Growth is sometimes painful and uneasy

Growth is sometimes painful and uneasy

It was a blue-blue sky morning. My heart was pumping like a fire engine. I was beyond the end of my physical resources after a very hard and intense physical workout with my trainer, when he looked meaningful and intensely at me and said: “This is where it really begins to matter. This is where you differentiate you from the real you.” With sweat dripping down out of every pore from my body and gasping for air like a fish out of water; his words hit something deep inside where it really mattered. He went on: “It is in these moments where you finally take the step to the next level, this is the door and your breathing and sweat is the key. Enter now, and enjoy it because you have earned it, and you deserve it! Well done!” I felt overwhelming emotions coming up from somewhere. “You see, he said:  “To really grow and get to the next level you have to leave the old comfort zone behind, the familiar and the known; and stretch far, and dig deep inside yourself  and find that inner strength which is the core you. This is a small step towards getting to know the real you…….”

Virginia Satir, the Grande Dame of family therapy and one of the people which was modelled by the founders of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, took the same approach. She would often go on for hours with a client without stop until she broke through and helped stretching and pushing the client into the often ‘painful’ and uncomfortable truth zone, where ‘what really mattered’ resides.

Byron Katie, another amazing therapist changing the lives of thousands of people presently; takes the same approach.  Applying a seemingly simple model she will not stop until she has helped the client to break through to the deeper insights, when tears begin to flow and greater truth surface.

Working with many clients over years I have found that just before the big breakthrough the resistance is usually at the strongest. Clients might get sleepy, start yawning, withdraw, and make every kind of excuse not to go ‘there’, to dig deep inside their psyche’s and go where it really matters.  This is where real therapists and coaches can show their deep inner strength and help a client to break through to the next level. Not by any form of emotional ‘abuse’ but rather with great respect and love as well as enough firmness; knowing that the door to the client’s inner transformation is only seconds away and stopping now might mean that the client may just grow another layer of resistance and perhaps never reach this point again.

In life it is so often in the deepest and darkest moments where the key to transformation is. In 2003 Aron Ralston had a moment of truth when he found himself facing the defining moment of his life.  He fell down a crevasse and his arm got pinned down under 800 pounds of falling rock. On the fifth day he resigned himself to the belief that he would die in the canyon.  He scratched his epitaph on the rock wall with a small knife and recorded his last will and testament on his camera. And then something happened which changed his life and destiny. In the middle of the night he had a dream which helped him seeing a form of future ‘truth’. He had a dream of a small boy look into his eyes and asking, “Daddy, can we play now?” Ralston realised that he had been given a glimpse of the future, his boy, and what was possible. What happened next has become the subject of books, television specials and the 2010 movie 127 Hours.

I think the only question is this:  When your dark and often very painful moments come, in whatever form, are you going to find the key in the ‘darkness’ and transcend? Or: take other options like blaming self, or others, criticising, getting angry, looking ‘out there’ for the reason for whatever is happening, instead of finding your key to change inside this moments of darkness. Asking questions like: “Why is this happening to me?” or “what have I done wrong to deserve this”, will often just lead you deeper into the darkness and sometimes over an abyss of emotional turmoil. In these times you might have to stretch yourself into uncomfortable and painful territory – (a good coach and therapist can help you go a long way) – go where you haven’t gone before and ask very truthful and often ‘exposing’ questions. Like my trainer said: “This is where is really begins to matter.” This is when you differentiate you from the real you and discovering strengths inside yourself you didn’t know was even there. This only happens in the ‘stretch zone’ of life. It is only then that you can begin to see the truth and start your own hero’s journey to freedom and inner transformation.

Another present day philosopher Andrew Weil is of opinion that all healing and also spontaneous healing may very well be the result of “flash of insight” or “seeing the truth”. In its essence all coaching techniques are exactly about this. Stripping away the non-essential and fog until the ‘often vulnerable’ moment of self truth emerges from the depths of the own psyche.

I borrow the following beautiful words by the poet Emily Dickinson:

“Opinion is a flitting thing
but, truth outlasts the sun,
if then, we cannot own them both,
Possess the oldest one.”