I am mentally and physically preparing for my coaching call tonight. I have watched some 15 videos, researched what others had to say…

I still feel unprepared to talk to a coach. By the way, it is clear to me that you don’t know what coaching is, or you wouldn’t be where you are at.

And it’s not personal.

The coach, so far spent ten minutes on a video to make me promise I’ll show up. The cost of not showing up. I have received three emails and two texts. That tells me many people don’t make the call.

What the coach hasn’t said so far is that only someone in action can be coached.

I have been on many coaching calls and my experience has been that people think a coach is a teacher. Maybe a trainer. So what’s the difference between a teacher and trainer? The teacher provides knowledge, information. A trainer makes you do what there is to do to learn to do, and corrects you in your doing, in your attitude, in your stance, in your posture, in your form. And then you do it again, better. Better this time using the adjustment you got.

Only an object in movement can be coaxed to change direction or speed. An object in rest cannot be coached. Being trainable means you are willing to be in action so you can be trained. And when the adjustment comes, you take it in your stride, immediately adjusting to the new instruction, without resistance, without annoyance. With no ego.

Talking may help with the attitude, the context, the purpose, but does help, doesn’t improve, doesn’t change or correct the action itself.

Everything, even the simplest actions have many components…

…and they can be all adjusted for the best result. Your depth or the lack of it shows here the most.

The measurement in the Starting Point Measurements, how many items you can hold in your brain at any on time needs to be above 1 for anyone to be coachable. Because even if one item can be adjusted, all the others go back to baseline, how they were before the coaching, and you never get better at anything.

The goal of education, in my humble opinion, is to raise your baseline.

Classroom education doesn’t do it. This, raising the baseline, is the purpose of the extracurricular activities, sports, music, hobbies, dance, acting, improv, anything active.

If I were to start today I would actively inquire about their extracurricular activities before I accept someone into my coaching programs. And soon would find out that most people have had none.

I can hold seven items in my brain at the same time And I can adjust any or all of them if and when needed, without dropping any of them.

Taking coaching in stride means exactly that…

If you feel entitled to be the arbiter of the Universe, meaning you live on the systemic level of judgment, the binary level, any and every adjustment makes you drop everything other than your systemic judgment. So you always start from your baseline. You don’t adjust your stride. You stop and have to start over again.

Intelligence is the ability to be able to hold two or more conflicting ideas and adjust them individually. This goes way beyond what F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote: ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.‘

What we see, mainly in politics, because they are so abundantly documented, is that most people, aren’t intelligent at all.

And that is one of the shifting baseline phenomena civilization is suffering from.

I was 34 years old when I left Hungary. I literally hadn’t seen bullying. Not in school, not anywhere. Maybe a little bit before I was nine when I was called a dirty Jew… Or on vacation German tourists do the same. But it wasn’t part of Hungarian culture. The baseline was more: we are in this life together. Today, I hear, bullying is normal in Hungary.

Whatever ugly things you can do and still survive, people will take advantage of.

Stealing, lying, being judgmental, lazy, having no skills, resisting, avoiding domination, not doing much, acting superior. The baseline of humanity is ugly. And whatever you don’t see ugly enough, you’ll do… if you are allowed. If you can get away with.

In my experience, until and unless someone is threatened with death and ruin, they are not willing to raise their own requirements with regards to their own attitude and behavior. And most people, as soon as the direct danger passes, they return to their baseline. To the ugly.

At this point I can safely say I only have two and a half worthy coaching clients. The rest feels can survive without adjusting their attitude or behavior, or they hope they can.

My job, the client’s job in this new venture I am embarking on, is to cement the feeling that there is no way backwards.

Locking all back doors. Why? Because the pulling power of the benefits I am going for are probably not strong enough to keep me in the game. I don’t much care about money, for example. And the current situation is not bad enough to keep me going either. So I need to lock the arena, and consider the project a fight for my life.

