Positives from a Negative Experience

It has been a busy couple of weeks.  Many significant things have happened, some of which I want to share.

As you might expect, I have had both positive and negative moments.  I am focusing on celebrating the positive developments and considering carefully the “negative” ones, looking for the lesson in each disappointment or unwelcome situation.

My wife and I had lunch with a dear friend and her new gentleman friend recently.  We had not met the gentleman previously.  When I explained, or tried to, what it is that I am moving to in my life, to become an author, speaker, teacher and coach, the gentleman immediately began to ask me specific questions about how I would help or coach someone on getting a job.  At first, I thought he was asking for himself, but as the conversation went on, I finally realized that he was hypothesizing so that he could decide how good I was.  This was my second mistake, not listening clearly; the first was doing a poor job of explaining what I want to do.

Part of my problem stemmed from not wanting to be put on the spot with a stranger.  Especially when this person began grilling me, I became resentful.  I quickly realized that he had a particular view of the world, based on his success in a particular industry, and probably made it his mission to advise everyone on how to fix their life based on his model.  Unfortunately, I got off completely on the wrong foot with the entire meeting, and it took quite some time, and specific observations from my spouse, for me to sort out everything that happened.

So this was a very uncomfortable, even negative, episode.  On reflection, I realized that this person did me a huge favor.  I learned several very important things about myself and what I am engaged in becoming.

I do not have an effective “elevator speech.”  While I tend not to focus on standard sales and marketing techniques, and put more emphasis on being authentic in my relationships with others, it is important to be able to answer the question, “What do you do?” in a succinct and straightforward manner, and with confidence.  I have been able to do that previously because I was speaking to friends and acquaintances, a nurturing audience.  This was the first time I had to answer that question for someone whom I did not know, and whom I mistakenly viewed as a potentially hostile audience.

Even though I consider myself a good listener, I failed to be completely in the present for this situation.  I allowed another person to put me in a defensive state of mind, though that was not his intention.

As I thought further about the episode, I also realized that I had fallen into an old trap that is very much part of my personality – I was trying to do too many things with my new business, and some of them don’t really make sense to the casual outside observer, making for an uncomfortable experience when trying to explain them.  In particular, this helped crystallize my thinking on coaching services, in that although I believe strongly in my ability to be an effective life coach, I have no credibility at this moment, and really need to be emphasizing the efforts that can establish me as someone who can truly help others with life issues.  This episode also educated me clearly on the fact that many people, especially those who are traditional in their experience and their thinking, really do not have any concept of life coaching or life transformation.

The end result of this experience is that I have removed two sections of my web site, which also involved finally making a decision to drop something that was not really serving me, and refocused my time and energy on getting my Life Talks videos created, and getting my book finished and published.

Many of the best teachers and transformational leaders constantly remind us that, as humans, no matter how enlightened we may become, we always have personal challenges to overcome as we go about our lives and try to give our gift.  It is very important that we learn to view these challenges as something we can learn a great deal from, and act on whatever the lesson is.  I truly appreciate the lessons I found in this experience, just as much as all the positive and reinforcing things that occurred during this same time.