NB: The privacy of the coaching conversation is paramount. Any story involving a client’s experience will have some combination of details (name, sex, occupation, etc.) changed to protect identities.
Meeting a Contradiction
I once had a client who seemed, and claimed, to “have it all.” In fact, he thought he had it all, and he was mistaken. Through the explorations of coaching, he came to recognize the mistake, and started on a path to a much fuller, truer sense of “having it all.” This man was a doctor, wealthy, married to a beautiful wife, two bright and promising children, expensive car, expensive house, muscular build, classically handsome. I will call him Mike.
In his own words, Mike was “a stoic man.” He prized his ability to put aside or, he thought, to be completely free of troublesome emotions. Mike credited his stoicism for his considerable success, a success that he openly recognized. By external metrics, he was successful; in his own words, he was happy. Mike did not come to me because he wanted or thought he needed coaching, but because his wife strongly suggested therapy. She felt that he was emotionally distant with her (though Mike denied this). He came to me, he admitted, because he simply wanted to honor his wife’s wishes in what he saw as the smoothest way possible. He flatly refused to see a therapist because he wasn’t “the sort of person who needs therapy.”
The Assessment
Mike’s choice of coaching did not, as he expected, turn out to be smoother or easier than therapy. Things became complicated in one of our earliest sessions, which included the ELI Assessment. I expected Mike’s results to reflect his claims of being a calm, collected, stoic man. The results indicated some of the highest catabolic energy I had encountered in a client at that time. Catabolic energy, in the ELI framework, indicates stress, conflict, and destructive thought patterns; fully the opposite of the calm he projected. Put simply, the results indicated that Mike was not happy after all. We were both surprised. Mike was dismissive: the ELI, like coaching, therapy, emotional work in general, was all fluff. I encouraged him to continue the coaching process and explore the implications of his assessment results.
As we continued to work together, Mike began a process that would lead him to admit, slowly and quietly, that he was unhappy. When that realization first emerged, he was not angry or disappointed, or even relieved: he was confused. Mike knew as well as any outside observer that his life was “perfect.” He had done the work, met the expectations of parents, teachers, peers, and later his wife, and won accolades from his community. Nonetheless, Mike realized that he was unhappy, but was truly confused as to how that could possibly be. He later told me that confessing unhappiness felt terrifying. He recoiled from the idea that the stoic calm that had carried him through life was not his true self, but a façade. As terrifying as what might be behind that façade was the possibility that he was not a true Stoic at all, but a weak imposter.
Investigating Unhappiness
Mike had acknowledged that he was unhappy. In exploring this insight, I asked him to define happiness; if he knew he was unhappy, he might reasonably be able to describe its opposite. Mike first answered as a good Stoic: he had never given happiness much thought, just as he had never thought much about any particular emotional state. When pressed, he said that he would expect happiness to result from a situation like his: wife, kids, job, car, house, recognition, prestige. Mike became frustrated again as he realized that he had done everything on that list and still was not happy. Through our conversations, he finally articulated that he considered happiness (and any other emotion) to be the natural and immutable result of one’s actions: do these things, and you will be happy; fail to do these things, you will be unhappy. His approach to happiness put one of my favorite verses in mind: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt 6:33). This verse from the Sermon on the Mount counsels against worrying about worldly things, assuring us that by focusing instead on holy things, the needed worldly things would be provided. I suggested to him that he was expecting happiness to be “added unto him” by seeking the things he had achieved. He agreed: he had sought the things he had achieved, and expected that happiness would be the natural consequence. Emotional states were, in Mike’s mind, the outcome of circumstances, and circumstances are the result of one’s actions. Stoicism was the rejection of emotion, or at least of emotion for its own sake, that made grand achievement possible. Mike asked new questions: why does it matter whether one is happy or not, if one is a Stoic? More importantly, would achievement and accomplishment, combined with a Stoic manliness, be enough to make him happy?
Mike wanted answers to these questions, but was hindered by the newness of exploring emotions and by his hesitation to betray what he called his stoicism, a term that had become shorthand for all his values. Personal principles and values are often the focus of coaching work, because unhappiness frequently arises from a discordance between our lives and our values. I asked him what it meant, to him, to be a proper Stoic. His definition was incomplete, but very common: being a Stoic means lacking emotion, or failing that, suppressing emotion. Men, especially strong men like Mike, are strong because they do not feel (he was startled when he said this aloud). I encouraged Mike to consider a familiar phrase at the core of Stoicism and some more enduring traditions: Γνῶθι σεαυτόν (gnōthi seauton) – in English, “Know Thyself.” Mike tried again to describe stoicism and happiness, and through his efforts the “Know Thyself” of the stoic met the “Seek ye first the Kingdom” of Christianity to produce a new perspective. To be truly stoic, to live as a master of one’s emotion, means one must first know, feel, and embrace the emotions. After asking him if I could share a quote, I offered an insight from English author Charles Williams:
“To tolerate such knowledge [applied to Mike’s case, the knowledge of his true self] with a joyous welcome was meant…to be the best privilege of man, and so remained. The best maxim towards that knowledge was yet not the Know Thyself of the Greek so much as the Know Love of the Christian, though both in the end were one.” (Charles Williams, Descent into Hell).
