Rock, strong, undefeated and the power of done so…

I asked my client if he knew why I wanted him to “done so,” and if he remembered why I constantly have those two words printed at the bottom of nearly every “construction zone” page in the 12 and 8 Playbooks. He could not recall either.

Here we go again, I thought to myself. How many times will I assume too much? Will I ever rid myself of the curse of knowledge? Nope to both…

I took a deep breath and told my client the story of Kit Carson and why those words meant so much to him and to me. He got it. He gets it early and often. He is not the problem. My building is. Together, we jumped into page 92 and began to build some humility. Again, an area that is much more of a struggle for me than for the man sitting across the round table.

After we read a bit, I asked my client to dig deep and try to find a root of some of his pride. I reminded him that we all struggle with pride. He doesn’t come across as arrogant and works hard at keeping his feet on the ground. His biggest problem has not been his pride. In fact, far from it…

He wrote and so did I. After a couple minutes he put down his pen and I kept tickling my ivories. We didn’t make eye contact and before I looked up from my keyboard, I noticed he had picked up his pen. A couple more thoughts came his way and then a couple more. I allowed the silence to continue a bit more and gave him the gift of time. His pen went up and down one more time. I had a sense he was doing some good digging. He was.

I asked him to read what he had wrote and tuned in. His voice was filled with emotion and cracked on a word or two. He had written some good shit and it had gotten to him, I thought again to myself. As I let his words in they seared me too. He had written really well. His words may not mean much to you because they lack context. Then again, they just might. Let them in and extrapolate to the roots of your pride. Here’s what he wrote…

“I try to be the rock, the strong one, the one that can not be defeated. I need to ask for help and accept that help graciously. I will not have all the answers all of the time. I need to get comfortable saying, ‘I don’t know.’ I need to make myself more vulnerable, more human, and let others see that side of me. Be less stoic.”

FM for my client and FM for me. Freakin’ MAGIC. These are so on point for my client it’s not even funny. What will make these words really freakin’ magic for my client isn’t the writing piece, however. Writing gets us the clarity and that clarity is the starting point, the leaping off, if you will. The FM comes with the addition of two more words…

Done so.

Full circle we’ve come. Full circle in less than 600 words. Pretty good if you ask me. Yes, I’ve got issues…