Transformation Coaching is about unleashing and practicing the awesome Superpowers of Human Nature.
I want to share with you the BACK story that led to a big lightning bolt moment.
Finally the FISH sees the water!!!
In this case I was the FISH
This happened in 2014 … I had been coaching for 17 years at this point!
You Were Born Awesome Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
human nature, coaching, humans, living, book, culture, fish, metaphor, life, transformation, neglect, personal growth, water, people, fish tank, control, burdened, amazing, industrial, problems
SPEAKERS
David Buck
00:01
All right, hello to you coach Dave out from CoachVille here with you. This audio is called you were born awesome. Change the water. It is part of our transformation coaching audio series. And I know that it’s a very quirky title and I will explain. All right.
Transformation Coaching is unleashing and practicing Human Nature Superpowers
00:24
Transformation coaching is all about unleashing and practicing the awesome superpowers of human nature. Now, in order to explain all of this, I need to share with you pretty incredible backstory that led to a huge lightning bolt moment for me, this is one of those moments. Again, this is another metaphor, but I would explain it as finally the fish sees the water. And in this case, I was the fish. Okay.
Dave’s Backstory before coaching
01:02
So this happened actually back in 2014. By this time, I had been coaching for 17 years, hard to imagine. So here’s the quick backstory. So starting in my 20s. This was in the 1980s, I became an avid personal growth explorer and advocate, I absolutely immersed in 1000 hours of personal growth programs and audio back then on cassette tapes. Yes, it’s true. And going to so many seminars, a lot of time at Landmark education. And I had so much knowledge about how to help people succeed. I got an MBA in night school, I knew all about management. I had done project management as part of my computer software career. And then the age of 35, I became a life coach. Okay, I think I’ve already told you that story, okay. Anyway.
Industrial Culture Coaching = Questions, Problems and Tasks
it was good, it wasn’t great.
02:07
So, around the year 2000, my coaching business really started to blossom. We started CoachVille, Thomas Leonard, and I was coaching like 50 people a week, which is kind of nuts. But it is this amazing melting pot of human experience. This was really how I would describe my life, a melting pot of human experience, human potential human possibility. And I was doing everything that I learned to do in life, coaching school, and being having so many clients helping my clients accomplish their goals, asking great questions, sharing the occasional personal growth idea and strategy, solving problems, problems coming up with personalized task plans. You know, this is what we did.
03:06
And you can probably relate to this probably what you have done, and many people that I have met who get into coaching have had somewhat of a similar path, a lot of personal growth exploring in their life backgrounds. So you can probably relate to this. And so I was coaching like this for a long time. And it was good. It was it was good. But it wasn’t great. That’s a theme. I’ll share in a few of these different audios. It was good, but it wasn’t great. Yeah, some of my clients accomplish their goals. But the thing is, it didn’t really change much.
Life seems like a burden of frustration and anxiety
03:49
There was still this underlying frustration, anxiety. Something was missing. It was that’s what I was always feeling. I used to say this, often that it felt like my clients were walking through life carrying a piano. Now, of course, this is a metaphor, but just the idea was it just seemed like everyone was kind of burdened or income really encumbered. Which I can you can probably relate to that as well both in your own life and, and with folks that you have tried to help really do anything, there’s this burden.
04:27
Okay, and I’ll tell you this, also. And again, you may relate to this. If you’ve been coaching for a little while, when you’re a coach, you really feel what is happening with your players, like every client, every player is a mirror and you just become an intense, you know, kind of a student of the human experience and when things don’t go easily or go well you start to wonder what the heck is going on. But nevertheless, I persisted for 17 years.
05:00
At this point I’ve been running CoachVille for over a decade, I was leading coach education programs for people all around the world hosting events for amazing people. But still, just wondering, this is just harder than it should be. I thought
A lighting Bolt Moment = The Continuum Concept
05:16
Then I had this amazing lightning bolt moment, okay. I was dating this delightful woman, and she wanted to go on a vacation to Block Island, which is little island off the coast of Rhode Island. I was not super excited about this, to be honest, because I get horribly seasick and the only way to get there is on a ferry. But she really wanted to go. So I said, Alright, let’s do it. I’ll take the drugs and get get through the boat trip and we’ll get there. Alright, so here we are.
05:51
We’re staying at this lovely b&b. If you’ve ever stayed at a lovely b&b, you can recognize this scene. There’s a common room, there’s some cozy couches, and there’s always a bookshelf there. And on the bookshelf, there’s a bunch of books, people leave books, take books, and it’s usually a lot of Danielle Steel. That’s what you usually have or Tom Clancy. And there was plenty of this on this bookshelf.
