Coaching for real

Trying to become real is not easy. We certainly can't start with a definition of real. Real is one of those words that the Germans call "ur" words, words that are so comprehensive that they define definition. Love, truth, beauty, reality -- these are like sunlight that enlighten everything else but we can't look directly at them.

So let's back into real.

It is hard to imagine anyone more backward than Sarah Palin. She divides America into "real" America and the rest of us. She does flagrantly what most of us do surreptitiously: real is what we identify with and or like. The Lakota Indians defined themselves as "the real people." (That's what "Lakota" means). So the first thing we have to do is learn that what we experience is real to us and coaching will endeavor to enlarge and perhaps alter what we experience.

For example, when I coach style Six, I admonish them not to watch the news broadcasts because those are calculated to frighten us: "If it bleeds, it leads" starts things off, followed by murders, rapes, car accidents, lost children and used car salesmen. News is when the fabric of humanity is torn. The unexpected, the disastrous, the frightening -- these make the news. If you are a style Six, this confirms your worst suspicions about the way the world is. But the news isn't that. It is a description of what went wrong that day. It is so narrow and selective it doesn't have much that is real. Television is always entertainment, regardless of what else it is, and entertainment is diversion from reality. The evening news is suffering as entertainment.