A new and exciting development in the life of me. Shortly, I will be working at the Ontario Lawyers' Assistance Program (formerly the Ontario Bar Assistance Program www.obap.ca). I'll be working there part-time as a case manager, counsellor, trainer and speaker/trainer. OLAP serves lawyers, law students, judges and their families who are in distress or are struggling. I've always been drawn to frontline intervention work and this opportunity is buzzing with possibility.

The work I'll do fits like a glove with my ongoing coaching work, especially the work I already do with lawyers. Needless to say, my work with lawyers has been a natural progression from my life as a lawyer. It's so gratifying to know the life of a lawyer and so, be able to help and relate to members of my legal family in a way that many simply cannot. Of course, my work with non-lawyers is just as rewarding. Watching people step into their power and create new and better lives, right before my eyes, is astounding. With this new position, I get to add a new dimension to my experience. Up until now, I've worked mainly with very successful people in creating greater fulfillment and balance in their lives. Now I can add people who may have hit a rough patch, as all of us do at one moment or another in our lives, and watch them climb out and into infinite possibilities.

I'll keep everyone posted on how things are going. And of course, if you know a member of the legal community in Ontario who needs our help, please refer them to us at www.obap.ca. Asking for help is a sign of strength and character, not weakness, despite what the legal culture often professes. We're all in this together.

Happy Canada Day!!

Stronger? Is that what you thought I was going to say? Do you believe that axiom? I just saw Jennifer Aniston reciting it in reference her break-up with Brad Pitt. I assume she believes it to be an undeniable truth of life, as do many others who pull it out of their pockets at specific instances involving challenges in life - a way to make life's problems noble, or even worth every moment of the pain they've caused.

It is an undeniable truth that pain, failure, challenge, et al. are teachers. Most of life's most valuable lessons arise from failure and pain as opposed to success and happiness. It's widely reported that most successful business people failed many times before succeeding in business, and that those failures were essential to the ultimate success.

It's also true that the compulsion of many parents is to spare their children from pain and discomfort - to be over-protective or over-cautious. They pay off the guy whom your son hit with his car to avoid the child's insurance rates skyrocketing, they pay for school so that the child doesn't have to work two jobs to do it, they keep their children from many activities which may cause injury, among other things. While the urge is loving and true, it's result can be crippling to a child's development. How does a child know that they can endure challenge if they are never put in a position to do so. Further, what is the message to the child when the parents "fix" the problem for them: "I don't think you can handle this so we'll do it for you." A child that learns about hurt and failure and recovery and growth is well-equipped to own their own well-earned lessons and take them into adulthood.

So what of "If it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger"? Well, in my humble opinion, it's bunk. Pain and challenge are not automatic teachers. Sometimes, people get shut down or discouraged by failure and never recover. Sometimes those children who've had their mistakes smoothed over by their parents grow up ineffectual and with low self-esteem as adults. Sometimes, the guy who's advance is rejected by a woman, decides he can't take it anymore and never tries again. A survivor of genocide may learn never to trust any other human beings and never to get close enough to anyone to get hurt. Is that strength?

The lesson is not automatic. The growing stronger requires consciousness. I would amend the saying: If it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger, if you choose to be conscious of and learn the lessons it has to teach you. There is no passive growth. It's a choice. When challenge, pain or failure arise, it must be viewed as an opportunity for growth. And let's not kid ourselves; it's hard. Pain can be blinding - like a fog that blocks your view of the larger picture. Learning from it requires real vigilance - an intention to make lemonade from lemons. And while the effort is great, the rewards are even greater. There is no more glorious achievement than the endurance of failure followed by the "getting up" and owning the lessons of it - worn as a badge of honour - evidenced in the new success it fostered.

So the next time someone starts saying that reliable old phrase, throw in your two cents about it. And for that matter, feel free to share your opinions about it with me as well.

Well, week 2 of my 4 week Leadership Training Course in California is in the past now and the learning flows and flows. One more week in August and another in November and I can't imagine the first two retreats being topped. There is no learning like experiential learning. And there is no experience like group experience, especially when that group stays together for a whole year.

I'm exhausted and invigorated and shaken up and inspired. It's so clear that learning about oneself is a lifelong endeavour. Just when you think you're close to figuring it all out, you find out just how much you don't know. It's daunting and refreshing at once.

