COACHING THE COACHES,
PART 13
By Jon Rappoport
Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport
Living through your imagination allows you to discover profound desires you never knew you had.
Not living through imagination? You’ll never see those desires.
We’re really talking about a philosophy here. It’s based on the difference between What Exists and What Doesn’t But Could Exist.
As a coach, you certainly encounter clients who, in their lives, are covering the same ground over and over. They’re mired. They’re struggling to get out of What Already Exists.
They want to believe, many of them, that they can move over a few feet and suddenly discover something better that already exists.
This kind of hope is part of the problem. In a way, it’s the whole problem.
The greater the hope they can exit the swamp and find stable ground a few feet away, the more resistance they have to using their imagination.
Why? Because they basically want to trade one piece of What Already Exists for another piece of What already Exists. That’s their philosophy and their psychology.
I had a client who owned his own business. It wasn’t huge, but it had lots of moving parts. And every part was a mess. The disorganization was rampant. It was as if he’d set out to complicate and screw up every single thing he possibly could. And in the aftermath, there he was, standing in the middle of it.
He was very capable, though. He knew what needed to be corrected. He described every system and every employee, and he recited the solution to every problem he was facing. He was actually trying to fix all these problems. So he wasn’t inert.
He confided in me. He told me what he really wanted to do in life. And what he was doing in his business wasn’t even close. It was 180 degrees in the opposite direction.
But every time I brought up his true desire, he backed away from it. First, he said, he had to straighten out his company. I understood that.
However, as the weeks went by, I saw that he didn’t stand a very good chance of extricating himself, because the strength of his desire for future he really wanted was minimal. His energy was minimal. His enthusiasm was minimal.
Whenever I mentioned imagination, he said, “Are you talking about what I’m seeing?” And I would say, “No, I’m talking about what you can invent.”
I tried a few Magic Theater exercises. They basically went nowhere. He wouldn’t play roles. He’d stall and ask questions and resist. He wouldn’t do writing exercises.
Finally, one day, I said, “What does your wife think about you and your business?” He said, “She hates the business. She says it’s wearing me down. She’s very impatient.”
He was basically a man who was sunk up to his neck in What Exists, and what existed for him wasn’t pretty at all. But of course, he wasn’t willing to entertain other possibilities. He had made a stand in the middle of his problems, and if I let him, he would just complain on and on about them. That was his world. That was his universe. He was, in a way, trying to convince me that, for him, no other world could exist. He was determined to play that part and only that part, come hell or high water.
He was like an actor in a long-running play who had forgotten life could exist outside his role. He was essentially telling me, “This is it. Convince me there’s anything else.”
I figured, why not jump in the deep end?
So I began to talking from the point of view of his wife. No intro, no prelude, no explanation.
At first, I didn’t lay into him. I just spoke about my dissatisfaction with the way things were going.
He was silent.
Soon it became apparent to him I was speaking in the role of his wife. He still didn’t say anything.
I gradually increased the tempo and the emotion.
Still, nothing from him.
After maybe ten minutes, he started responding. He couldn’t hold himself back. He entered into the dialogue, as himself—because that was the only role he was willing to play.
So we argued. Back and forth, back and forth.
This went on for the better part of an hour.
He got on a roll. He poured out his frustrations. It was a cascade.
I continued to play the role of his wife. I said what I imagined she’d say.
Somewhere in the vicinity of an hour and a half, things slowed down.
So I flipped sides. Again, without any intro or explanation, I began to play the role of him. I argued my position from that point of view. He caught on immediately and jumped right into the role of his wife.
We kept on going. For another hour or so, we kept arguing.
Finally, he started laughing.
“My mind just blew up,” he said.
You’re a good actor,” I said.
He laughed some more.
By playing his wife, he was wrestling one leg out of the swamp, and he knew it.
It was a start.
That day was the turning point. Things began to go better. He saw there was some definite emotional value in using his imagination.
Eventually, he saw that imagination was his key to the real door he was trying to open in his life. And once he saw it, he responded with great commitment. He did all the exercises I gave him. He entered into the Magic Theater full-bore, playing many roles, even the most absurd ones.
He settled on a plan to fix the several biggest problems in his business and sell it. Which he did. He freed himself from the swamp. And then he went on pursue what he really wanted in life.
For a time, he kept looking for What Already Exists in various forms, but he dropped that, too, in a matter of months, realizing he could imagine and invent on a very wide scale.
This was his liberation.
Jon Rappoport
A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.