On the quiet pull of survival, and the people who help us wake up
The moment he entered the Zoom room I could tell something was different.We had been working together for a couple of months, and I had my doubts whether I could help him any further. A lifetime of therapy behind him. What was I thinking? People who have spent years in therapy can explain everything. They know their patterns by name. When I bring my own approach, they ask me whether it compares to this or that method. They defend their stance, and underneath I often hear an unspoken sentence: you don't understand what it's like to be me. The mind finds rest in a familiar bucket, and the soul keeps waiting. At the end of each session he could name the essence. When I asked whether he would share it with his partner, he said he already knew her answer: great, and now what are you going to do with it?
She was right. That is the part nobody can do for you. In our previous session I had run out of cards. So I told him about my own dark night of the soul. How for many years I had to force myself out of bed every morning to start my day. A struggle only very few of my friends knew about. I could sense the fence dropping. Maybe he could feel that I knew darkness from the inside. So I came into this session looking for small signs of progress. Instead he told me he had made a bold move. The liberation came straight through the screen. With a smile he said: you really know how to get people moving, don't you? I told him he made my day.
The move was his. Still, I keep returning to that moment when the fence dropped, because I know it from the other side of the table. Years ago I was talking passionately about my calling to a friend, a man with a rare ability to be fully present with whoever was in front of him. He listened, and then asked me: and who takes care of you? I can still feel what happened in my body. I dropped into a pit. A scarcity of warmth for myself, the same warmth I was giving to everyone around me, clients, friends, family. The question opened a place in me I had never been present to emotionally. That sensation woke me up. It became the starting point of reinventing myself.
What I discovered then, and saw again in my client, is how quietly survival takes over. Nobody announces it. It settles like a gray veil over a lens. Day by day the colours fade a little, and we drift away from our own dreams and the longings of our heart. It goes so slowly that we hardly notice. From the outside everything can look fine.
Then someone sits in front of us who is not satisfied with the surface we offer. One question can be enough, or a story told at the right moment, and the veil lifts. We see the truth of where we are. And then we can choose again. We can recommit to something we lost along the way.
We have been building Lead True for twenty years, and along the way it has grown into a community of practice. What we practice is inner sovereignty, leading our lives from the inside out, from inspiration. Living, not only surviving. I am wary of the familiar phrase about living up to our full potential. It always sounds pushy to me. What I mean is more subtle and understated: sensing the truth of our own path and its rightness, touching the joy of our lives, of living itself. The lifeforce. For that we need each other. Someone in front of us who wants to meet the real us, and who can poke underneath the surface we offer each other, until we reach places inside ourselves we didn't know were there. A coach can be that person for a while. I have been that person for many, and I have needed it myself. In a community of practice we do this for each other, in every direction. Feeling alive, and staying that way no matter what life throws at us. That is what I wish for my clients and for myself. The gray veil will creep back in, for him and for me. What I practise now is noticing it sooner, and letting someone close enough to ask me again: and who takes care of you?
About the Author
Lead True Global Leader Andrea Henning’s vision is that when people discover their authenticity and dare to follow their bliss they are happier and more successful in their lives while serving as an inspiration to their communities.
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