Your Possible Evolution
Years ago I read a book called The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution
"Our fundamental idea shall be that man as we know him is not a completed being; that nature develops him only to a certain point and then leaves him, to develop further, by his own efforts and devices, or to live and die such that he was born, or to degenerate and lose capacity for development. Evolution of man in this case will mean the development of certain inner qualities and features which usually remain undeveloped and cannot develop by themselves. Experience and observation show that this development is possible only in certain definite conditions, with efforts of a certain kind on the part of man himself, and with sufficient help from those who began similar work before and have already attained a certain degree of development, or at least a certain knowledge of methods."
Coaching is a fashionable term these days. Those who constantly analyze Tiger Woods' success talk about the value of coaching. Here's a guy who is clearly on top of his chosen profession...and he still uses a coach. I think P.D. was trying to say that we all need coaching to evolve. As I reread this passage and thought about it, I was struck by the modern-day relevance of P.D.'s thinking (he died, by the way, in 1947). Although Bullwinkle would have likely lumped Ouspensky into the same category as the pedantic announcer on Rocky the Flying Squirrel..."He's a bit wordy today Rocky", P.D.'s comments capture the essence of why we are offering a course on coaching in 2008. Of course, we gave our course a fancy name (Achieving Extraordinary Career Results); however, those of us who developed the course informally refer to it as the "coaching course." P.D. recognized years ago that people need help if they want to evolve. It was true then, it's true now, it will be true in the future.
By now, most of you have figured out that my use of famous Russian philosopher and Bullwinkle references in this blog entry is a shameless and not-so-well disguised ploy to get you interested in taking a look at our course offering. I'll eventually post some blogs about the sales process and the fact that if you are not proud of your offerings and willing to tell people about them...why bother calling yourself a businessperson. And I promise not to get "Donald Trump" on you, but from time to time I will chat about the business side of my activities. Anyhow...I had one more reason for posting this particular blog. I am a big believer in the "Law of Attraction" (as it was articulated long before the popularity of the video The Secret). Robin and I have always tried to attract interesting people into our personal and business lives. Although we identified our "official" target audience when we were initially planning this course as those interested in having a coach or those interested in being a coach; unofficially, I would like to attract people to this course (and our circle of friends) who find Russian philosophers, Bullwinkle and people like Albert Einstein, The Beverly Hillbillies, Carl Jung, Gary Larson, the presenters at a TED conference and the crew of Star Trek equally as interesting and capable of teaching us valuable life lessons. Who knows where we might boldly go in March if we get the right kind of people together in the same room.
Live long and prosper!
Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.
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