Effortlessly difficult: a story in five parts
I love stories.
In times of pain, grief, or even celebration - the stories of others have shown me the lessons I have not yet learned. They help me to contextualize my picture within the collage of the human experience. They help me to feel less alone.
When I listen to a story, I tend not to care so much about the what. (e.g. What school did they go to? What type of company did they build? What did they do, step by step, to amass their fortune?) To me, the what is often of little consequence and not where the true lessons are.
When I listen to a story, I want to know the how and why. I want to know how it felt at every step of the journey and why they chose path A over path B. I want to know how they found it in themselves to take the risks they took and why they kept going even when it seemed impossible.
The how and the why are transferable. They are translatable to all of our lives.
A story of my own
In the coming week(s), I’m going to share a large part of my story. Specifically, the story of how I became a coach.
A warning that this is a story about four very clumsy, messy, and often painful years. So, if you’re looking for a story filled with magical epiphanies and aspirational effortlessness - this may not be the story for you.
And while it’s a story about my journey in becoming a coach - it’s more about the lessons I learned along the way.
So, if you’re a coach, perhaps you will see a bit of yourself in my story.
And if you’re not, perhaps you will see a bit of yourself as well.
You let me know.
Anywhere but here
Part one of my story takes place in the fall of 2015. It was a miserable time in my career.
At that point in my life, I was an experienced achiever and planner who always had plans A through Z strategically stacked up. I believed that if I worked hard and stuck to my plan, I would be rewarded accordingly. This, I believed, would make me happy.
Then, a series of unfortunately timed events swiftly upended my belief system. Suddenly, I was working harder than I had ever worked, yet I was being rewarded less. I was very much not happy.
It was clear. There were only two options: stay in my current job or go anywhere else.
So I left. Or at least, I tried to. In October of 2015, I applied for over 70 jobs. I interviewed for 3 of them. I was offered none of them.
Right after a particularly crushing moment where I received news in early 2016 that my “perfect” job was in fact offered to someone else, I met Jennifer and Julia.
And perhaps, had I not been in such a bad place when I met them, I wouldn’t have told them so much about the state of limbo my career was in. And perhaps if I had not told them about my struggles, they would not have thought to tell me about their hiring struggles on the coaching/consulting side of their business.
And perhaps then, they would not have hired me.
Who knows?
I was at iCadenza for nearly 5 years, full of so many experiences and lessons, but those first months will always feel so special. Mostly because in many ways, we all had no idea what we were doing.
I will clarify - Julia and Jennifer very much knew what they were doing in terms of the work they were delivering to their clients. They had already been in business for over 5 years themselves.
However, they had never onboarded someone to “do what they did”. And I had certainly never done it.
So we just started. First, they tried to tell me as much as they could about what they did and how they did it. And then, they simply showed me.
“What they did” was technically career consulting for musicians. But really, a large portion of it was coaching - something I wouldn’t really realize or come to terms with for another year or so.
At the time, all I knew was what I was learning each day about these clients and about this business model. And I was happy!
In a time where work felt so heavy and so synonymous with feeling disappointed and stuck - my five iCadenza hours each week felt interesting. They felt exploratory and joyful and flexible. And so I stuck with them.
It would be another couple of years filled with lessons and a different full time job before I would make the leap towards a full-time role at iCadenza. It would take another 9 months after that leap before I would really consider myself a coach. And nearly a year after that before I would consider myself a professional coach. But that’s another story for another day.
Just one step
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve had a historically rough time with making large proclamations or declaring my goals in a big way. It’s like, I struggle to experience the excitement of them without feeling the extraordinary weight of them.
There is something delightfully dramatic and instantly satisfying about declaring who we are from this day forward. But, it’s my experience that the initial boost of inspiration quickly turns to overwhelm. After the excitement wears off, it’s easy to start to compare our current selves to our aspirational selves, and then feel exhausted by the road ahead.
Whenever I feel a sense of heaviness around what the future holds, I think about the first days of my coaching career. It started in such a small and silent way. There was no proclamation, no expectation, no strategy. Just a quest for a little more happiness in my career, and a step each day in that direction.
I’ll wrap it up with a metaphor, as I like to do. Here it is:
The fabric of our future is ultimately made up of the threads we carry with us every day. It’s just that simple.
So, if you are aware of thread you are carrying now that you don’t want in your future fabric, drop it.
If you want to weave a different fabric, but you don’t know what kind, start picking up a new type of thread each day. Carry it with you for a little bit. Be willing to drop it if it’s not what you thought it would be.
One thread, each day. Try it on. Keep it. Or don’t.
The only failure is not moving forward. The only failure is pretending to know about thread that you’ve never tried before. The only failure is mindlessly keeping thread around because you feel like you should.
The only failure is focusing on other people’s fabric instead of weaving your own.
If you feel stuck, or you want a change, just take a step. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be anything except for one step. See where it takes you.
You might be surprised.
Part 2 of my story will come someday at some time, and will be all about mistakes - like the blog version of those videos where a cat tries to jump on a christmas tree and face plants instead