I took in so much this past week, but the key learning is simple and so challenging: No matter what's happening and where you are in your life, that's where you are and you need to find a way to make that okay. It's as though you're okay for not being okay. It's such a hard concept to wrap your brain around but it strikes me as the key to living life. Living in the moment, without judgment of self or others.

So much of what I just said sounds like tripe if you're not really ready or willing to take it in. And I admit, i'm not always up to internalizing it myself. I can spend an entire call with a coaching client telling them to be compassionate with themselves and not add the pain of self-criticism to the pain of whatever they're already enduring. Then I can get off the call and scold myself for not doing a masterful job with the call, forgetting entirely what I just said to my client. It's a recurring theme: We are so much more forgiving of others than of ourselves. What is that? I fully admit to not having figured that one out yet. But I promise to let you know when the light bulb goes off.

Till then, I'll be witnessing myself with curiosity and trying to avoid self-judgment. Compassion for self is a true challenge. Today, when my coach challenged me to state my greatness and step into it, I fought it like a camper with a PB&J sandwich fighting off a hungry bear. What went through my mind is that I haven't yet deserved such accolades - haven't earned them yet - and if I say that I'm extraordinary and powerful, it's as though I'm rewarding bad behaviour, having not yet reached perfection. A crock, sure, but apparently compelling to some part of my psyche. I'll keep you posted on how that journey unfolds.

There's a scene in the movie Patch Adams in which the eccentric old millionaire who prefers to stay in the psych ward holds up four fingers and asks Robin Williams' character how many fingers he sees. Williams says the obvious - what's right in front of him - 4 fingers. The old man recoils in disgust. Just another simple-minded dolt, like all the rest. But he sees something more in this dolt, so tries again and encourages Williams to really look. Williams stares through the fingers and sees 8 fingers and the old man rejoices.

I've had that reaction to existence this day. There's such a rush on personal growth information, and much of it is worthy stuff. It's all about finding peace, happiness, fulfillment.... A seemingly noble endeavour. But is it possible that that pursuit is akin to seeing 4 fingers? I'm not sure, but it's an intriguing thought to me.

Why do most personal growth pursuits tend towards the pleasurable? Is that the goal in life? Is a happy, peace-filled life tantamount to a good life? Sure seems nice.

On the other hand, isn't the avoidance of pain what fuels so much of the world's ills? We drink too much, eat too much, abuse our spouses, start wars, drive too fast, watch excessive amounts of TV, pop Valium, etc., all in the hopes of running away from or masking pain. And the truth about pain is that really feeling it is the only way to get past it. Yet personal growth work also seems to often focus on the removal of pain. I'm beginning to think that pain and struggle are integral elements of a good life. It speaks to the duality of life. Chocolate and chips. Bass and treble. Life and death. Orgasm and chronic pain. Orchids and nuclear waste. It's all life.

If I imagine myself looking at the earth from miles above it, and looking through it like Robin Williams looked through the old man's fingers, I might see the totality of life. I see snow-capped peaks, and I see starving babies. I hear Chopin and I hear a puppy cry as it dies alone. I smell sandalwood incense and I smell bodies burning in Nazi concentration camps. How is this all to be reconciled? If there is a god, what was his or her purpose for this, if any?

So to me, today, personal growth is living in a world - being in a world - that is as it is - glorious, in both the splendor and the horror. As I say this, I'm a little taken aback by it. It's not as though I'm celebrating genocide or abuse, as much as accepting that they exist and going from there - and maybe even working towards a world with less of them, which I truly believe I'm trying to do. But making that world a little better requires seeing 8 fingers instead of 4 and being truly in what is. All of it. Life. Existence. Humanity. How unsettling and wonderful is that?

The offering that is often heard and passed around, especially in New Age circles, that it's the "journey" and not the "destination" that is worthy of our attention, has become almost trite. It's entered my consciousness at various times, sometimes glancing by and sometimes really sinking in. It seems a peculiarity of the human condition that one can hear a message five-hundred times, only to truly "hear" it a handful of those times - or sometimes never.

Such is the case for me and the "journey". This week, I heard it that five-hundredth time, but for a little while, I truly heard it. Whether it sticks, is my challenge to bear. It's so seductive to see one's present circumstance in a negative, regretful light. I'm not entirely sure why that is, since it's such a downer. Am I a failure for all of the thing I've not acheived or done wrong in my life? As a former lawyer, I can construct a pretty compelling argument that it's true. However, I may, in fact, be a triumphant success story: a man who's overcome physical disability, cancer, depression, loneliness, paralyzing self-doubt and above all, a tragic absence of love, to learn and grow and learn some more, and from the bottom of the rubble-heap, climb out with nugget after nugget of wisdom and power, made all the more unlikely and therefore extraordinary, by the starting point?

