(This blog is posted in conjunction with International Coaching Week . For more information and a schedule of the Sacramento Charter Chapter events click here.)

Like many of you, I grew up in the pioneer West, minus a generation or two. Bedtime stories, stories around the campfire, stories from the pulpit were flavored with the rich folklore of cowboys, Indians, traders, pioneers, gold miners, and boom towns. (To actually live in the middle of where so many of these stories originated still thrills me.)

 

 Throughout my life, one story in particular bobbed up and down regularly in my consciousness, influencing my paradigm of what it means to live a full life. The story is about 3 men vying for a job as a wagon team driver responsible for transporting nitroglycerin over the Rocky Mountains. Each man, eager to show his skill, brags about how close they can drive a team of horses along the rocky, crumbling edge of a cliff. The employer is dually impressed as the first two applicants state “5 inches!” and “3 inches!” respectively. “It takes great skill and nerves of steel to execute at feat like that.” the storyteller would always add. The third man, knowing it was ridiculous to play that game to its next outrageous boast of “1 inch”, sighed and while turning away said, “I stay as far away from the edge of a cliff as possible!” Guess who got the job? It was the cautious and wise third man. (Oh, how I wanted to be cautious and wise!)

Testing our Limits
Now, however, as I back track the steps of 50 years of a carefully cautious life I wonder, “Why, oh why, didn’t I want the great skill and nerves of steel?” Why didn’t I push to find out if the edge was real or imagined? In the Superman movie, Man of Steel, summer 2013, Kal-El is advised to test the scope of his limits. He doesn’t know yet that he can leap tall buildings in a single bound or fly to the stars and back. In the Smallville version of Superman we, as the audience, keep waiting and waiting for Clark Kent to figure out he has the ability and power to shoot like a rocket through the sky. We know he can do it but he doesn’t. Not yet.

The only way Clark Kent can know what he is capable of is to push until he finds something he can’t do. (He never does, right?…except to understand his relationship to Kryptonite) To try and find something that we can fail at shows us many things we will succeed at.

Fearing the Edge
Push the limits? Maybe that is not your style. But is your “box” shrinking? The message of the wagon team driver story, whether we heard “nerves of steel” or “caution”, was to make us fear the edge. But if we keep backing away from our edges the world we live in is going to keep getting smaller and smaller. I have a feeling that the world is a whole lot bigger than we can dare to dream. The scary cliffs at the edge of the known planet and the long fall into the abyss that the sailors in the 1400’s believed in turned out to be… EXPANSION… Glorious Expansion.

The Magic of Being All In
I no longer wish to be wise AND cautious… just wise. On second thought maybe not even wise. I’ll tell you what my dreams are made of. I want to expand! Not the muffin-top or biscuit-can-explosion-at-the-waist kind of expansion but the big bang kind where life is large and new. LIVING, LOVING, FUN, and GROWTH in life do not happen until we are all in. The magic doesn’t happen if we hold back. There is no fear of falling off the edge of a flat world anymore…that has been settled.

Any Dream Will Do

 I am reminded of another gem of folklore (and I am old enough to have possibly heard this original tale before it’s climb to urban legend)…there are two versions. In version one a man has fallen off a thousand foot cliff and is now desperately grasping a branch he happened to catch on the way down. It is just a solitary branch poking out from the cliffside with no foot holds or ledges near it. He is hanging on for dear life and as he is hanging he has a strong thought to let go. With the thought is the sense that Something would catch him. There is an immense inner struggle going on in his head. He knows he can’t hold on forever but does he have the courage to let go? (Oh, how I wanted to have the courage!) The story never finishes. We are left to hope that he walked safely away as he was let down softly into the forest of trees below. The second version is only one line. It subtly refers to the first version by saying, “Let go and you will find you have wings.”

All this said another way, this time by Amelia Earhart in 1937 while attempting to be the first human to fly around the world, is ”Everyone has oceans to fly, as long as you have the heart to do it. Is it reckless? Maybe….but what do dreams know of boundaries?” Any dream will do.

 

 
Lois Payne, A.C.C.  As a women’s life coach and veteran personal stylist, Lois uses her expertise in clothing communication as an instrument for more dynamic change . Simply put, she helps women see their beauty, their power, and their possibilities.  She is also the creator of the CORE FUNDAMENTALS FOR LIFE AND WORK personal workshop which she designed to be the starting point for any life coaching relationship as well as a foundation for transformational personal growth.  She is the owner of COACHING.LIFE based in Northern California, USA. Her mantra is LIVE LIFE ON PURPOSE! Please call or text 916-770-5758, or email contact@coaching.life. She would love to talk with you about your big dreams.