This post comes out of another thought provoking, rich discussion hosted by Professor Stephen Rollnick and Dr Joel Porter in their series of Motivational Interviewing and Beyond webinars.
Click on the image for the full recording
Last week in “At the Crossroads: Life Transitions and MI” various guests provided insights into supporting people through many different transitions: former professional sports people feeling their way to a life beyond their sport; young people shaping a whole new identity for themselves (and thrown back to their former lives by COVID-19); people leaving behind their substance misuse and addictions; patients coming to terms with life limiting diagnoses; and more.
Starting Points
Initially I wondered what relevance such fundamental life changing journeys might have for the – in comparison – secondary importance of the world of coaching endurance sports that I belong to. Even the toughest endurance events I help people prepare for, whilst deeply meaningful, are obviously on a different level as transitions go. Nonetheless I believe it is from the outer edges of support for ordinary people doing extraordinary things that we can learn and develop great coaching practice, rather than necessarily defaulting to top elite coaches. So it was great to listen in and reflect on the relevance to my coaching, to what I see in others I’m lucky to work with and to my own life changes.
Secondly, I believe the trick is… there is no trick! Instead of looking for ready-made solutions to package up and post from one field to another, by seeking to understand what an experience feels like and then delving into what may have helped, or not helped, we can bring an extra depth and richness to our coaching and to other relationships.
On Identity
And so to first guest, Rick Cotgreave from Lane4 and Crossing the Line who recounted his own journey from being an international sports person, fully absorbed in competitive lacrosse, into a much broader active lifestyle and career – including the research and work he now does helping support other top professionals make their transition to new lives beyond their sport.
Rick emphasised how so much of an elite sports person’s identity, their sense of meaning and purpose is typically rooted in the rarefied, narrow world of their particular sport. They are known to the outside world in a rather one dimensional form for their sport. As Professor Rollnick surmised, they are spoken to as an elite player, not who they are as a person. And I sensed an element of all or nothing - of having to be wholly identified and immersed in the sport to succeed. Rick talked about his life as a “human”, then for an intense period a “lacrosse player” then back to a “human.”
Rick’s story also showed how one can be locked in to an identity and way of being long after one’s place in the first team, the competitive circuits or on the podiums has passed. He openly recounted how he realised that some 15 years after leaving the sport he was still introducing himself as a lacrosse player – “I hadn’t really picked up a stick in fifteen, sixteen years but that was still a part of my identity… I wondered if it’s time to leave that behind.”
The insularity and intensity that had helped him to be successful in the world of international lacrosse and all the personal needs and sense of happiness he had by being immersed and successful in that competitive world now had to be realised and found elsewhere. His research and work with elite athletes now focuses on helping others make that shift, one in which they don’t feel the only version of themselves that is worthy is as an athlete, coming to see themselves as “human first, then athlete” and that ahead of them “there’s still a human journey to be had.”
Another point that struck me was Rick’s observation that the relentless pursuit of improvements, measured by what are essentially external, objective criteria, is somehow worthy in its own right when you are an athlete - and that it makes for goals that can never be satisfied as there’s always a stronger, faster target to hit. In this respect, I sometimes feel I’m swimming against a tide of data driven coaching with my emphasis on subjective measures designed to help the athlete be attuned to their own feel and presence in the moment – with amazing times and places taking care of themselves. Let’s hear it for Confidence Centred Coaching!
Intended Transitions…
Through the webinar I found myself wondering if there is a significant difference between transitions that are intentional, albeit in some cases taking many years; and transitions that are forced on us by circumstances beyond our choosing. The dividing line no doubt is often blurry, but listening to the speakers and reflecting on my own experience I wondered if the emotions and motivations involved might be different.
Illustrating an intended transition, another guest, Counsellor Margo Bristow recounted the support she has been giving over many turbulent years to a young patient who had been through all sorts of self-harming and destructive behaviours. Back from college, her patient tentatively revealed to Margo “there’s something going on about my Y chromosome identity.” Margo gently put into words what had been so hard to express: “you are a woman in a man’s body.” She’s now navigating a way to a whole new identity as a woman and preparing for gender reassignment. And Margo is there, ensuring that each step along the way is taken at her patient’s pace, despite family pressures and confusing signals from former friends. What extraordinary bravery – and what compassionate, steadying support!
