“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” — Pema Chödrön
First off, I want to address the elephant in the room. I haven’t written anything publicly since February.
I’ll get into the full story soon, but for now let’s just say I’ve been heads down figuring out how to use AI in my business and life.
It’s been equally overwhelming and inspiring to wrestle with a technology that has the potential to transform how we live and work in so many ways, and so quickly.
I’ve personally experienced a 2X to 3X gain in my ability to work more effectively. Tasks that used to eat hours now take minutes. Last week alone I handed off a multi-step series of jobs that would have cost me 10 to 12 hours, and they came back nearly perfect in a fraction of the time.
I have a lot more to say about all of it, and I will.
But here’s the part that matters for today.
The upshot of all this newfound efficiency? I have more time and energy to do the work I love and go deeper with the people I serve.
For example, last week I was coaching someone who acknowledged she had been using the ambition around her role at work to avoid the pain, shame, and grief she’d been stuffing down for way too long.
She had been running at such a fierce pace that it became easy for her to justify it while conveniently ignoring other important parts of her life.
And I find this is quite common among leaders and high performers. In fact, when we dig deep enough, they almost all describe it the exact same way:
“It’s like there’s this container. I know it’s there. And I just keep putting more in and setting it aside.”
The container holds everything they haven’t processed. The disappointments, the rage, the grief, the stuff they can’t afford to feel while they’re running at full speed.
They’re fully conscious of it. They’re just terrified to look at it.
All or Nothing Thinking
The problem, I find, for most people in this state is that their minds are thinking in terms of all or nothing.
Scared that if they turn to face the issues they’ve been hiding from, they’ll torch their lives. Blow up their relationship, piss off their board, burn bridges so badly they’ll never be able to have credibility again.
And so the container stays tightly closed.
All or nothing thinking happens when we’re dissociated from ourselves, often from traumatic experiences, and we can no longer see a middle path.
They don’t actually know the fullness of their feelings, or their options, and so they tell themselves, “I can either keep managing this pain, or I can light a match and burn it all down.”
But Here’s The Truth
Sometimes opening the container slowly does change your life.
When you allow yourself to go there, it’s scary as fuck, because usually you have to untangle a lot of things that no longer align. Relationships, locations, commitments.
Nothing’s safe.
Then, when you no longer have the chatter of uncertainty, and you know for sure what needs to change, you’re left with a much harder question to answer: Can I actually do this to the people I love?
I once had a private coaching client who went through this. She opened the container, and what came out first was something she’d known for years but had never said out loud: she despised her business partner.
While she was certain of that, she wasn’t certain she could take the next step. She was a single mother of three and was heavily reliant on her business partner for the day-to-day success of the business.
Rather than let all or nothing thinking rule her life, she started small.
She told one trusted friend, then she sat with that for a while. Then her trusted inner circle. Then her family. Then her attorney. It took time. It was hard. And yes, it was terrifying to untangle that toxic relationship.
But her life now? Stunning.
She has a thriving business, an aligned team calibrated around the needs of the business, and peace of mind that she hadn’t felt in years. She didn’t blow it all up. She rebuilt her world one small step at a time, on something real. Her truth.
The Heart of the Matter
The reason people look around their lives and feel like, “this is a hot mess,” is because they have no idea what they think or value or feel.
The expectations and responsibilities have trained you to suspend your soul in favor of everyone else’s needs.
This is why I encourage clients to write statements that start with the words, “I feel.”
My desire as a coach is to bring you back in touch with what you feel (and desire) for your one precious life.
I encourage you to trust that your big feelings and strong intuition are a trusted guide on your journey.
Here’s what I know for sure. If you don’t allow your body and spirit to heal what it’s been trying to for a very long time, you’ll wake up in 10 years and be doing the exact same shit.
Nothing changes if you’re comfortable, I can promise you that.
I can also promise you that opening the container you’ve been avoiding will not destroy you.
Leaving it closed has been doing that all along.
Live bravely,
Michael
P.S. What have you put in your container that you keep ignoring? You don’t have to open it all at once. You just have to stop pretending it isn’t there.
