About 10 days ago I received a call from a long time friend and mentor. He had a couple of guys in-tow on the phone with him, and asked me some very specific questions about my life over the past 3 years. He wanted me to share with them some habits and strategies that led to some recent successes in my life and work. I had a few minutes to spare, so I gladly stayed on the phone with them for about ten minutes. Eleven to be exact.
Although Phil has never been my official coach, he has coached me…and I have given him money. So in a loosely defined way, he has coached me professionally. He has tackled some very difficult subjects. He was tackling some difficult subjects with the guys he had on the phone that afternoon.
They wanted to learn how to accomplish a lot in a little time. They wanted results that they were not getting. It was an honor that they came to me for advice. Phil knew that I was a good story for him after taking his advice about three years prior. These guys needed a good story. I actually knew one of them. I had not talked to him in a long time, but remembered him quite well from years before. A quick virtual search after the call let me know that he had been divorced and remarried. The fact that he was on the call let me know he was in some sort of pinch professionally.
So if I read between the lines…Work not going well, wife not happy, marriage ended, new marriage, work still not going well, trying to change. None of this was communicated to me. But if we are getting real, this is the truth of the matter. And I know it all too well. Except for the divorce, and that only because when it would have been attractive, I could not afford it.
Phil reached out to me because three years before he was the one that hit me in the face with why I am not successful. He was the first person that ever looked under the hood of my wreck of a life and told me what the problem was. In short, I did not do enough success-spawning activities in order to be successful. This may sound obvious to most, and it is. And with any problem, the solution is not in the diagnosis-identification. It is in the actions taken after the diagnosis.
I could take almost any homeless person off of the street and get them headed down the path of not being homeless. There are numerous entry level jobs that will get someone a roof over their head in less than a month. The problem is not ignorance, it is unwillingness.
Just this past weekend my wife an I were on a date in the Deep Ellum area of Dallas. It was not long before a homeless man sat with us and let us know what led to him being there. His daughter had died four years before. He has yet to recover. He knows exactly why he is homeless. He has quit doing things that keep him from being homeless. He used to do them. He worked and had a wife and paid his bills. Now he drinks a lot and does little productive more than to cover his basic needs…which is little more than beer. Telling him what to do is not nearly as important to finding the motivation to do it.
If you are not getting paid, then you are afraid. I had to wrestle with this for YEARS. I denied it…argued against it…built great stories to disguise it…etc. but at the end of the day FEAR was gripping me at every turn and I would not confront it.
Years ago Phil helped me identify what needed to be done, but it took a few more weeks to dig deep and find the motivation to do it. So there I was 3+ years later talking to some guys about what to do, but did not have the license to dig deep as to why they are not already doing it.
All of has have some inherent skills and abilities to create success. If you are not currently doing it, there is a reason for it and I would bet money that Fear is the culprit. When you can identify this fear and Jump Afraid, success is simply around the corner. For strategies on this look for the forthcoming book JumpAfraid, by Tim Nichols.