It reminds me of negotiation theory, not that I'm a scholar, as much as a practitioner during my lawyer days. Where I am on the continuum is entirely dependent upon where I think I am. I was speaking with a friend who's sued a former employer for $10,000 and who was offered $4,300 as a settlement and she's debating her position. She's owed the full amount, but she has to prove it at trial or settle. She's decided, after balancing the pro's and con's, that she'd settle for $6,000. Why $6,000? And can she get it by offering it back at that amount, or does she need to convince the other side she can get $8,000-$10,000 in order to get him to jump on $6,000? Just like my experience with the concept of the "journey", she goes back and forth on it. It also reminds me of the used car salesman who is selling a car worth $2,000 for $5,000 by convincing the buyer that while the list price is $8,000.00, he likes them and is willing to give them a special deal. The buyer is much more willing to spend money if they believe they're getting a deal, even if the real deal is much lower. It's all about perspective.

Am I miles behind my contemporaries or miles ahead of my circumstances? Am I, as a leader, a fake for presuming to lead those whom I perceive as so far ahead of me in life, or am I, by virtue of my unique journey, eminently qualified, and in fact, duty-bound to lead anyone who will follow?

In the end, it has to be the latter. Each journey is just so unique to the individual. How can my place in life be juxtaposed against any other life, when no other life is like mine? On top of that, who's measuring anyway, and by what values? Is wisdom more valuable than money? Is the experience of love more valuable than career accomplishment? Is the overcoming of challenge more valuable than the nurturing of friendships? There's simply no right answer because those values are personal values, and they should be.

What I know is that each of the people I meet in my life - each and every one - is a success in life, by the measure of my values, and for unique and divergent reasons. One particular friend's journey comes to mind. He was slated to co-lead a tele-call of our Coaches Training Institute Leadership Training Program group. After the community call last week, I was a little disappointed that he didn't jump out and lead more - show himself more - step into his power as much as we know he's able to. I felt compelled to call him out and tell him that I know there's so much more there in him and that I won't settle for letting him doubt himself. All of that remains true. However, I've come to appreciate that that has to be viewed in the context of a whole life - and what a glorious journey it has been. I can't imagine a more successful individual? I simply don't know anyone who's come as far, through as much chalenge, with as much grace and decency and beauty. That's successful. To me. Which is precisely why I want to see it in its full glory, without a lid on it.

A resounding ditto for my friend B, who is an survivor of childhood sex abuse and has raised a beautiful daughter and is a kind and accomplished person by any measure. During one particularly harrowing exercise at our last retreat, I actually saw that horrifically abused little girl standing up there. How the hell did she become the inspired work of art she is now, after all of that? I'm not aware of a more successful person.

Another friend overcomes depression and childhood pain to become a star in her profession and a beacon of goodness. She grows and grows, and the growing pains are sometimes excruciating and lonely but onward and upward because she can't help but become better. Her journey inspires and teaches us.

The stories I heard from the course participants about their lives was probably the most significant learning I did at the first retreat. Person after person, struggle after struggle. Pain so inconceivable it deprived me of oxygen. Blank faces became rough outlines which became more detailed drawings which became three-dimensional, brightly coloured masterpieces. And I've heard and experienced but a sliver of their respective journeys. It's the truest meaning of seeing people from "out of the box" (as described in the book "Leadership and Self-Deception" by the Arbinger Institute).

The lesson I can't avoid taking away - no matter how inexplicably hard I try - is that I too am a masterpiece. My journey too is a heroic and inspiring one. I may not be where my brain tells me I should be, but damn, I am, in this moment, precisely what I am, and that is upon close observation, extraordinary. In the end, my greatest struggle - the barrier to my being a leader and in my full self - is seeing myself from outside the box.

With this realization, I asked my classmates for their help on my journey, because asking for help and being vulnerable is one of the keys to a successful life and I've offered my help in return, which is much easier for me. I then realized that by far the most effectual help they or anyone can offer me is to step into their own power and model that behaviour and that courage for me. To make it possible and necessary. At the core, I need you and them to be who you and they are so I can be inspired to be who I am.