'23 Weeknotes #19: Vulnerable Confidence
Discover more from Like person, like coach by Iacob Bacian
'23 Weeknotes #19: Vulnerable Confidence
You are reading ‘Like person, like coach’, a newsletter about being the coach you are whilst trying to contribute to a better world.
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‘There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.’
- Martha Graham
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Following on from last week’s post, I continue to contemplate doubt.
This time I’m reflecting on the kind of doubt that creep in when you’re doing something you care about, where you are risking something of yourself, and are putting in your best effort. And yet, the reality delivers something way less neat than the image of the Six of Wands, where one comes out triumphant. Often this isn’t because you haven’t been successful but perhaps because success, in coaching as in life, often looks different to what we expect it to.
Self-doubt accompanies me in most things I do. And yet, it never stops me from signing up for daring adventures both in work and personal matters. What I’m interested in right now is how self-doubt might actually be a source of power. And how staying open to the vulnerability of putting myself out there even whilst self-doubting brings forth a different kind of strength to the one I find when I settle for unquestioned confidence.
In my last supervision session the concept of Chiron, the ‘wounded healer’ came up. When I read a bit more about Chiron it brought up new questions around having faith:
‘According to the myth, Chiron was wounded accidentally by Heracles's arrow coated with the poisonous blood of Hydra. The unbearably painful wound was incurable, but Chiron, immortal because of his divine ancestry, could not die. The agonized centaur roamed the earth and continued to heal the sickly and the injured. He thus came to embody the paradox of the great healer who can heal everyone except himself. Eventually, he wandered to the place where Prometheus was undergoing his own agony. Here, at last, he found freedom from his pain: he volunteered to give his immortality to Prometheus and now could die.’
- from ‘The Wounded Healer as Cultural Archetype’
What I found powerful about this story was the randomness of how the wound was inflicted — it had nothing personal to do with Chiron. And that the way Chiron escapes this fate is when he gives his immortality to Prometheus. In which I read that perhaps caring for others deeply might be the catalyser of trust and faith in ourselves.
This week I’m curious about:
🔥 Organisations as Conversations, not Machines, Anthony Suchman
👀 Relational Team Coaching, Erik de Haan
I have availability for coaching starting October. Please pass on my website to people and organisations you think might benefit from us working together.
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