A few days ago a friend asked me about my journey into Coaching. What better way than to blog about it?

To ensure I can write this in one sitting I need to pick a point in time when I recognized the signs. So lets go with August 1986 as a starting point and work from there.

I got my A-level results and had aced them (5 A’s and an S-1). I found something I was damn good at up to age 18; science and maths. I leaned in hard. I had found my social scene to be too small and my social skills to be a bit limited. So I broke that part of my life open through another route; music. I started a band in my 6th form with a couple of friends as we learned to make less noise and more harmony together. Albeit edgy, electric and heavily distorted harmony.

We also left a legacy; we were the first band in the school. I was pleased to learn a few years later there were 3 on the go. We started something. Fuck it – own it – I started something.

So I had my ticket beyond high school into the next step of my path with my results. What to do with them? Where to go? I already had in my head I wanted to see how far the academic route would go, which meant a PhD at some point. But which way?

I had encountered computers at age 13 and had got hooked; selling my first game bought me my first electric guitar – a lovely sunburst Les-Paul copy that I rewired, changed the pick-ups in and played until my fingers were really sore… For some dumb reason I sold it in 1990 – trading in for another guitar which had a neck problem. I digress…

So I knew I was interested in computers. I was interested in Electronics. I found a program at York University in the UK; 4 years straight through to a Masters, sponsored by British Telecom. I applied. I went for interview in downtown Birmingham with the corporate dudes with the say-so on the sponsorship purse strings. Subject to my A-level results I was in. After sitting my exams in June there was nothing to do except work my part-time job at a supermarket, save up for leaving home, go do late teenage things and get the band out gigging. Note – at this point in time I had not learned to sing. We were post-punk enough to just get away with it…

In August I went to a British Telecom training school for a few days to meet the rest of my cohort and get some indoctrination an introduction to BT before the start of my degree program. Finding my way with a bunch of really smart people. Being engineering; two women and twenty men. Mental note – problem number one with Engineering as a career choice. I kinda knew this already… The other thing I started to learn. Despite my choices; these were not truly my people. The balance of the sexes was symptom. An important one.

When I arrived at the University of York in September of 1986 my circle expanded massively. Mindblowingly so. Painfully. I had had an issue with migraine in my late teens. The first week I had a hard time with a series of intense migraine attacks which meant I missed a lot of first week activities. I was – mostly – ready for when my courses began. And then – the social scene.

Spending upwards of 50hrs per week, sometimes more, with my cohort was plenty. I did not want to socialize with them too. And so following the threads of music I ended up in a scratch-band for a Ceilidh and met a trombone player (Hi Kath – how are you doing?) and Andy (who I had a really hard time understanding. Knew I liked him – it took a while before my brummy ear and his south-shields accent started jiving). From there – folk clubs. Also amateur operatics (Gilbert and Sullivan) where I *finally* learned to sing (second bass to first tenor in 3 years). Meanwhile busy with a f***** intense degree program. Working hard and working out the right people to party hard with. My people.

Who were my people? Well, I recognized a few characteristics. They were smart. Goes without saying. They were willing to stretch, look at who they were and take some risks. They embraced life. They were not on a linear journey from A to B. They were on a journey bigger than they knew themselves to be and it only kept getting bigger as they went. They were willing to get scared. Odd ones out, from the front…

And did I mention they were funny as hell and an absolute blast to be around? Another Andy and the Surrealist Olympics conversation will keep me amused for the rest of my life.

Now the group I went through my degree with definitely had their eccentricities. Pete (surname deleted to avoid potential defamation) was *definitely* out there. And a friggin genius. I worked hard for my 1st at the end of four years intensity. He apparently walked his; not without a lot of stress – but nothing like the discipline and structure I had created for myself. I learned a lot with these people. And many of them have gone on to do amazing things outside of engineering. You know who you are 🙂

So getting back to how I got to Coaching. I have always been interested in what makes people come alive. The people I admire; what makes them able to put themselves and their fears on one side and go do awesome things. What creates meaning and joy in their lives. I wanted more of that for me.