06:16
But the strangest thing happened. I’m standing in front of this bookshelf, I don’t read these kinds of Danielle Steel, Tom Clancy books, I don’t know why I’m standing in front of this bookshelf. But there I am. And this book just kind of grabs my attention. Strange, maybe because it was so different than the other books, I pull this book out. And the title of this book is the “Continuum Concept”. And the cover of the book as a as a mother holding a little baby. So there is no reason I would start reading this book. Clearly, I am not a mother, I have never had a child. I am not interested in natural child parenting, which seemed to be the topic of this book.
07:05
But for some reason, I started reading this book, it’s the weirdest thing. And this book was amazing. It was a story of this woman, the author. And she had gotten herself on this crazy adventure like a treasure hunt – real life – treasure hunt story in the Amazon. And she got lost from her two colleagues, and got taken in by this tribe of Hunter Gatherers. Totally incredible.
Humans BEFORE the culture of control and obedience
07:40
Now, these humans have been living in the Amazon, their families and and their culture had been living in the Amazon for 1000s of years, their ancestors had been there for 1000s of years. These humans were living, you know, in a way that was cultivated before, what we call civilization. Before countries there was no countries, no money, no monarchs. And most importantly, they lived as humans lived before there was conquering, and colonizing, and command control compliance. All of these cultural customs we have of civilized society. she’s there. She’s living with them.
08:36
And now she’s writing about it in this book. And just as a quick back note, as I’m reading this, I’m thinking this is really strange, because I remember learning in high school in you know, some Western civilization classes, which we had like every year in high school, especially, all about how, Oh, before civilization, humans were savages. They were running around killing each other; savaging. And what did she find among these humans that are living in a pre civilized manner? Well, they were not savages. They were absolutely delightful. They were loving. They lived every day like an adventurer. They co created and talked about everything. They faced big challenges, but always with a playful approach. They cared for each other; everyone was cared for.
09:39
And the big big point was, no one tried to control anyone else.
09:47
There was no such thing as obedience. It didn’t exist in their minds. There was no obedience; no commanding; no controlling; parents didn’t try to control their children, they just didn’t do it. And anytime a person expressed anything, a little person, a bigger person, everyone in the group, this is a large group of humans, 100-200 people, Everyone just assumes that, oh, well, they’re expressing that; that’s a part of their human nature. So it must be okay.
The Fish (ME) Sees the Water (Culture)!
10:27
And I’m reading this book, and the lightning bolt flashed, and it was me the fish. finally seeing the water, that I was swimming in that I would say, we are all swimming in, we are all swimming in this culture, this civilized industrial culture, based on hierarchical command, control and compliance.
11:04
In our industrial culture, we assume that human nature is a problem that we need to get under control, we need a fix it. And they didn’t live this way at all, they did not have this concept. And she also observed that the way that the whole human group treated the infants, and the toddlers and the children was totally different to how we do it in our civilized culture.
Industrial Culture NEGLECTS and CONTROLS Human Nature
11:42
She described it as the industrial culture that she had grown up in, compared to what she lived and observed with these pre civilization humans is that in the industrial culture, we positively neglect the needs of human nature. From day one, we neglect them to such an extreme degree, it’s almost impossible to fathom.
12:18
But these pre civilization, humans did not neglect human nature, they nurtured human nature and the needs of human nature. From day one, it’s just how they lived. Now, if you are a parent, or have been one, this is not about you, I am not saying: “Oh, you didn’t raise your children the right way”. I’m not saying that at all. What I’m saying is the culture that we have co created at this point in the Industrial Age, absolutely neglects the needs of human nature from day one, in infants, and toddlers, and children.
13:00
And then after we neglect the needs of human nature, from day one, then problems happen. And then we move to attempt to control the bad outcomes that were caused by that neglect. So in our culture, we have command control and compliance and hierarchies and obedience. It’s everywhere.
Control is the CAUSE of our problems, NOT the solution
13:29
And we’re trying to fix the problems that are caused by neglect with control. And this is actually a terrible idea.
13:38
This was all sort of coming to me as I was reading this book. And so wow, I had this big aha moment that, wow, this starts to explain to me why all these amazing people that I coached, were always seeming so heavy, such a struggle to live and to and to, you know, what I call now play for our dreams, but even just trying to accomplish goals, it was so heavy, so burdened, and I started to connect the dots. Okay, started really connect the dots.
14:20
So I’m not going to tell you any more details about the book. It’s not in print, but you can find a copy if you want to get into those gory details. But I can tell you that I started replaying in my mind my 1000s of hours of personal growth of human potential management training.
We don’t SEE what we are doing to each other
14:43
And it’s all based on the premise that we need to fix or control our human nature and was so pervasive, so everywhere I didn’t see it, it’s that classic story of the fish can’t see the water. It’s was the same thing. It’s the culture, in our human version of fish in water as humans in a culture, it’s hard to see the culture because we’re in it, we’re living it, or we’re a part of it, we absorb it, but then we also co create it.
