His anxiety was high. So high, in fact, that—at first—he wasn’t even aware of it. But I could hear it in his voice, feel it in my chest, as he spoke to me over the phone.

“What’s going on with your breathing?” I asked, “I can hardly breathe listening to you. Even more, your voice is way up in the back of your throat. Slow down and tell me what’s going on.”

He assured me that everything was great. The meeting he’d just come from was very promising—the potential client—a large consumer products company—was going to make a large ad buy and his company, my client’s company, was going to land the deal.

“Okay,” I said probing, “but what if you don’t land the deal.”

The balloon burst.

“Well then we’re fucked. If we don’t get this deal, then there’s no way we’re going to make our numbers.”

“But you’d nailed the last quarter. Doesn’t that count?” I said.

Silence.

“What happened?”

Turns out they hadn’t made the fourth quarter numbers. Both the top and bottom lines were off; expenses were up 10% over where they expected but, even worse, revenues were off by 40%. Forty percent.

He took a breath—maybe his first during the whole call—and he told me that the board had told him that if the company doesn’t make the first quarter numbers, his job was on the line.

“So?” I asked in my annoying coach-like way.

“So?!? So I’ll be out of work?”

“You get job offers all the time—is that what you’re really worried about?”

He paused again. “No. I guess I’m worried our business model is wrong.”

Again, the annoying, “So?”

“And if our business model is wrong, then I’ll have wasted the last three years of my life.” He was nearly shouting.

He paused again. His voice deepening as his breath steadied and the emotions rose.

“And worse than that,” he said, “I’ll be tagged with this failure for the rest of my life.”

The rest of his life defined by a missed quarter?

Few people understand just how difficult it is to be an entrepreneur.

I’ll often ask a client who’s struggling to deal with the burdens if they can really afford to be an entrepreneur. And by that, I’m not necessarily referring to the financial costs of living with a diminished salary—or even going without altogether. I’m referring to the emotional highs and lows of fundraising.

One day, for example, the investor returns your email, inviting you in to present to the full partnership. You leave that meeting feeling great. You call your coach: “I nailed it.” You tell your spouse, “Don’t worry, honey, the funding’s coming through.” But then the investor stops responding to emails. Doesn’t answer their phone. Nothing. Not a word. Silence.

And the killer-developer you hired on a wing, a prayer, and a slug of equity starts worrying about paying his rent and says that the job with that new iPhone app company is looking better and better.

Or you’re funded and one of your investor/directors starts making noises about doubting the business model, about doubting your head of sales, about doubting you…but you know that these doubts have less to do with your company than they do with the fact that the investor is having troubling closing his new fund and so to him, everything looks like crap. But, of course, you can’t say that, because well, he’s sort of your boss.

And you come home and it’s your daughter’s dance recital—“Geez, already?!? Didn’t she just start classes?”

No, your wife says, she started classes nine months ago. “Oh right,” you say to yourself, “that was version 1.2.” And you catch yourself and laugh a little thinking that you now tell time by counting versions of the software.

David Whyte—a brilliant poet who, among others things, speaks to and consults with large corporations, describes well an aspect of why the burden is so keenly felt:

There is an ancient Chinese story of an old master potter who attempted to develop a new glaze for his porcelain vases. It became the central focus of his life. Everyday he tended the flames of his kilns to a white heat, controlling the temperature to an exact degree. Every day he experimented with the chemistry of the glazes he applied, but still he could not achieve the beauty he desired and imagined was possible in a glaze. Finally, having tried everything he decided his meaningful life was over and walked into the molten heat of the fully fired kiln. When his assistants opened up the kiln and took out the vases, they found the glaze on the vases the most exquisite they had ever encountered. The master himself had disappeared into his creations.

How many of  us create companies, create products where our blood and bone fuse with the glaze to create something so exquisite as to never have existed before? How romantically seductive is the image of giving one’s all to the fire? After all, as Whyte says:

Work is the very fire where we are baked to perfection, and like the master of the fire itself, we add the essential ingredient and fulfillment when we walk into the flames ourselves and fuel the transformation of ordinary, everyday forms into the exquisite and the rare.

