, which hasn't happened in years. If that intrigues you, you can try Shukman's app for 30 free sessions with this link.
• I (again, a childhood part) have been reluctant to admit that my coaching business could be doing better. That childhood part wanted to project that I'm awesome and everything is going great. But in being more open to sharing that I want to be doing better, another coach shared her own feelings around "playing small", and how she had committed to playing bigger than felt comfortable. That resonated with me, so I've been exploring what it would mean to think much bigger about my business (e.g. setting "impossible" goals) and what support I would need to get there. This hasn't shifted yet, but I'm feeling a bit of forward momentum which I hadn't felt in a few years.

• I wrote a book review of The Science of Scaling, by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Blake Erickson. This book shares a simple but profound insight that if you set "reasonable" goals based on what you've already done, you will continue to get similar results. Instead, the authors recommend setting an "impossible" goal on an "unreasonable" timeline because that forces you to let go of what you're currently doing, and look for new possibilities that could create that "impossible" future. By raising the "floor" of what projects and customers you will take on (letting go of any that don't fit with your goal), it forces you to focus your attention on the limited pathways to achieve your scaling success. It got me thinking about how I would apply its recommendations to my coaching business.
  • How am I settling for incremental business growth today? To use the question from my book, how am I the problem?
  • What clients am I taking that aren't part of my long-term future?
  • If I set myself the goal of 10x'ing my business next year, what would I have to immediately do differently?

• What have you been avoiding? The Immunity to Change method posits that information is rarely the limiting factor preventing change; otherwise, we'd all eat healthier and exercise more and be in fantastic shape. There's some "brake pedal" in our head that is keeping us stuck, and we won't make progress until we ease up on that brake. By looking at the emotions that come up around the things we are avoiding, we can gain more insight about our "brake pedal" so we can work with it directly (much like me not asking for help as I described above).

• Becoming a magician where a blogger describes how meeting somebody who does work of incomprehensible quality opens you to new possibilities: "The way to extraordinary growth and changes often involves a fundamental ontological or ‘lens’ shift in how you see the world. Magicians are wearing not just better, but fundamentally differently shaped lenses to the rest of us. ... Meeting magicians is the first step to becoming one – when you are attempting to learn implicit knowledge that by definition you don’t understand, it is important to have a bunch of examples in front of you to feed your brain’s pattern-recognition systems. This will start to change your worldview without the controlling ‘you’ explicitly approving or denying every new belief or framework." Watching Thomas Hübl coach last year in the trauma class was a "meeting a magician" moment for me, where I saw a completely different depth and level of coaching that I didn't know was possible.
• The defense against slop and brainrot, by Paul Jun. While this is a screed against the overuse of AI, I like how Jun positions it as a choice: "That grinding, repetitive friction built something no language model can download into you: muscle memory for excellence. ... Every hard task you delegate is a rep you didn't do, a pattern your neurons didn't carve deeper." "The few who commit to this conditioning will find themselves uniquely equipped to navigate whatever comes next. Not because they avoided the future, but because they trained for it." He recommends writing, reading books, and physical training as the ways in which he is deslgning his life for that friction that leads to growth (which, admittedly, are three points of emphasis for me this year so there is likely confirmation bias).
• In a similar vein, Matthew Inman, who writes the Oatmeal comic and has created best-selling games like Exploding Kittens, shared his perspective on AI art. Art used to be "an expression of human being making human decisions". Art requires skill, it requires practice, but AI art enables anybody "to bypass that training and churn out really pretty Clipart" (generic average output). He doesn't dismiss AI entirely ("AI art can be useful [because] it enables artists to focus on the part that matters to them - the core of their composition") but aspirationally declares that "Your toil is what makes your art beautiful." Where will you put your effort?