In late 2012 I found myself in a seminar room in Portland, Oregon wondering if I had made a huge mistake. It was 8:30 am, my seminar with 20 new leaders was to begin at 8:30 am, and NOBODY was in the room, except me. Wrong time? Wrong day? Wrong place? YIKES!
As it turned out, the person in charge of the session thought it was to happen in a few weeks and had not sent out any invitations! After profuse apologies she asked me to come over to her office and so I found myself walking into an office and meeting my client, Laurie, who was almost in tears and profoundly embarrassed.
“Please,” I said, “feeling so awful certainly does not help and I am fine, really!” In 30 minutes Laurie had identified a current issue that she and her team were in the middle of and we had decided to use this day in a strategic planning session. It was productive, shifting some ways they had been thinking and planning, very creative and just a lot of fun. When the day was over, I felt quite energized rather than tired and stressed. How could this be the result?
This is what can happen when ‘NOBODY’ shows up.
When I head what had happened, I was VERY aware that I was at a clear internal choice point. I could drop into an old default mode and begin to let irritation, disbelief, negative judgment and, frankly, concern about what was going to happen to my contract, begin to take hold of my thinking. In other words, had I been more ‘SOMEBODY,’ identified with any self-righteousness, opinions and judgments about what occurred, this might have happened.
However, none of this was present when I walked into Laurie’s office. Rather, curiosity led the way as I had walked across the corporate campus in the rain, with no umbrella. “Well, how about this! How interesting; I wonder what is going to happen NOW!!” This sense of physical, mental and emotional ease made it possible to be maximally open to all possibility and indeed quite an opportunity rose from the ashes.
After we had decided how to use the day, I took about an hour alone to create an agenda, to find provocative questions and receive a few processes that seemed to fit the situation. I say ‘received’ for this is how it felt. I was balanced enough to get quiet and still, internally, and to simply hold the upcoming day in my awareness and ask “What now?” Yes, I have had a lot of experience doing this sort of professional work. However, had I been carrying anger or disappointment or any of many other more contracting emotional states, my own wisdom and guidance could have been much more difficult, even impossible, to access in this very short time.
I loved what I re-learned on this day. What can happen when I, as nobody, show up? Everything.