Mitch’s Success Story: It Would Be A Cliché, If It Weren’t So True

Mitch’s Success Story: It Would Be A Cliché, If It Weren’t So True

I want to tell you a story about Mitch. He’s 54 and the co-owner of a boutique creative agency. He came to me as a coaching client after he’d heard me give a talk at an event. He said he felt incomplete and unsatisfied with his life.  He hadn’t achieved the success in his career that he felt he should have.  He told me that he would inadvertently sabotage himself by saying the wrong things at the wrong times. And just as he was about to close a big deal, for example, he would shoot himself in the foot.  He had had enough success to support his family well, put both his kids through private schools, and take his family on wonderful vacations. Still, however, he felt a real sense of lack.  It had been a struggle.  He had regrets.  And he was often secretly depressed.  But he didn’t know how to break these patterns, not for lack of trying. In fact, over a 20-year period he had been to see three different therapists, two life coaches, and even two spiritual gurus.  But still, he felt incomplete.  And still his business didn’t gain the traction he knew it could. Over the course of several months of deep coaching work, I helped him identify exactly what was missing. As an eight year old boy, he had felt different, unaccepted, and unseen. And he carried that inner pattern of insecurity with him even into the corporate boardroom. And despite all the therapeutic work he’d done, he had never actually uncovered the root of this recurring pattern.  The difference, he said, was that with...