Like in the Roman arenas of times past: I am a gladiator, and the tigers are there to fight. It is either them or me.

Unless you lock those back doors, you’ll escape, and you’ll never amount to much.

And that is the new baseline: people in jobs, in relationships, in health that is mere survival.

So is there anything that you can do?

even if all the measures point to the fact that you won’t take action, won’t allow guidance and coaching, either because you can’t or because you are too rigid.

Horrible question, and you don’t want to know that you are one of those whom I am asking this question of, right?

But unless I ask, then what? Despair?

To be quite frank, since I started to write this article, I watched a few more of the videos of the side hustle I am signing up for, and I am finding out some very uncomfortable facts, not unlike the ones you are finding out.

In the business I have chosen, the chances to succeed, judging from the number of failures in it, is about .25%. Meaning that with no additional help (expensive!) 399 people out of 400 don’t make any money.

The people in the success stories all got 1-on-1 help, to the tune of forfeiting their first three to six months of income, while they worked their asses off. If someone doesn’t have that money as ready cash, they likely will never have. So far I have spent one week’s of hoped income… and am ready to throw in another week’s hoped income to get started. And then keep none of the money until I get this side-hustle up to the level where I match my new income from that to my income from coaching, healing, teaching… in this one. Coaching, healing, teaching YOU. Full time.

So what is my strategy? lol… Strategy?

I am going to grit my teeth. That is my strategy to overcome the overwhelming urge to not even start.

I am 76 years old. My heart is 100 years old. My stomach hurts. But the question is: am I going to go out roaring, or am I going to go out in a whimper?

My self-respect will not accept anything smaller than going out in flames, when I have to go out. Fighting. Fighting the tigers, fighting the bears, the lions, because what else am I going to use my life for? Quiet desperation, like you? No. No aliveness, no Life there.

It’s not for me, thank you.

But really, what would I suggest that YOUR strategy is?

I am going to disappoint you. I am certain that you hope that knowing something or learning it would make your situation better. But I say: not so.

Only action can change anything.

I am looking at outsourcing some of the hardest work I’ll need to do. Will the knowledge of the person I hire matter? Not at all, if they can and do the doing and do it well.

The programs I have that are most about doing are all my challenges.

Starting with the Reality Challenge, the skill building challenge, the creativity, the allowing, the validation, the drink your food etc. Even the detach, although it is not formulated as a proper challenge, is the challenge type. Or the Amish Horse Training Method. Or the context courses, the integrity workshop, the Soaring Method. Unless you do the doing part, until what you learned to do becomes second nature, you have gained nothing.

Understanding IS the booby prize.

Seeing, recognizing, reining it in, distinguishing it, curtailing it, stopping, starting, looking longer and deeper, changing your vantage point, looking again, changing your mind, changing your attitude are also actions, the kinds of actions my challenges train you in. Directing your attention, pulling your power back, putting all power in all action, catching yourself, changing your posture, taking a deep breath, leaving the mind, getting out of your head… actions actions actions.

They are also skills.

Skills, that no matter what area of life you try to accomplish something, will come handy, because they are needed. I like people to start with the Reality Challenge… it is deceptively easy… And they get into the habit of watching, noticing, and reporting to me daily. Each challenge requires daily actions and daily reporting. Can’t do it? Won’t do it? Guaranteed you won’t succeed.

I did a search on Quora. Many people ask: can you buy a course for a hundred bucks that teaches you how to generate a new income?

The answer is no.

This program I am ‘auditioning’ for will cost me close to 13 grands, and a ton of work before I can keep a penny of what it will make. This, even though I already have half of the skills that will be needed. Skills that helped me making money on the internet for the past 28 years. If I can put more money in this program, I will… It’s an investment.

You’ll either invest in something that rusts, rots, and depreciates, or you invest in something that increases its value over time.

Your choice.

Read the original article: Shifting baseline, or how I prepare for my side-hustle gig?