Supercoach - Michael Neill [5]
— attributed to Winston Churchill
This book is laid out in ten coaching sessions, each one built around a “secret” understanding about life. We could call these secrets “principles,” in the sense that they will reliably guide us through the uncharted territory of life; we could also call them “understandings,” in the sense that once we understand them, we’ll never relate to our problems, goals, or the people in our lives in the same way again.
Each session is designed to be a catalyst—something that will spark your own insights about your work, your finances, your relationships, and yourself. An insight is something that once seen (by looking within, hence “in-sight”) can never be unseen. That’s why there’s nothing here to master and no particular skills or techniques to learn.
This insight-based approach is another difference between Level I and II change, which often involves hard work and disciplined practice over time; and Level III transformation, which is seemingly effortless in its application yet profound in its effects.
What makes most change seem difficult is that we’re trying to do it from the outside in—that is, to change our external behavior without making any change in how we’re seeing the situation on the inside. Because there’s no internal basis for making the change, we need external motivation, reminders, and any other threats and bribes we can think of in order to get us to consistently behave in the ways that we or someone else has decided are good for us. But the moment we see things differently, either because we have more information or we’ve had some kind of insight, change is natural and inevitable.
Let’s imagine for a moment that you travel to work each weekday morning. And let’s pretend that it’s a fairly unpleasant commute—it takes upwards of an hour there and back, and there’s either a lot of traffic at that time of day or the subway is inevitably packed, or both. Now, let’s say I happen to know a shortcut you could take that would enable you to bend the laws of physics so you get to work and back in no more than five minutes. Better still, the journey would be pleasant, uncrowded, and rather beautiful. How many times would I have to show you the new route before you began taking it as a matter of course?
It wouldn’t matter if you’d been doing things in the old way for years, or if you had low self-esteem or a difficult childhood. The moment you saw that this new route was a genuinely better way to get where you wanted to go, you’d begin to take it. The entire experience would be effortless, because the external change (your new behavior) would be the natural fruit of the internal change—your new understanding of what was possible.
In a similar way, each session in this book will enable you to see a number of “shortcuts” to happiness, success, and well-being. And as your understanding of what’s possible grows, your life will begin to change for the better, all by itself.
How to Use This Book
“Don’t cut the person to fit the cloth.”
— Sufi saying
Perhaps the most effective way to use this book would be to read through it cover to cover, then go back and spend a week or so playing with the ideas in each session. But then again, perhaps not.
Each person is unique, and the value you’ll get from reading this book will be found more in the insights it provokes than the actual content or exercises. In other words, you may get everything you need in one reading, but if you find yourself wanting more, it’s designed to stand up to deeper inspection and introspection.
In these pages, I’ll be sharing a few strategies and techniques that my clients and I have found effective in creating more and more wonderful lives. But by and large I’ll be focusing on new perspectives—new ways of seeing that will lead to appreciating new possibilities and taking new actions in your life and the lives of the people you care about most.
At the beginning of each session, you’ll find a story. These are written for a different part of your mind and are there simply to be enjoyed. Don’t