I have to understand this viscerally if I’m going to be of service to my clients. But I have to be mindful, too, of the cost. In disappearing into the kiln, the potter created the most meaningful thing possible. But in the end, he ceased to exist.

The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of Soul in Corporate America and Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, both by David Whyte; The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring by Parker Palmer

Now that he’s nearly 13, he’ll deny that he ever said it but I swear it happened.

My son Michael was ten and we were in the backyard tossing a ball. He paused just before tossing to me, laughed, and shrugged.

“What?” I asked

“It’s funny,” he said.“Thoughts are like puffs of air. They come and go. Poof.”

He was ten and he’d already figured out that we’ve all got Monsters in our heads.

The Buddhists teach a story about a man who walks into a darkened room, looks down and is startled by a coiled snake. He lights the room only to discover that the frightening snake is nothing more than a coil of rope.

Monster.

The Buddhists teach another story. This time of a man lazily enjoying a sunny day on a lake, napping in a slowly drifting rowboat. Suddenly, the boat is rocked by another boat slamming into it. Furious, the man leaps up to throttle the oblivious rower who failed to avoid his boat. When he does, he sees the second boat is empty. The wind had pushed the boat into his. The rower he was going to kill doesn’t exist.

Monster.

In coaching, we talk about limiting beliefs. Things we believe to be true about ourselves which, umm, limit us. I was in the eighth grade at Sts. Simon & Jude R.C. school in Gravesend, Brooklyn.  I was in the “smart kids” track and, as we’d all delightedly anticipated since seventh grade, the “smart kids” got to study ninth grade algebra in eighth grade (thereby yet again confirming our superiority).

But that year, the school had hired a new eighth grade math teacher: Ms. Babejko. Ms. Babejko loved math and thought everyone should love math. Even more she thought that everyone could do math, everyone could do algebra. So gathering all three eighth grade classes in the auditorium, she proposed that she teach ninth grade made to all of us. Well we “smart kids” were outraged. It’s unfair, we said. We deserve this, we said. And it fell to me, as one of the more outspoken members of the group (I’d been elected student body president), to articulate our position. I’m embarrassed to repeat the horrendous, elitist arguments I made. Trust me though; I was obnoxious.

But I prevailed and she proceeded to teach only the “smart kids” algebra. And one by one we dropped like flies until, in the end, there were only three kids in that section and the rest of us had fallen into “regular” math.

I’m grateful to Ms. Babejko for that lesson. BUT the experience also implanted a limiting belief that plagued me for years: I’m not good at math. Up until that experience, I’d gotten all A’s (except for my second grade penmanship class). Nevertheless, from then on, I became one of those folks who self-defined and self-selected away from math. It became, ultimately, a Monster in my head—a puff of air, a coiled rope, an empty rowboat—that defined me, scared me, and trapped me.

Sometimes the Monster is a specific fear such as, I’m going to get fired. I was working with a client the other day and we were discussing just how infuriatingly dependent her boss is on her. She’s constantly picking up after him, cleaning up his messes, making him look good.

“But that’s what you told him when you took the job, right? You told him that you saw your role as making him successful.”

“But I didn’t sign on to be his mother,” she said.

We laughed and there was a pause and then she asked the burning question:

“Do you think I’m going to be fired?”

Monster.

After outlining all the ways this boss needs her, her mind still said, “Be careful. You can be fired.” I know she was once fired and that experience, like my time in eighth grade, still haunts her, defines her, throws shadows on the wall.

Just yesterday, talking with another client, a CEO, about a staff person who is undermining his authority, I asked:

“Why do you allow it?”

See the non-coaching, friendly supportive response would have been to cluck my tongue and say the staff member is a terrible person. Or, when I was an active board member, I might have said, “Fire them.”

But neither of those statements would have served the CEO.

“I suppose I’m a nice guy,” he answered. I let that hang for a moment in silence. He continued, “I’ve always had a problem with having to be the nice guy.”

