“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.” Mahatma Gandhi
One of the fascinating things I have learned in trying to start a personal development training and coaching business is how many such businesses exist, even in my out-of-the-way, not-quite-rural part of the world. I am somewhat under-whelmed in the levels of interest shown in my own services, but if the proliferation of such businesses is a reflection of a need for such help, it must in turn represent some kind of insidious internal disquiet in people about where they are now, compared to where they want to be. They are willing to pay stupid money to some companies (while resisting inexpensive little me) in order to find something they seem unable to discover for themselves.
On the other side of the scales, however, there are those who absolutely dismiss the potential benefits of training, whether it be for them or for the people they manage, work for, or even live with.
I read a great story that might illustrate what I see to be the benefit of self-leadership training. It concerns a middle aged man, shall we say in his early 50s, who was sat at his father’s bedside as the septuagenarian drew close to death. As the old man ebbed away, he managed to impart one more piece of wisdom to his son. He said, “Don’t do it like I did it, son. I was wrong. Live life better than I did.” Then he sighed, and left.
The son was bereft, partly because his father was gone but, as he disclosed to a confidante, also because he realised something else. To that confidante he said, “I am 55 years old, and my father says I’ve being doing it all wrong. I am half way, if not more through life. What the hell can I do with the knowledge that I’ve been doing it wrong?”
The confidante smiled wisely. He said, “How old is your son?”
“Twenty-five, why?”
“What your father learned by his seventies, you learned in your fifties, and you can teach your son in his twenties. In turn, he can teach his children from the day they are born. 70 years’ wisdom available to a child. That is what you can do.”
The purpose of coaching and training is to provide the student, Oh Padawan, with a short cut to the wisdom that they may find for themselves – but now. So they can use it, now. Not when it is too late.
A coach is not there to tell you what to do. S/he is there to help you discover where to look and to open your eyes to alternatives. The coach’s job is to assist you in your relentless search to be better than you already are. On your own terms and in your own circumstances.
Seek it and use it.
My rates are pretty good………………
