I don’t believe in coincidences. Earlier this week I had an email conversation with a friend that ended up in discussion about fear (I forget how it began). He saw fear as the opposite of greed; I saw fear giving rise to greed.

Then, later, my family hiked a glacier to climb Whistler Peak (“Via Ferrata”). Two days later, my kids stepped off a bridge more than 160 feet above an engorged river.

Standing on the bridge, watching my children fling themselves off into the air, I thought of a line from a post I’d written just a few weeks ago: “I had been inspired in small ways to live a life that would always push against the limits of my own fears.” As powerful as it is to push against your own limits, nothing beats watching your kids learn to do the same.

I can be a lousy businessman. That’s hard to admit as a coach. I often imagine that one of the many reasons people come to me for coaching is they feel I can help them unlock the secret of building a successful business. (I can, of course, but only when I wave my magic wand.)

Lousy because I often make business decisions out of want, desire, wishes, feelings, and other heart-driven motivations. (Read my exhortation about Saying No not merely as a prescription to others but as a reminder to self.)

Still though, sometimes an idea gets fixed and I have to act. (Note to clients: Don’t worry, my attachment to the idea is loosely held.) Such is the case with the notion of figuring out Europe.

A few months ago I visited Slovenia and fell in love. The city, the people, the spirit of local entrepreneurs grabbed my heart hard and fast. Then I received a poignant email which, with the entrepreneur’s permission, I turned into a blog post called Born Somewhere Else. And an idea began to grow.

Weeks later, the incomparable Ann Mehl and I (with thoughtful and caring support from our friends at General Assembly) pulled off the second iteration of our workshop: Disappearing into the Fire: Surviving the Startup Life. Selling out quickly, we realized we were onto something. But we didn’t realize how significant an idea it was until I’d heard from the generous Kevin Dykes, challenging me, essentially to bring the workshop to his adopted home of Berlin.

Ljubljana, Berlin…cities with nascent but vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems. Hmmm. This started to sound interesting. And so we talked. And wrote. And talked some more. Kevin connected us to others and the idea looked like a real possibility. Let’s take the show on the road. And so we are.

Ann and I will be leading the workshop with support from Kevin, Stefan Wolpers of the Entrepreneurs Club of Berlin and the local whizzes at General Assembly. To maximize the trip, I’ll also be leading a breakfast discussion about the challenges and opportunities facing  entrepreneurs over there looking to raise money from investors over here.

I’ll also visit some clients and spend some time with their companies.

Sounds good, right? So what’s the lousy-business guy thing? Ever since I received his email, I’ve not been able to shake the question about what differences exist between US-based entrepreneurs those based in places like Berlin, Ljubljana, Estonia, or Tibet; what are the differences and what are the similarities. From the work I’ve done with clients outside the US, I know that the fear and the emotional roller coaster are common. But from other conversations I’ve learned, for example, that the acceptance of failure is a large cultural difference…which leads to all sorts of mind-bending for a first time entrepreneur. So following the advice of my dearest friend and former high school English teacher, I’m going to “teach the questions I want answers to.”

The lousy part is we may not make money on this. But, I know, I’ll walk away with an incomparable experience. And, ya know, that’s worth all the effort.

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I’m pretty sure it was a Philco. I know I was five and half.

It’d been a typically hot summer day where my best friend Marcus had spent much of it carving our initials in the hot, soft asphalt of East 26th street and floating wooden Popsicle sticks at the gutter river rushing out of the open hydrant. July 20, 1969.

My father calls out from the front window of our ground level apartment. ”Jerry!” he shouts, “Come inside.” The tone means either I’ve done something wrong or something important is going on. I hope for the latter.

I come  inside and find my parents, my brothers, and my sister gathered around the Philco (or was it a Dumont?). Neil Armstrong is  just stepping down the ladder of lunar landing module.

I thought of that moment years later when, after deciding to go into work a little late that day, I watched the Challenger first lift off and then explode.

And I thought of it again a few weeks ago as Hugh MacLeod talked about going to watch the last Shuttle take off. When I saw his drawing, his take on what this all meant, I understood a little more about my own experience.

Watching that one small step on the static-ky, shaky black and white TV, with the tinfoil on the antenna to get a slightly better reception, I realized I had been inspired in small ways to live a life that would always push against the limits of my own fears.

Hugh’s “Incredible Times” drawing implicitly challenges me to see more clearly, to articulate more dearly, those folks who inspire me to see the incredible, the unbelievable. Fortunately, I can see it in the everyday.

I see it, for example, in the client who discovers a tumor that needs to be removed from her liver or the friend who’s tumor is in her breast. I see it in the client who–despite the gnawing, aching fear of never being able to be good enough to please a parent–still goes in every day making, as I am wont to say, “incremental progress that is directionally correct.”

We do ourselves a disservice when we look only to the extraordinary for affirmation of the incredible. We set ourselves up, then, to see that our struggles with the pathology of every day are somehow less then. And, of course, that then reinforces our own gnawing aching fears that we are never enough.

It helps to see the incredible inspiration in the man, the artist, whose demons were so ferocious that his only solace was to drink, smoke, and sleep in a kind of hazy denial of life. When that man wakes (albeit with the shock of a fearsome medical diagnosis) and begins the painful process of reclaiming his body, and through that act reclaims his souls…well, when that happens, boy howdy, we do live in incredible times.

So Hugh is right: there is work to be done. But I think the work is not getting people to romanticize our heroes but to see the incredible in the simple act of getting along, of growing up, of becoming more and more wholly, utterly, ourselves.

When Siddhartha woke up and became the Buddha, the awakened one, he didn’t wake to see the triumphant earthly gods and goddesses. He awoke to the utterly breathtaking beauty of the everyday person facing the truth of the pain and fear of life; facing that truth and choosing to move ahead, regardless. That feels like one heck of a small step.