And we took a deep look at the monster and saw that there was a way for this CEO to be true to himself—that is, to NOT be an asshole—while not allowing his staff person to destabilize the company.

Limiting beliefs, puffs of air, coiled ropes, monsters we create and carry around in our minds; they’re all worth examining deeper. Byron Katie’s The Work can be a powerful antidote.

She offers four questions that often times puncture the entire belief system:

1)   Is it true?

2)   Can you absolutely know it’s true?

3)   How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?

4)   Who would you be without that thought?

To her list, I’ll add a fifth question: What’s the Monster in your head?

Re-entry is a bitch. It’s not just the cold shock of JFK at 6 a.m. (and that’s not particularly pleasant) or even the cold itself (coming from the bottom of South America to the center of the Northern Hemisphere—or at least what New Yorkers believe to be the center of this half of the earth if not the universe itself—wakes the body up a bit, I’d say).

No. The hard part is shifting gears–getting readjusted to not greeting every friend, every companion with a gut-busting hug, a kiss, and a hearty “Buenas Dias!” The hardest part of coming back from 12-days of, among other things, rafting the Futaleufu and connecting with Chilean Patagonia is the simple disconnection from nature.

Camp life

I’m reminded of Phillip Pullman’s daemons–so central to the His Dark Materials trilogy…especially the pain one feels when separated from your daemon. Can a river be your daemon?

Such trips are never just about being in “nature” or, even–despite the bravado implicit–the machismo of running a rapid. Such trips are about connecting deeply, soulfully with the rivers, the mountains, the condors, fellow travelers, and—of course—ourselves. Our selves.

On the last night of our stay at the Bio Bio Expedition’s safari–style camp

My home for the week

on the banks of the “Fu,” most of us told jokes, sang songs, re-enacted the most dramatic “swims” (including my unfortunate swim through Khyber Pass and Himalayas).

By the light of the fire (aren’t all such moments lit by campfire?), I recited:

The Return

by Geneen Marie Haugen

Some day, if you are lucky,
you’ll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.

Eyes will examine you for signs
of damage, or change
and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces

Thankfully Brian knew what he was doing

of fur, or leaves,
if thrushes have built a nest
of your hair, if Andromeda
burns from your eyes.

Do not be surprised by prickly questions
from those who barely inhabit
their own fleeting lives, who barely taste
their own possibility, who barely dream.

If your hands are empty, treasureless,
if your toes have not grown claws,
if your obedient voice has not
become a wild cry, a howl,

you will reassure them. We warned you,
they might declare, there is nothing else,
no point, no meaning, no mystery at all,
just this frantic waiting to die.

And yet, they tremble, mute,
afraid you’ve returned without sweet
elixir for unspeakable thirst, without
a fluent dance or holy language

Ashley, Jorge, me, and Damara

to teach them, without a compass
bearing to a forgotten border where
no one crosses without weeping
for the terrible beauty of galaxies

and granite and bone. They tremble,
hoping your lips hold a secret,
that the song your body now sings
will redeem them, yet they fear

your secret is dangerous, shattering,
and once it flies from your astonished
mouth, they–like you–must disintegrate
before unfolding tremulous wings.

Thanks to Brian McCutcheon and Ashley Scanlon from ROAM from taking me on this “thunderous journey.”  Love to my new friends: Beth, Fred, Stacey, Jordan, Tamar, Todd, Mike, Jay, Tim, Derek, Ellen, Quentin, Christian, Judith, Damara, Mark, Lorenzo, Kevin, and Alex. And special thanks to Jorge for getting his kayak to the right place at the right time to save my butt. A few of the photos are mine. The better ones were shot by Kevin Thompson.

I’ve been training with Emmanuel for about ten years. Most mornings, around 6:30 a.m., he pisses me off by urging me to do one more  chest press, one more bicep curl, one more “squat trust.” He’s Haitian.

