The enemy within

Lately, I’ve been reading The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience.

It’s a great read, and it fell into my lap just as I agreed to lead a training on coaching skills for nonprofit managers. An example of perfect synchronicity.

As I go through each chapter, I distill the tips into my presentation.  The process has been relatively straightforward so far.

Until. Today, I came across Chapter 6, which focuses on engaging one’s audience using the classic hero-villain storyline.

I have to find a villain? I thought frantically. In coaching?

My mind went blank. Coaching is a practice of finding out what really motivates us, and applying it to proactively shape our ideal lives.  It’s about moving toward the light, not fighting the darkness.

Or is it?

Aha!  In moving toward the light, I realized, the enemy is the darkness.

According to Eckhart Tolle, whose bestseller A New Earth reached millions via live webcasts with Oprah, most people alive today are in a state of darkness, which he calls unconsciousness.

In this state of unconsciousness, we act instinctively, and oftentimes from a place of fear.

In coaching, the client works to uncover her motivations.  These motivations, camouflaged but readily identifiable, can be divided into two categories.

We either act from the fear motivator, a place of pain avoidance, or from the passion motivator – a place of conscious alignment with our highest values and goals.

Through coaching, an individual sorts out the fear motivators from the passion motivators, gains clarity on the passion motivators, and shapes his life from a place of conscious choice.

As you may imagine, the results are quite extraordinary.

Becoming conscious is a process that each of us can begin today, whether we work with a coach or not.

Moments of heightened emotion draw our attention to triggers  – triggers of fears and passions.  By sorting out the two, and choosing to align our lives with our passions, we can conquer the enemy within.

So go forth and conquer.  And, as a great hero once said, may the Schwartz be with you.