Time to open the Kimono.

Despite all of this ‘success’, I have lived much of my life against the pervasive backdrop of feeling I was ‘not enough’, ‘inadequate’, ‘unworthy’. Sometimes it looked like that ‘I had not suffered enough to earn this’. This bizarre fuck-up mindset has been a dominant factor in my life. Keeping me blind to choices that in retrospect I can see clearly. It has not always been in the front; but it has haunted me. When I have taken big steps in my life ‘not enough’, ‘no-one cares’, ‘you have not got it’ has been waiting in the wings to give me a blow upside the head. Sometimes overtly. Sometimes subtly. Almost as if a force that has held me back from fully being in the joy of my life. At my worst moments; it has been a deep black despair. At times it has just shut my mouth for me for fear of somehow fucking up and making things ‘worse’, whatever the hell that meant.

Realizing that this was there – I have been looking for a way out. A way to ‘fix’ this part of myself. Or perhaps amputate it. Looking for something bigger than this limited, limiting sense of myself. This seeking led me to out of the limited spirituality of my youth into meditation in my early 20s. I encountered first of all Vipassana meditation and thence Buddhism through the works of Steven Levine and then through some flirtation with Zen before finding a deeper resonance with Dzogchen. I did Yoga. Meanwhile I read all the philosophy I could get my hands on and get something from – because that must have an answer, right? Isn’t that the whole point? And I deep-dived into the more popular psychology. Jung.

And on the way I discovered Sex, Alcohol, Drugs. And a lot more music. All the usual pathways that are intended to lead to pleasure and thence the good life. I discovered Love too and the power it had to change me. I also discovered how I could grasp on to things that I thought would make the pleasant changes permanent. I was looking for a me that felt elusive.

I was looking for tools.

I was trying to fix me.

I kept going. I got my PhD and did a my first post-doc Research Assistant. Concurrently I got married to an amazing woman who had left Germany to follow her dream of making a life in the UK. And of having a dog (a long and beautiful story for another time). After a couple of years together and having a lot of fun and some intense and challenging experiences, getting married – in my mind – killed the relationship. Speaking for myself – it exposed some deep mental shit that I had not dealt with. Up until this point I had not even seen. It threw me. I went to work more on myself and went into therapy for the first time to get some understanding of what the !*&&@*&!!!! was going on. As I discovered more, the marriage got messy and ended when I decided I had had enough and left.

Meanwhile I got tenure; as far as I could go in Academia – or at least to the first major rung in what would be a 20-30 year long ladder. It took me a year and some illuminating conversations to realize it was not for me. Not my dream. I was rapidly running out of heroes.

One of my Profs had a prescient conversation with me before I set off on my PhD. He suggested I look around and see how many people I could see that had sacrificed their lives, their relationships, their larger dreams for Academia. I noticed. True heroes were in limited supply it seemed.

By the time I started my post-doc I had a few left; my people. A renegade prof from Leeds who was returning from Calgary, a genius friend with a Royal Institution fellowship who was using some beautiful maths to describe computers, electronics and ecological systems at the same time. There were a few more older generation guys (yes, I still noticed the bias) getting ready to retire after careers where they re-invented themselves multiple times and had done some ground-breaking and, in many cases, work of unrecognized brilliance.

When I followed my passion in my research – I loved what I was doing. I leaned in hard. The problem was that my passion was unfashionable and did not get papers published. I got impatient reading the same paper again and again by variations on the order of authors. I got impatient with recycled old ideas. By the time I had got tenure I was in serious trouble. My heroes had seemingly retreated, retired or left academia. I had to re-invent or I was done.

My re-invention suprised the hell out of me, involved both Love and great Sex. It involved my meeting an extremely cute, sharp, strong Dutch woman who was focused on coming to Canada to follow her path. I had already thought about Canada during my PhD. Enter this passionate, crazy-smart, sexy-as-hell woman who was both into me and had a path. It aligned with what I could see of mine.

