Can You Take Coaching from a Rubbish Bin?

When I was in “facilitator school” I remember the leader suggested that we should all be open to receiving coaching from anybody, anywhere, in any situation going so far as to say “you should be willing to get coaching from a garbage can” - while I got the theory that was the end of it. I have observed in myself and others, particularly those in the management consulting, training and coaching industry is an ever diminishing list of people & philosophies that we are open to listening to & learning from.

The last 18 months of my life has been a complete hell.  Other than very serious health issues or the loss of someone special I can’t think of anything being harder.   Words cannot describe the inner and outer turmoil I have experienced since mid 2009 until around October.  A complete loss of confidence, complete loss of passion, huge mounting debt, and creditors continually on my tail with no means to appease them, depression, sadness, anger, eating terribly, gained a huge much weight, no clarity and an unbearable amount of stress over a prolonged period of time which resulted in significant sleep problems.  I was lost, disconnected and profoundly lonely (professionally).  At my wits end, one day for no particular reason I asked out loud ‘what am I going to do”?  The answer that came to me might have been from within me but I am not sure to be honest but it came in the form of a question…”who is the last person on earth you would take advice from”?

The answer was clear to me.  We all have people in our lives that we rarely listen to; some of them we have completely written off, particularly when it comes to listening to their advice.  I saw this person’s face and I immediately remembered the last time they had offered advice / direction – it was in the form of an email.  So I immediately went to my deleted files in Outlook and found the message.  Without even a second of hesitation I acted on the advice. To make a long story short that one action was life changing.  It led to a series of fortunate events and connections that have completely transformed my life.  A few days later I asked another similar question “Who else’s advice have I dissed”?  Again I immediately recalled another email that I binned without replying, found it and acted on it resulting in another series of small miracles.  There is so much more to say about what I have been through (to help others) and where I am now going but I will leave that for another time (first two blogs we're way too long).

No matter how enlightened one may think they are – we are all operating in a finite and fixed cultural meme, way of thinking, belief system, view of the world and if things are really crap for a prolonged period of time there is no way out other than complete collapse of the structures we currently operate in. More often than not the impetus for the hard but needed collapse of the old to allow for the new is going to come from outside your current thinking.

So if you are going through a life change, resisting or need one - you might ask a rubbish bin “where to from here”?

Love Joe