I was speaking to a friend of mine last week and they happened to mention that the reason that they have done incredibly well in high performance coaching was because they had “done the work!“
So I asked them what they meant by having done the work. How they explained it shocked me.
Doing the work, for them, meant going through a journey of personal development and spiritual growth that had cleansed them of all their blind spots and all the other things that would stop them from being a high-performance human being. It also meant discovering their own potential and discovering their own passions and finding ways of connecting their highest values with their work. So far so good, I thought. But the next bit was the most important. They actually then immediately went on a journey of actively pursuing the life that they have discovered and they never went back to doing the things that they had done previously and if they found themselves thinking about the past or thinking in the same way that they used to think then they would draw upon these resources (from the work) to get them back on track.
What I love about this phrase though, is that it demonstrates that you cannot just go on a course and expect things to change. You have to do, as they said, THE WORK!
Now, whether I like it or not or whether it serves me fully, I am a pragmatist. And a practically minded person. So I have always looked upon courses as something which either solve a problem or lead you to where you want to go. And in thinking in this way you have to except that either (Or both maybe) you have problems, or you’re not getting what you currently want from your life but know what it is that you want.
But, we all have blind spots.
So in 2006 when I first attended Tolly Burkan’s fire walk instructor training programme, this course put me through so much of the work that I was fundamentally changed.
Having gone into that programme with a sensible respect for heights (semi-phobic), I returned home and immediately signed up as a retained firefighter here in the UK. This is a fully trained firefighter role but you are based only locally and called upon only when they need you to tackle fires and other emergencies like road traffic accidents. On day one of training I had to climb a four story building via a single ladder. I was able to do this with complete ease.
So my post today he is about doing the work. It’s no good just going on these courses. You have to put into practice what you learn on them and seek out the ones that call out your blind-spots. The ones that force you to connect with the things that you most need to do in order to get the life that you yearn. And even then what you must most understand, is that it’s your life. Your life. And the only way to get value out of your life and to get value out of the courses you attend is to do the work. It might be painful, embarrassing, tiring, frightening, exhausting, expensive or make you feel vulnerable but if you do the work you’re almost certainly guaranteed to get the results.
It’s my intention this year to do some different courses because in 2019 my own blind-spots appeared and so just like you, I need to do the work. Which I am.
But this is one reason why I simply had to bring the fire walk instructor training programme to the UK. Having done all the other high impact Guru lead personal development programs, I found this to be the most impactful one ever. I hope I get to meet you on one of ours, soon.