Williams deftly combined the messages of the Christian call to seek the Kingdom and the Stoic call to Know Thyself. He offers a version of stoicism that is truer to the ancient understanding and, importantly for Mike, offers far more depth and nuance than a simple avoidance of emotion.
Cultural Stoicism and Ancient Wisdom
Our culture has a complicated and conflicted view of emotions, particularly male emotions, and often values the kind of “stoicism” that Mike followed so diligently. He did not consider emotions, because emotions are the province of weak men. Whether that message is spoken or implied, it remains quite powerful; we often hear, implicitly or explicitly, that emotional vulnerability is a betrayal of strength. In Mike’s case, this was not a martyrdom. He did not do what he was told despite knowing that his true wants and needs were different. Rather, he did what he was told and never considered whether it was what he wanted.
Mike had believed that a true Stoic knows nothing about himself because there is nothing to know. A true Stoic, in this thinking, has nothing to examine when called to “Know Thyself” because the Stoic has no emotions that can harm or hinder. The ancients, however, went far deeper: to know oneself means knowing the depth of emotion, of spirit, of life, not absence and emptiness. Mike had never thought about happiness, taking his definition from others. He had never explored his emotions, thinking his stoicism precluded them. For the first time, his personal call to “Know Thyself” meant something unknown and frightening, but behind even that, something exciting. He had chosen a new “stoicism.”
It was the excitement of this new definition of stoicism, and thus a new definition of knowing himself, that gave Mike the impetus to risk and learn what he truly meant by happiness. He told me that one of his biggest fears in those first moments of exploration was who he would turn out to be if he looked at himself closely. He feared that he would not recognize himself: that he would hate being a doctor, would not love his wife, that his true self would be an emotional wreck. In coaching, however, we do not bring up possibilities that lead you to question your true self and values, and then leave you to navigate those new possibilities alone. Mike’s coaching journey began in earnest when he accepted the vulnerability of the unknown.
The Work of Self-Knowledge
Coaching does not shy away from vulnerability, but rather chases it. For the sake of Mike’s new desire for happiness, we examined his life, his accomplishments, and looked frankly at whether they made him happy. We began with his work. I asked him to describe, in as much detail as possible, the feelings that came up when he thought about his work, paying attention both to the anabolic and catabolic sensations. I asked him to put aside the fact that he was a doctor and look at the job as someone else’s; I wanted him to explore whether that job, if he observed it as a disinterested person, looked appealing or not. Mike was embarrassed when he described his work as a doctor because, as he said, it sounded so clichéd: he enjoyed helping people, he enjoyed being good at something that not everybody can do, he enjoyed solving difficult and life-altering problems. When pressed, however, he acknowledged that, clichéd or not, his reasons were genuine.
As he recognized his unfeigned enjoyment of his work, Mike looked for a moment like he might laugh, or cry, or both. I asked him what he had experienced. He had realized two things in rapid succession: first, that he had a happy and genuine emotional connection to his work; and second, that it was the love of his work, and not his stoicism, that had supported his efforts and success. He was happy to learn that he was happy, but startled that he had become happy without the thing he called his stoicism. I reminded him that he had chosen a new definition of stoicism and asked how this new insight fit into that new definition. Mike considered the deeper sense of Know Thyself and realized, with a wonderful smile, that he had been guided by his self-knowledge, following his calling, without realizing it. After finding his new definition of Stoic, Mike had worried that he would not recognize himself. Now, Mike found that he had followed his interests and even emotions more than he had thought possible.
Sometimes, indeed, people discover that they have had long careers in jobs they ultimately hate, and coaching helps such people find their ways to fulfillment. In Mike’s case, he did not have to leave his job, his training, or his family to find happiness. Rather, he had to embrace that his happiness came from choice. He was a doctor (and a very good one) because he enjoyed it, and so chose to continue it. He returned to his wife after each session, not because he felt compelled by external expectations, but because he knew he could be the husband he wanted and chose to be.
Know Thyself
It is possible to be unhappily successful, as in Mike’s case. He did great things in his life and had everything to show for his efforts, everything except happiness. Before coaching, he was content to live an unexamined, stoical life; it was his wife who saw the discordance and pushed him to consider that all was not right. Mike’s happiness was superficial, a state of being that he accepted from others. He thought that he must be happy in his circumstances, therefore he was happy. In coaching, he discovered that such meager “happiness” is not sufficient. The real work then began, work that continued long after our time working together had finished. His work became that of a true Stoic. Rather than accept others’ definitions of happiness and others’ assurances that he must be happy, his task became more difficult and more fulfilling: to know himself, and to choose his path to happiness.
