Supercoach - Michael Neill [66]
During the course of his research, he visited a prison in Somers, Connecticut, and spent time with a group of murderers, rapists, and other violent offenders who had been working with a man named Dr. Nick Groth for over a year. To Bill’s surprise, rather than blaming what they’d done on their often horrific upbringings filled with abuse, violence, and criminal neglect, all of these men took full responsibility for their lives.
Toward the end of their time together, one man who had committed three rape/murders and held no possibility of parole took Bill aside and expressed his heartfelt compassion and sorrow for what had happened to Joy.
In that moment, Bill realized that if he was capable of murder and a murderer was capable of that degree of compassion, the capacity for all things must live inside all of us. As he wrote in the course manual for “What One Person Can Do”:
What I learned in this unusual laboratory is that it is possible, given two critical factors, for even the most violent people to develop meaningful, productive, contributory lives, even within the confines of a maximum security prison. The fact that this is so speaks volumes in terms of what we can do. . . .
The critical factor . . . was getting these individuals to know that they were loved (i.e. cared about, valued) and that they were able to make choices. . . . If it is possible in this environment, with these men, it is possible at every moment in every environment with anyone.
In private conversation, Bill has told me on numerous occasions that in nearly every instance he has seen where people have turned their lives around, there has been the presence of at least one individual who loved (cared for, valued) them unconditionally and believed in them and in their capacity to choose—to make different choices and fundamentally change the direction, quality, and character of their lives.
At first, I felt that Bill’s work was very important but not terribly relevant to my own life. After all, nothing that horrific has ever happened to me or the people I care about most. But I soon came to realize that the same critical factors were present anytime I overcame a crisis in my own life.
“I Believe in You”
Choose a person in your life whom you deeply love and would love to see tap into the power within them.
The next time you spend time with them, decide to be with them as they are, without trying to change, fix, or help them in any way. Know in your heart that no matter what is going on, they have the ability at any moment to spread their wings and go from falling to flying.
My parents believed in my mental strength and capacity at a time when I was so messed up that I thought they were the ones who were nuts for believing in me. Charley Helfert and Dale Moffitt, professors at Southern Methodist University, believed in me enough to not only bring me into their professional-actor training program but to refuse to let me be pushed out even when some of their perhaps more “sensible” colleagues were lobbying for my expulsion. Their belief in me forced me to question my own sense of worthlessness. If they thought there was something inside me worth spending time on and salvaging, maybe there really was. In short, they believed in me long enough and consistently enough for me to begin to search inside myself for the strength they seemed to see so effortlessly inside me.
And since I’ve found that strength and begun to use it to create my own wonderful life, I’ve felt equally committed to believing in others—to making the choice to treat the people I come into contact with as though they too have the power within them to choose and to change. And because the world is what I think it is, they miraculously and consistently prove me right—again and again and again.
The Tenth Secret
I was teaching a seminar several years back when a woman stood up, dripping with disgust, and pointed an accusatory finger at me.