Rob,

The cookie cutter pieces are old and stale. I will be looking forward to coaches "real" personal trials and tribulations. Readers will benefit from learning how successful people faught to get there, good and bad.

Ditto, ditto, and DITTO.

Rob,

Thanks for saying this and putting it out there, I'm so glad you did. I totally agree with you. Some of the best healers, leaders, and teachers I know are wounded healers.

Once you've lived it yourself, and done the work, and maybe you are still working it, because I don't get that you are ever done, you are able to pull from that deep place and share what you know. It may or may not speak to someone else. But from my experince, I would not be able to be the coach and healer that I am without having walked through my own stuff.

Book knowledge has it's place, but is your heart truly present???

Thanks Rob. It will be great to see what comes from your challenge.

Sharing from our hearts, with the intent of impacting others, through sharing our personal stories, is what it's all about! I believe that true wisdom is gained from experience, and sharing this wisdom is what creates the greatest impact.

"It is courage the world needs, not infallibility...courage is always the surest wisdom." - Wilfred T. Grenfell

Rob, if you were sitting here in front of me I'd kiss ya! I've been in the coaching community for many years and if there is one thing that puts the crust on my Cornflakes it's the gushing optimism, please hold the humanness, posi-babble that goes on with us in this profession. We're humans for Pete's sake! We're messy! And for so much of my life I thought I had to cover up and hide that messiness. Life has a way of saying, "Go ahead and try, cuz I'll just keep beating you upside the head with the cosmic 2X4 until you get that your messiness is a HUGE part of your beauty. What are the movies and stories we all love? Ones that show us the messy (and soft) underbelly of the human condition. We love this stuff! We line up at the box offices for it. So why in the hell are we so afraid to show it to one another? I believe all human beings are looking for permission to be their whole self - the good, the bad and the messy! We get tired and eventually sick from covering this stuff up. Managing perceptions of others is tricky and tiring. So do yourself and the world a favor and cut it the hell out! Get messy! Get wild! Live like no one is watching! And THEN go coach some people! They won't be able to get enough of it because if YOU are being messy you give THEM permission to be messy and then we can all be freakin real and live happily ever after! (think you hit a nerve here Rob? Thanks!)

...is AMEN! Thank you for the charge and the reminder. Let the warts, zits, bumps, errr...whatever else, all hang out!

Amy,

Right on! I spent soooo much of my younger years trying to manage perceptions and keep my 'stuff' covered up with some kind of camouflage. Ha! Not fooling anyone and expending huge amounts of energy trying to hide. Like trying to close an over stuffed suitcase to come back from vacation. I sat on it and still stuff would not fit. And if I did get it closed, I would get to the airport and they would say, 'ma'am, your bag is overweight and you need to remove some things'

This literally happened to me and it was a huge, in my face metaphor for what was going on in my life at the time, and directly relates to the declutter work I am doing right now.

Years of my stuff placed in nooks and crannies, not to mention trying to manage other peoples stuff (read my families stuff).

Soft underbelly is a great description!

So I second your passion Amy! Live out loud and then go coach some people. People need to give themselves permission to make mistakes, to have excuses, to be human, to fall on their asses in a large pile of crap and then to be able to get back up again and move on. If they are so busy trying to cover up what happened, they will spend their lives in shame, closed to the world, to their families, closed in their hearts, and as you said Amy, the cosmic 2x4's will be there.

Rumi said, 'Wake up, don't go back to sleep'. Ditto!

Thanks again Rob!

Hey Rob, I just wanted to personally thank you again for the reminder to be vulnerable. I took that reminder with me into a coaching call today and shared a REALLY personal experience with a client. Wow, what a difference and it caused a huge shift! You know sometimes I think we get stuck in the rut of having to be seen as the professional with all the right questions and even all the right answers. In all honesty, all we need to do is just be who we are and not be afraid to show are our vulnerable, human side! It does make a difference!

Rob & Everyone else...couldn't agree more - when we let others behind the curtain to see our scrapes and bruises we all win! Great stuff!!

One thing that I've learned about professional coaches is that they respond well to direct feedback. I have unbounded respect for you. When we write on the Web, the tendency is to "front": we spend energy constructing an elaborate facade. this is common to everyone. Get over it as fast as you can because your readers can see right through it. Smash the glass. Talk about the stuff that you cannot in polite society because that's what people want to read. That's where the lessons are. What did you try? How did you fail? What did you learn? Check out Nathan Thompson's very candid recap of his real estate investment failure. No one who reads it will come away with a negative impression of Nathan. Rather, you get a deep sense of his humanity and the fragility of human endeavor. Ultimately, your heart is filled with compassion when you read about such struggles.

I commend you all on your efforts and encourage you to write from the heart about what you've learned the hard way. This is the stuff we crave. Go, write, tell all!

Hi Rob,
Yes I agree, I want the real stuff too. What is gong on in our lives and how are we handling it. Learning is a result of 'ready-fire-aim' and the more cycles we go throgh, the quicker the learning. The trick is to fail forward, not be sunk by it. Bravo for the call to be more courageous and vulnerable...and more powerful in the process.
xoxoxoxo,m