Obviously not on the same level, though still deeply felt, I also see a bravery in some of the people who come to me. Many are desperate to take on a big challenge whilst wrestling with self doubts, acutely aware of not knowing how it will be or what to do – yet determined to step into the unknown to find the swimmer, runner, triathlete… in themselves. And I know the feeling of needing to summon up a courage that I feel isn’t really in me, such as in setting a new unchartered path away from my previous secure, regular career to what has become my much more fulfilling life of an endurance sports coach (with plenty of zigzags along the way).
Now, at one of those outer edges of experience, can you picture the very early intrepid sea explorers setting off on their small sail ships into unchartered oceans? Trying to navigate by maps that only showed the outlines of unexplored coastlines. Vast blank areas of the unknown and a few warnings scrolled in Latin “here be dragons.”
If you can, hold that image.
…And Unintended Transitions
But what about when a change is forced on us without us choosing or against our will?
One thinks of the pandemic and all the uncertainty and ruptures it has brought to our taken-for-granted lives. For almost all of the athletes I coach those big, daunting challenges that they’d set for themselves were at first held in an uneasy limbo then cancelled.
For one adventurous new swimmer, who wrote up her story on my coaching site here, there was an immediate sense of relief that the pressure was off, then desperate disappointment, followed by an absolute determination to do her big event next year. As it happens we’ve just learnt the 2021 event is now also cancelled. So we’re designing for ourselves a series of challenges that will meet her needs for something truly stretching, life-affirming and fun. (Watch out for an update on the ZigZag Alive Stories page!)
Looking beyond the frustrations of cancelled sports events, Margo recounted more generally that many of the young people she sees are finding the pandemic imposed restrictions really difficult. Several had struck out from home to begin a new life, began making new friendships and becoming immersed in studies in college, only to be brought back in lockdown to their old family lives from before. Maybe like setting off on a brave, unchartered journey, full of both fear and hope, only to be brought back to sit out quarantine in the dock. Feelings of powerlessness, suppressed energy and isolation must run deep.
In my case I couldn’t also but think of the long, terminal illness my wife suffered as an utterly unintended transition. And here I remember how distancing and alienating it felt for us whenever someone said how brave she was – as if she had any choice in the matter. Although she was unbelievably brave I sometimes felt it was a label being attached that neither one of us identified with or wanted, that didn’t ring true to her feelings. I suppose some of what we can feel is so overwhelmingly sad as to be hard to sit with silently.
hope
Back to my question of whether there is a difference in emotions around intended and unintended transitions, I’m left thinking that there’s more in common than is different. And that both carry the risk of being locked in to a nowhere land between leaving the past and stepping into the future - like brave mariners going round in weary circles, never finding the shore to land on and make their home, nor the dragons to be faced down and slain.
“Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.”
Toward the end Dr David Rosengren also made a really interesting observation on the theme of when our central identity changes - whether through choice or force of circumstance. David noted that in the pandemic, with all its anxiety inducing uncertainty and ruptures, many have in effect gone back to reappraising and connecting to their inner selves: the who they are rather than just what they do. In this way we come back to looking for our inner resources to find a stilling contentment. And I think of the magnificent quote from Rebecca Solnit shown here about hope that gives me the energy and drive to act in ways true to what I believe.
Now what’s the relevance to sports coaching, you may ask. It’s everything!
Imagine if as coaches we could create spaces for those we coach and come into contact with for them to feel safe and supported to step into their unknown and find themselves at their very best. Looking back on his time in elite sport, Rick expressed this in terms wishing he had others around at the time who could “help instil unconditional positive regard, to learn patience and provide hope and courage.”
So what do you say?
At various points in the webinar Stephen and Joel brought us back to the question of what would help. What might one say to help someone navigate their way through their transition?
There was a common thread in the guests’ answers of actually saying very little. Being still, listening and sometimes doing little more than relaying back what had been said to show an empathetic understanding counted for more. There were also several variations around holding back to ask oneself “is what I’m about to say really going to help?” - “shut up Margo!” perhaps the bluntest self-talk!
Way more important and effective was conveying the sense of being with someone; able to sit with their mix of emotions; and demonstrating compassion, simple acts of kindness and being so present as to notice and be attuned to another’s feelings.
And with that we’ll leave it there for now. Nothing more to say at this point - though plenty to reflect on. As always please leave a comment below.