I've worked with people in some capacity for close to 20 years now. I have been a social worker, a graduate TA, an adjunct professor, a campus mentor, a meditation teacher, a therapist, a life coach, and now I'm an executive coach and consultant.
I've often said that things would be easier if I could distill everything I've learned from these professions into a statement about what I do. People often ask what I do for a living. It's easy to say that I'm an executive coach and consultant, but when they ask what that entails, it always gets a little dicey because there are so many different directions I could go with the answer.
That all changed over the last few months when I started working with a media partnership company that found me online and reached out. In our initial interview, one of the founders stopped me and told me that he was having difficulty reconciling the person I used to be versus who he was talking to at that moment.
I'll be honest - that's one of my favorite things to hear from people. I enjoy it when somebody who hasn't seen me in a while is surprised by how I turned out or when I meet somebody for the first time and they are surprised when they hear who I used to be. It makes me feel like I've made some kind of progress on this journey of being a person.
Despite appreciating it when asked, I've never had a good answer for it. I don't have that one defining moment that changed everything for me like you see on Sandra Bullock movies. It was a slow process of evolving away from who I was and into who I am, so I said what I always say: "I just walk through open doors when I see them, and I don't waste my time trying to kick down doors that are closed or get into rooms where I don't belong."
I've made this statement quite a few times to people, and while they might see it as interesting, nobody's ever dug into it before, but this guy did. He stopped me and started asking questions about what it looks like to walk through these open doors, how I can tell when a door is closed, and what doors I've walked through on this path that got me to where I am now.
One of the first examples I used was seeing an open door and saying yes to the initial consultation with his company. I told him that after meeting the recruiter, I was excited to work with them, but if something did not work out, I would accept that and look for other opportunities. I wouldn't be upset about it, cry, or say it was unfair, and I wouldn't ask why other people were given the opportunity. I would just look for another one.
He carried the idea over to my work with people, pointing out how helping people recognize opportunities and take advantage of them seems to be a central part of what I do. He suggested that we home in on and try to perfect this idea.
I'll be honest—I wasn't completely sold on this being the primary driver of my brand going forward at first. It seemed too simple and reductive to everything I've done (because I'm soooo special), but as I started looking at it, it seemed more and more clear that he was onto something.
As I began to look back at the last 15 years of working with people, I realized that this should have been clear to me all along. When I first left counseling, I got quite a few messages from people asking me to recommend a counselor who was "like me." When I would ask what they meant by “like me”, they would tell me that they wanted someone who helped them look at options and take concrete steps toward change instead of reflecting their feelings back to them.
I realized that one of the reasons I've never been super helpful to people who are dealing with depression is because I am always looking for opportunities to do something, and that can drive them up the wall. I have a hard time sitting with a situation that is not as good as it could be, and I'm almost pathological in noticing and assessing different options to change things.
I realized that some people had (usually jokingly) accused me of toxic positivity because of my belief that there is always an option and that we can always do something no matter the situation. Viktor Frankl saw this in the Nazi concentration camp he was confined in by recognizing that no matter what our circumstances are, we always have control over our response to them. There's always something we can do.
I realized that I've articulated this to myself and others by saying, "OK, cool," no matter what happens.
I lost my job? OK, cool. Does this free me up to pursue a different career now? Does it mean there are new opportunities I may not have looked for when I was comfortable? I wound up having my own counseling practice, which led to my coaching practice because the job I thought I would have for life went sideways.
I messed up the tendons in my elbow and can't work out anymore? OK, cool. What other kinds of exercise can I do? Now, I wouldn't trade my morning walk for anything.
I'm experiencing anxiety and dread. OK, cool. I've learned that in times like this, my ego is stripped away, and I am forced to rely on something bigger than myself. I always come out the other side better because of it.
None of this is meant to dismiss the difficulties and struggles inherent in life. None of this is meant to dismiss the fact that things happen that are not good and that we cannot accept very easily.
I don't need to tell you about those things, though. The news, social media, blogs, and every other medium we have is dominated by things telling you that life is particularly unfair right now and that it's not your fault. It's difficult to find a website that doesn't have something on it about how awful life is.
I'm not here to dispute that. I don't have a perfect life. I've been honest about my struggles, particularly the difficulty of the last few years. I'm not here to say that there is no difficulty in life and that everything will be fine if you look for the good in it, but I am here to tell you that there are a lot more opportunities available than people think there are.
There are new opportunities in every situation. They may not be the opportunities we want and may require difficult things of us, but that does not mean they are not there.
You've heard me talk a lot about how our self-obsession is the primary source of our suffering. This has been getting steadily worse since the 1960s and is now on steroids because of the hyper-personalized form of capitalism we exist within and the echo chambers of social media.
It's important to understand that the people who want you to click on their articles and buy their products have learned that it's a lot easier to get you to do this by telling you that they understand how much everything sucks and that they are sorry you are trapped. This is a way for them to fake empathy and then offer you a solution that just so happens to benefit them.
A lot of this is done under the guise of good things. Some of the people telling you that everything sucks may have good intentions. Still, in the end, they are robbing you of your ability to make the changes you need to make in your life.
It is true that the opportunities in our lives are impacted by factors beyond our control and that there are people who have a lot more opportunities than others, but this does not mean that you do not have any opportunities. This is the false dichotomy they've been shoving down our throats for the last 60 years, and it is crippling people.
They also tell us that opportunity has to be a struggle. They tell us we have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, hustle, grind, and live a miserable life in order to seize opportunity. To some extent, this is because people all want to believe they fought hard and made their own way, but none of us have ever done anything completely on our own. It doesn’t have to be hard. Many opportunities don't require anything more than the ability to see them and a willingness to step into them.
That was one thing I liked about the idea of walking through open doors - there are often opportunities all around us that we aren't seeing because we are so focused and intent on struggle. I thought that leaving the job I had before opening my own office was a struggle, but as I look back, I see that what I needed to do could not have been clearer. It didn't require me to pick up and carry some kind of load; it actually required me to put one down.
I still remember the moment that I realized that the situation would not be addressed healthily and that I had done everything I could to make it right. This moment of clarity allowed me to go home for lunch and submit my letter of resignation without turning it into an angsty struggle. I hadn't realized it at the time, but I was carrying so much weight that it was preventing me from walking through an open door into something completely different. I just had to put it down and leave.
This is what we're going to talk about going forward. Learning to recognize the open doors in our life, knowing how to assess them, how to tell if we want to walk through them, how to identify closed doors and not waste our time on them, and the kinds of things we need to do and be every day to set ourselves up to see the open doors that are all around us.
For now, take a few moments to consider what opportunities you may be missing in your life.
In what areas of my life do I feel trapped?
What is the story that reinforces this idea of being trapped?
If I had a magic wand, how would I use it to escape being trapped?
What are my options to escape whatever it is that has me trapped? (This question is important. Make sure to catalog every available option, even the bad ones or the ones you are unwilling to consider. It's important to recognize that we do have agency in situations.)
If you recognize options and then weigh them out and decide against them, this will help you see that you are, to some extent, choosing to remain where you are, and that has power in and of itself.
There's always an option.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I look forward to talking to you soon.
James