Live It to Give It.
Coach, heal thyself.
The five most powerful words I learned in the Martha Beck Wayfinders Coaching Program?
Live It to Give It.
Such a simple thought: make sure you’re embodying the personal growth qualities you’re helping clients attain — not just learning and parroting them.
When this concept was taught, I had an impatient “yeah, yeah” assumptiveness about my ability to embody it. Of course I’m modeling brave living: I mean look at me reinventing my whole life post-COVID, post-divorce, post-3% Conference, post-empty nest.
Boy was I wrong.
Every single week something happens in my personal life — usually something I realize I’m sucking at lately — that smacks me awake. You can spin it aspirationally as my “growth edge” but it’s usually more my “avoidance edge.”
Why am I putting off writing that email?
Could I have been kinder in that exchange?
How come that movie scene made me cry in shameful recognition?
And I realize I’m NOT living it. And definitely shouldn’t be giving it. Which actually inspires me to do the hard thing. Because I want to be the best person and the best coach I can be.
Here’s where you come in.
You are likely not a coach. But Live It to Give It absolutely belongs in your fortune cookie, too.
You see, the first time I was aware of this concept was long before I became a coach. After years of watching my sons compete in soccer, baseball, basketball, football and golf, I took up competitive tennis in my forties.
My childhood sport was gymnastics where I’d competed but never faced a true competitor (no one ever tries to push you off the balance beam). And the opponent piece was a bigger hurdle for me than any of the tennis strokes or strategies. Just facing off with someone else, knowing only one of us would win. It petrified me. My boys were amazing coaches to ME during my first few USTA matches. Because they’d lived it, they could give it.
We are never done facing ourselves in this life. New circumstances, relationships and world realities are the wild cards that force us to keep looking inward. And when it’s hard to access your own bravery? Just think about the important people in your life who are hoping you’ll live it so that, when they’re lost, you can give it.
Until next time, remember that creativity knows no bounds.