Solution? As it played out; quit academia. Marry. A months salary in hand, land in Victoria, BC, Canada and see what we could make happen.

We made it happen.

I stopped writing about engineering and started doing it full time for more money than I had ever got before. Building some beautiful things, learning at the hard-edge, playing with teams. Creating great relationships. Starting a family. Getting involved in many pathways with many people. Setting out as a Consultant. Learning how to build my value with other people and companies near and far. Making some really dumb mistakes, often involving being flattered into taking on something that was not in my best interests. Blindsided. Sometimes sailing my family really close to the wind financially. Somehow squeaking through.

My old nemeses ‘not good enough’ and ‘unworthy’ kept hitting me upside the head around big changes I was looking to make. They made their appearance and ate into the depth of connection in my marriage with all the busyness and intensity of raising two high-energy kids. Meanwhile keeping me pointed in perhaps too many directions to be healthy. ‘Not enough’ can do that to you…

Twelve years after landing in Victoria, there were many things I knew I wanted to change. Somehow I had lost the deep, intimate connection that I had once with my wife and really wanted back. I knew it was going to take something new. I did not know what that was. My version of ‘not enough’ had me spending a lot of time focusing inside myself for the answers. I was trying really hard to find them. Perhaps too hard.

At the end of 2011 my wife (now my ex-wife) had discovered coaching and committed to go through a year-long intensive training program. This was something new, and exciting. A change. Perhaps exactly what I had been looking for? Although I did not know what it was. Some other version of ‘fix’ probably. A good one. As she started her program, I took on a coach who had gone through the same program, so I could work on myself and ‘keep up’ with where my wife was going.

It did not work out as I had intended.

I only wanted to change some things.

This changed everything. But change is like that. It does not come in nice small chunks; well tailored to ‘tweak’ your life. It is not tame. It is a fucking wild animal.

By half way through 2012 I decided that I wanted to to this Coaching program too. There was something big here for me. At the same time my marriage had become incredibly uncomfortable as those changes I talked about began to impact everything. I went into my program in 2013 and by May I was separated. I went through my program in the breakdown of my (at that time) almost 15 year marriage.

In the depths of all of this I discovered what I had been missing all along. Something that integrated all the disparate threads. That pulled the best from philosophy and psychology. That at times looked more like poetry and music than ‘productive’ effort. That used my finely trained analytical mind to its fullest and stretched me beyond what I could deduce into where intuition was my only guide. That had me dancing in the moment in a way that challenged everything that I had. That made me profoundly uncomfortable, and got me being okay with that whilst tears streamed down my face. That resonated with meditation and mindfulness. And – ultimately – that was an end to a life based around trying to fix something that was never broken. That questioned everything I had built my understanding of life around and held me whilst I came up with a new way to be, a new place. Incidentally; it keeps doing it.

I have now been Coaching professionally for four years. The learning and practice is constant. I have taken my work on myself deeper and further than I ever thought possible and have broken through mental traps that I have been swirling in for ever. I keep learning more. Joy and Play are now a consistent part of my life. And feeling deeply, dangerously and with courage beyond what I ever thought I had.

I still keep breaking shit. I screw up. Sometimes people get hurt. I keep going.

I earn good money too as an Engineer; a career that, in time and perhaps sooner rather than later I will gracefully move on from so I can bring all of myself into bringing others out of wandering in the darkness of trying to fix their lives and into being their fully authentic greatest selves. And writing.

And my people? Oh yes. These are my people. Women and Men. I am a leader amongst these people. The coolness of the community I get to spend my life and time with is breathtaking. I keep meeting more of them.

I cannot think of any way to bring my fierce and fearless Love into action more powerfully. It is what I am here for.

Except, perhaps. Hmmm… There are more ways to manifest that. One significant way I can think of. There is some serious adventure to be had from here. I dare to Love deeper than I ever have before.

Scary stuff.

I wonder who you are.