I borrowed the money to hire my first coach.
(I am not recommending this, by the way; I don’t want my clients to feel over-extended.)
I had a vision of exactly what I expected to gain from this coaching experience, and I figured that if I created a financial incentive that was slightly stressful, I would be forced to hold up my end, and thus get the particular result I desired (which, in that case, was to have that program move my business forward by, at a minimum, the amount that I had borrowed).
When that didn’t happen, my initial response was to treat the whole thing as a failure.
Until, a year later, I realized why she had been exactly the right coach for me, precisely because she was the wrong coach for me. The lessons I took from that enabled me to see my life, and my work, with greater clarity, and thus to do both better.
When I figured that out, I made the money back in spades.
But this is not a story about money.
It’s a story about vegans.
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Deep in cancer-land, I discovered that primal eating made me feel the best and heal the fastest. Over time, my intake of all carbohydrates, even vegetables, has dropped to less than 20% of my diet, as I have experimented with what generates the greatest health, sleep, digestion, energy, athletic performance, and physiology, for me.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s what I need to eat, and what I don’t (which doesn’t mean I didn’t just eat half a chocolate bar on the way back from the gym today, because I did, and the fact that I am feeling it causes me very little remorse).
That said, I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all diets or protocol solutions, and I have loved and lived with many vegans and vegetarians over the years. The man I love was one for the first 15 years of our (currently) 24 together.
As long as no one is telling me what to eat, and I’m not casting unsolicited shade on anyone else’s food choices, we can all get along. (Note – I do talk about diet in my work, where appropriate, but only when it is relevant to the health issues we’re working on.)
Back to my militant vegan coach.
Now, I knew, and perhaps should have dug more deeply into, this person’s social media profile of intense progressive politics and vegan activism. But I’ve spent so much of my life writing the Minority Report that I just assumed: a) I was stuck with some version of that ideology in a guide (given the ubiquity of such biases in the alternative healing world), and, b) that it wouldn’t be an issue, and would just force me to rise above my reactions.
However, one of the very first meditations she offered me was a Buddhist reflection on the “problem” of eating animals.
I eat animals. I understand why some people don’t and I’m good with that; it would be a boring and soulless world if everyone did the same things.
But I felt manipulated and a little betrayed. This process was supposed to be about my growth, and instead she assigned me a foray into her ideology, one that had no relevance to the issues I was exploring.
Several times in our work together, she directed me to resources that promoted her worldview, either overtly or subtly. She may not even have been aware that she was doing it.
She is a lovely woman. She saw my talent and offered me deep and beautiful healing. She elucidated, both through her strengths and weaknesses, avenues for me to explore and incorporate in my own work, which give me a unique approach to coaching that distinguishes my services.
But I didn’t feel safe with her. I couldn’t show her the deepest parts of myself, because I knew that she would see them as pathological, misguided, or wrong. If I were to reveal my values and fears to her, she would immediately put me in the “them” bucket.
Compassionately, and patronizingly, I’m sure, but, nonetheless, across a great divide of unenlightened thinking.
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I have no way of knowing that’s true. In fact, the better reality would have been to assume that it wasn’t. But it was a story I created, and once I had written it, I placed parts of myself “off-limits” and thus, I was never going to be able to go to most difficult depths with her.
And so, in my own practice, I have a commitment to recognize any moment in which my stuff is getting hit. I won’t think you are crazy, or broken, or pathological.
You can trust me.
The resources and tools I share are based on what you need, not what I want.
I won’t wave away your fears.
I won’t judge you for the things you love.
Unless it’s tofu. I have been known to judge tofu.
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