On Facing Storms and Creating Workshops

My last post was on Friday, Oct 28th, the day before I set sail on a 68-foot sailboat to continue the training program with the “Clipper Round the World Yacht Race”. It is required to participate in one of the eight legs of the year-long race in 2023 or 2024.

That post was an invitation to participate in a 5-week group coaching workshop on transitions and crossing thresholds that starts on the 22nd of November.?

I’m a perfectionist and I am very proud of my program, so under normal circumstances, I would have created a good marketing plan to promote it, with nice graphic design, enticing copy, and a website. Instead, as always, life got in the way and I ran out of time. I had to prepare for my sailing trip, reschedule my coaching clients, and fly to Europe to join the team.?

However, I had committed to running the workshop this year as a pilot for a larger program that I want to run next year. I chose to honor my commitment by posting a simple invitation and a form to express interest, which I left on my LinkedIn profile.

The perfectionist in me tried to convince me to postpone my workshop until next year.

All sorts of “real” excuses contributed to my resistance to posting my invitation: it is not a professional invitation, it needs more background material, people won’t understand what it is about, I’m not going to be able to follow up on the invitation, I won’t be able to respond to inquiries, it’s too late to invite, and many more. Sounds familiar?

As a way to follow up on my invitation, my brilliant plan was to record a short video every day from the boat at sea talking about the workshop. Surely they would get viral and I would find a long waiting list upon my return.

Of course, all sorts of challenges came up, the most important one being the ocean itself: we sailed through gale-force winds every day and night ranging between 25 to 60 knots (46 to 100+ km/hr winds). It was a beautiful and humbling experience at the same time.

Ironically, I signed up for the race to test my mental and physical limits and to experience the vastness of the great Pacific Ocean, the great storms, and the huge waves. I never expected to get a foretaste of all that out in the English Channel.?

I was wet, cold, and seasick for at least half of the journey.

I could not envision the idea of picking up my cellphone to record anything even remotely intelligible. The sounds of the wind, the waves crashing over the boat, and the winches grinding to pull the sail sheets would have made my voice impossible to hear.?

At the same time, we were sailing at full speed, moving up and down, left and right with the waves: at times, in the worst part of the storm, I felt like being inside the drum of a washing machine.

I loved it, but I could not record it. My plans failed, and my single post vanished like a wave in the vast ocean of the social media world.

But I’m back, and this is precisely what the workshop is about: overcoming resistance and crossing a threshold into the unknown.??

Resistance will always be there when you are about to make a transition, you are in the middle of it, or you are just past it and still trying to get your bearings. Especially if it is an important transition, voluntary or not. It does not matter in what stage of life you are in, or if you have experienced them before.

Embarking on projects that matter, making career moves, beginning or leaving relationships, starting over again, or taking a year off are all examples of important, often scary transitions.

You are putting yourself on the line, and you don’t know if you will succeed or you will fail.

The beauty of my program is that we will explore individually and as a group what all of this feels like and what you can do about it. Leveraging everyone’s experience, we will discover our blind spots, gain insights, understand our fears, and most importantly, move into action even if we have a long list of excuses and life gets in the way.

I’ll be following this post with more information about the workshop, but for now, use the QR Code below to express your interest and get some preliminary details.

I hope you will join us. It will be transformational. Get all of the details below.