I was watching CNN as I warmed up on the treadmill, as he walked into the gym this morning. Normally I’ll turn  off theTV and just listen to music as he and I go through my routines. Today, though, I wanted to watch the reports from Haiti. Emmanuel typically  ignores the TV so it didn’t seem all that unusual that he was doing so this morning. As the morning wore on, and images of the devastation flickered by, I kept saying things like, “My God. Look at that.” Then I realized he wasn’t looking. Purposely.

The only family he has left on the island, he said, is an aunt–a nun in a convent outside Port-au-Prince. Growing up there, his family was part of the shrinking middle-class, which means they escaped while Baby Doc was in power.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Sure. I’m fine,” he said.

I was working my chest when he surprised me.

“Do you know that Frankl guy?”

“Do you mean Victor Frankl? Yeah. What about him?”

“He said that we just walk by…that’s what happens in Haiti. People don’t see people so they can keep going.”

“You mean, they’re desensitized?”

“Yes. Sure. They don’t see them as human,” and he spat out the word “human.”

“To bear our own pain, we’ll often de-humanize those who are suffering,” I acknowledged.

In between squat thrusts, Anderson Cooper came on. A story about one house, on one block in a devastated country of nearly 10 million people. For 18 hours, a 15-year old was trapped in a building pancaked (and that word in relation to buildings is so evocative for me; I always think of the World Trade Center). Family and friends had spent five hours using one shovel and their hands to free her. As Cooper spoke, the family, friends, and the girl could be heard in the background.

“What’s she saying,” I asked Emmanuel.

“She’s talking about not being stuck. How to clear the rubble…I mean ‘dirt.’ ”

Finally she’s pulled out. One family member stands behind her picking through her hair, making her pretty again. I look up at Emmanuel. His eyes are rimmed with tears. I know he’s got two teen-aged daughters. I know that when his mother died a few months ago it was hard for him to even sit in the room (he told me at the time that in Haiti he could never bring himself to go to funerals. And there were a lot of funerals.).

Ten years together, pushing heavy pieces of metal together–I’d never seen him come close to crying before. I stood and pulled him close in and he wept in my arms. Like the strong man that he is.

I recommend reading Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains.

My favorite part of Glee is the liberal use of the word loser. (Okay, maybe my favorite part is really the way it evokes memories of Sing at my high school but go with it…)

It reminds me of the time when my daughter established the Loser Table at her middle school cafeteria.

(Last night, she reminded me just how damned hard it is to push back against crowd-I owe her that acknowledgement.)

Which then reminded me—in the way only my unique twisted tangle of synapses can leap—of Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety:

Our “ego” or self-conception could be pictured as a leaking bal­loon, forever requiring the helium of external love to remain inflated,

and ever vulnerable to the smallest pinpricks of neglect. There is something at once sobering and absurd in the extent to which we are lifted

by the attentions of others and sunk by their dis­regard.

Absurd and sobering; leaky self-conception balloons. Yep.  And what’s the way out of that trap?

The Buddha taught that we should see the inherent self-lessness of all things; the inherent interdependence of all things, the inherent impermanence of all things; and let go of the those balloons.

I was assisting a coaching class last Sunday and Martha Lasley, one of the program’s master coach teachers, had the class draw an image of the mask we wore when we are home; the mask, the image, the collection of self-conceptions that we put on and, in an often silly and vain attempt NOT to be seen, project to the world.

I drew a wise owl.

Then she had us crumble the papers and toss them into the center of the room. Drop the mask of how you wish to be seen, be seen as you really are—leaky, messy, fearful, grasping, joyful—and disregard the disregard of others.

Easier said than done.

At J&J’s on Monday night, a lovely group sat (or, as in my case, sprawled) and talked about projections (I kid you not; our hero spends his free time doing things like talking about projections with dear friends. At least there was wine and cheese.). Tracey turned to the group and noted, with glee, “He’s a life coach and he’s a mess.”

Crumble the masks and blow them kisses. Put the L on your own forehead. Prick your own damn leaky balloon. Sit at the Loser Table. Embrace your messiness…

…actually I haven’t a clue what you should do. That’s just what I plan to do.