Early on we sat with an idea that changes the size of the work. There’s a finite number of concepts we hold about who we are, and a good many of them aren’t true. Finite, rather than endless.
If the beliefs that limit us can’t be counted, there’s no sensible reason to begin. If they can be counted, each one we let go of is one we never meet again, and the work has an end to it. Acknowledging that tends to raise both diligence and motivation.
Most of us have had a lifetime of being taught who we are and what our problems are. Most of it arrived without evidence. It arrived with repetition. So what’s in front of us isn’t learning, it’s unlearning. In the mornings I remind myself that I’m a happy learner, and then I correct it, because a happy unlearner is nearer the mark.
A Member opened his HotSeat talking about money. He has decisions coming about where to put it, and he was clear about his own nature, which is that under pressure he usually tightens up and goes for safe. He listens to podcasts on investing, he holds a view that a significant correction is coming, and he was honest that he’s guessing along with everyone else.
We didn’t stay in the mechanics long. I asked whether he has confidence in his intuition. He said he does, and then said that he recognises that intuition disappears when we’re in fear. He knows how to lower the fear. He told us he notices those feelings much more quickly now, goes into them, and finds they start to evaporate.
From there he arrived somewhere on his own. His intuition said there’s no rush to decide anything, and that there’s nothing wrong with the money sitting in the bank. My focus is always to guide people back to their own guidance. His was working.
We looked at the other side of it as well, because it’s healthy to. If we feel guided towards something and then lose most of the money, we’ll be tempted to go back and second-guess the guidance. It didn’t work out the way we interpreted it, which isn’t the same as it not working. We get more of what we value. Value the money and we may get more of it, sometimes at a cost. Value freedom and we get more of it. Holding both outcomes as acceptable is what stops us making ourselves wrong.
Something else surfaced that might be your experience too. He said his sense of what he wants has shifted, towards more freedom in how he spends his day. Sometimes what he loves is to sit in a chair in the sun for twenty minutes with a podcast. That option had always been available to him. What changed is that he’s now giving himself permission.
Another Member picked up the trust thread. He said his belief is very strong and his trust isn’t, and that the distance between the two is where he recognises fear. He described trust as a muscle that strengthens by use, and said the Club group sessions work as a mirror for him. He also offered a useful line on investing, which is that we should only invest what we’re not afraid of losing, because anything we watch fearfully tends not to stay with us.
Another Member brought a story about someone who saved for a long time and bought a Rolex. It was the most beautiful watch he’d ever owned, and he was too scared to wear it and too scared to leave it anywhere in case he lost it. He sold it within a year and said it had owned him. The getting was wonderful. The having was not.
We spent a good stretch on a Member’s work commissioning original pieces for people’s homes and offices. He described a process that begins with interviewing the client about who they are, what matters to them, and how they want people to feel in the space. He’ll often travel interstate and spend a couple of days in someone’s home before starting. One client’s work grew out of a poem he felt he had to write about the man before he could paint anything.
A client of his was in the room, and his feedback was that the artwork is the end of it, but the experience of the process was the thing. Months of anticipation and conversation and build-up, and then the piece. He also named the hurdle plainly, which is that commissioning something you can’t yet see takes trust, and he only did it because he knew the artist through the Club. What came out of that exchange was a piece of practical work, which is that the process itself needs writing down and showing to people, along with what clients say about going through it.
That same Member is running monthly performance reviews across his business, with each person reviewing themselves and others auditing at random. He was direct that implementing the change was the easy part and following through is the work. He also described a delay on his home renovation and called his own choice the biggest mistake he’d made. What I put to him is that he didn’t make a mistake. He did his best in that moment, and it’s providing an experience different to the one he expected.
Which brings all of it back to the same place. What we see and experience is an external reflection of an internal condition.
And, the answer I give another person is what I’m asking for, and what I learn of him, is what I learn about myself. That’s the great leveller in a room like ours, and it’s why I’m no guru. Whatever answers I give, I’m giving to myself.
The list is finite. Each correction we make is one we don’t carry forward.
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” — Carl Rogers