15:18
So here’s the big idea is that we, as human beings have somehow gotten to this point where we’ve created this culture that’s so fixated on hierarchies and command control compliance, that we don’t realize what we’re doing to each other.
When the fish are sick, CHANGE THE WATER!
15:41
Now, let me take this metaphor just a little further. When I was a kid, we had a fish tank with tropical fish, maybe you have ever had one of these. And so we had this amazing fish tank with these beautiful tropical fish. They’re amazing. It was fun to watch them swimming around. And one day, a couple of the fish were dead, just floating on the surface of the water. Kind of a bummer, you know, you get these fish, and then a few of them die seems terrible.
16:16
Then the next day, a few more fish were dead. And you think: What’s going on, we have to help the fish, we have to get a fish doctor. We’ve got to… the fish are sick, we have to fix them, we have to cure them.
16:34
And what you find out when you have a fish tank is you can’t cure the fish, the only thing you can do, and the thing that works is you change the water. You change the water, and then the fish are well. They’re healthy again.
16:59
And this is a beautiful metaphor for understanding the situation we are in as humans. There’s so much suffering in the human family, the depression, the anxiety, the addiction, the bullying, anger, frustration, so many humans living in poverty and warfare, you know, attempting to find a safer place to live but being shut out and: “NO, the humans cannot migrate”. And even though humans have been migrating for 70,000 years, no, they can’t come.
17:38
And this is the water. We can’t fix the problems by trying to fix the people, we have to change the water, the industrial culture, where we neglect and control human nature. This is where all of the problems originate all of them. It’s the culture, it’s the water.
Transformation Coaching = From Control Human Nature to UNLEASH Human Nature
18:09
So with that being said, the big idea and what we’re creating with transformation coaching is instead of trying to fix or control human nature, what we do is we embrace and encourage human nature. Instead of trying to control, we unleash human nature, we practice expressing our human nature together, which is a powerful way to bond together.
CoachVille is Fresh Water
18:41
And just one more quick metaphor with the fish. What you learn when you have a fish tank is you can’t just take all the water out and put new water in because the fish will die with no water, just as bad as they will in bad water. So what you need to do is you need to create a temporary tank. With clean water and good water you put the fish in the temporary tank, then you refill the original tank with water and then slowly get help the fish acclimate back into the clean water.
19:16
So taking that as a little metaphor, what we’re trying to do at Coachville, and in transformation coaching, is to create a culture; a little temporary culture in a way that you can be a part of, and sort of acclimate to a transformation coaching culture that’s different than a hierarchical control culture. And then by acclimating in this new culture, then you can go back into your cultures, your family, your communities, your companies, and begin to co create a new culture together with the people in your life.
19:56
And so this is the big transformation of transformation coaching is from human nature is this problem we need to control and we need to fix. Instead, we transform to human nature is a power, we can embrace and encourage, we can unleash and practice our human nature superpowers.
20:22
And this is really the big kahuna transformation that we are playing for at CoachVille, that we aim to restore the awesome human nature that you were born with. This is what I mean going back to the title, you were born awesome, then you were put in some bad water. Okay.
20:43
And so we’re trying to introduce you to some new water, some good water so you can get your awesome human nature back. And then hopefully, you can then spread that culture to the people around you. This is the big idea. Whew!
Quick Review of Human Nature Superpowers
21:03
All right now just quickly… how do we describe this awesome human nature? Well, there’s 1000 ways we could talk about human nature. But we just came up with this one way that is hopefully clear and easy to remember.
21:19
It’s “(the ability) To dream” and “the five BE’s”. And the five BE’s are: BE free, BEfriend, BEcome, BElieve and BElong. And these six are basically an antidote to the industrial hierarchical control culture of command, control and compliance. And then I later added, conquer and colonize just to flesh out the whole picture of what we need to do as humans, we need to create and CO-create a new culture based on accentuating these five BE’s.
22:00
And the long version of these are: the drive to be free, the love to be friend, the urge to become the need to belong, and the ability to believe these are six awesome superpowers that we all have. And with transformation coaching, we can unleash them, we can practice them, we can uplevel our own lives each other’s lives, and then we can use these powers to co create a new culture together.
22:29
Together, we can change the water. At least, that’s the idea. All right.
22:39
I thank you for listening to this impassioned presentation. That is all for this transformation coaching audio. You can join us at CoachVille, where transformation, coaching lives and experience the transformation coaching culture.
22:57
Until the next time, remember that this world of ours is a playground and we are here to play together.
Become a CoachVille Transformation Coach…
You will become a wise soul with deep understanding and awareness of Human Nature.
You will become a “go to guide’ and leader because you foster personal growth, peak experiences, Human Connections and desired results.
You will become a happier and more playful person. For real.
Center for Coaching Mastery Program
In the Center for Coaching Mastery Program the curriculum is organized with classes that focus on each of the essential superpowers of human nature; so you will gain in depth knowledge.
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