Personal Notes
Introduction
What Is Important To You In Your Life
Nolan Hergert
Importance of Art (and other lunchtime conversations)
Pick an area
Point A to Point B
Unfinished Business
- 3 Methods for dealing with Unfinished Business
Other points
My Questions
QUEST Workshop Take 2
Point A to Point B
Coaching for Nolan
Risk
Commitment Precedes Creativity
- What else is also True?

Put on by the Center for Advanced Coaching, founded by Hendre Coetzee.

THIS IS JUST DAY ONE / TWO

Personal Notes

Hendre studied and went to seminary before doing his restoring work in South Africa after apartheid. However, seminary / God? didn't really help him fix the problem down there. He studied behavioral science and got classes from the government as part of his training.
Hendre asks the person “what do you think you should do?” instead of telling them. Usually there is no action with the latter.
Hendre always asks “Would you like me to ask you some questions?” before he starts.
Hendre lives out what he talks about. He doesn't need a script! He is the script!
Sam (the other leader), even if he messes up on a few words, isn't as good of a speaker as Hendre in saying clear statements, calling out people, and is shy/indecisive/etc in nature, he doesn't let his limitations/shortfalls stop him from doing what he intends to do in communicating with people in love. Wow. :)

Introduction

“My point is to bring the internal conversations outside and in the open so you can see them”
Things are a lot easier to do when you are in a community
We need a measure of confidentiality in the room. If we don't, no one will open up and change.
“I am not stuck, I have felt stuck”
Content <gathering information> doesn't change people. You probably already know what you need to do! It's the motivation…
- What is the monster that is keeping you from doing what you want to do?
If you do not act within 24 hours of this seminar, you will not act. Nolan: Something about commitment being important
Courage: Doing something in spite of fear / lack of confidence.
Changing your physiology (stretching, going for a walk) will change your emotional reality.
- Me: Is this a true/real change? Or just a false confidence???????
“Think of us as coaches”
- Me: In the good football sense of moderately screaming at you to get back up again :)
- This is the first time that I've met someone that coached me in the non-athletic and non-academic sense. Good ol' LIFE COACHES. Woo hoo!
If you don't do anything in relationships / put yourself out there / withdraw because you don't know what to do or will be hurt, then you won't go anywhere!

What Is Important To You In Your Life

Me: No one has really asked me that before. Probably because I've never had any life coaches before
Michael: “Someday if I get money…I'd like to fulfill God's calling on me to do <church stuff>”
- Small business owners never get funding before they spell out their idea. They only get funding after they've fully fleshed out their idea and people agree with the fully fleshed out idea! Why should we/<normal people> think any different?
- Me: <Flesh out the idea! Go for it! Tell others, then funding will hopefully come!>
- We aren't pursuing something because we don't know how it will make any money. So we take our passions and make them less than because it might affect our stability.
- You want to know the real truth, you haven't made the commitment
What does it help a man to gain the whole world and lose his very soul/self? (in reference to the surgeon lady who detached herself from her emotions / heart)
Specificity = Probability you will do it. Also, just focus on doing one thing and it will spill over into other areas.

Nolan Hergert

I feel like I am chipping away at my own foundation <of faith>. And no one / few are there with me, encouraging me on, and it seems like God isn't either.
“I think about …”, “…, and I thought”. I do a lot of thinking
Does God want me to have critical thinking? Hendre: The Bible is the most crazy book ever written. OF COURSE YOU NEED TO THINK.
- 1,000's of books, and 1000's of books outside of Christianity…something…forgot the reason for this.
Hendre: <maybe there is no answer> <Maybe it's about discovering all the time>
- Go for it
- Can you love someone that doesn't think like you?
- Emotions are thoughts inside you <that haven't been let out yet?>
- Hendre: Anyone else feel alone and discouraged? <everyone raises their hands> Join the club. :)
- Don't let the fact that you're alone discourage you so much. BECOME NOT ALONE!

Importance of Art (and other lunchtime conversations)

Me: Art is revealing the real things? Who said art is bad? We just don't value it with money that much in society.
The sermon that Skye Jethani did was really revealing…LINK

Pick an area

What will you start?
- Making friends for a shared purpose. Fellow laborers in the quest for understanding and action.
- Invite others along for the journey
What will you stop?
- Thinking that I am inconveniencing others when I ask them to help mentor and coach and push me in this direction of understanding and critical thinking.
  - In reality they would love to help someone and see them improve. It'll probably motivate them too.
- Treating loneliness (in doing rigorous thinking) as an excuse to not do it
What will you re-engage?
- Finding mentors/coaches that will push me into more discomfort in this and other important areas
- They value thinking.

I can try thinking for 30-90 days and pray for the Lord to show me clearly otherwise. Now make the commitment.

Point A to Point B

Just because you have truths (“introvert”/“pain in my past”/etc), does not mean that you can't work around it! The blind kid can still skate around! Trevor (blind COMPUTER SCIENCE guy at CMU) crushed you at ROCK CLIMBING during orientation week.
In South Africa after Apartheid, Nelson Mandela and those folks purposely had lots of conversations about the New South Africa for 4 YEARS before having the elections. The “truths and conversations” thing after the elections did not stop people from being convicted, but the point was to bring the truth out.
Coaching / counseling should not focus on Point A (current/past). It's like driving a car only looking in the rear-view mirror.
- Bring Point B as close as possible to the person so that you can have hope and not cast it away as some pipe dream and then take actionable steps forward.
Don't be afraid of the dark. “Inside the cave of <darkness/scariness> lies the treasure that you seek” –Quote by famous guy

We want endorphins, a rush of understanding, BUT YOU HAVEN'T ACTUALLY CHANGED! What most people experience is that on Monday morning they feel exactly how they felt last Monday! Bummed and depresed and stuck again.
A Dude: “Life Sucks!” Hendre: “It doesn't suck enough for you to change it.”

You don't want to be the guy that goes down in history as being right all the time. You will have no friends. And the words on your tombstone will read: “He had no friends”. And you will be right! And no one will show up to your funeral.

Unfinished Business

Write down for 2 minutes unfinished business that you need to get done.
(1) Remote pulse app / presentation
(1) Move notes onto wiki convert dokuwiki using python
(2) Email inbox to zero?
(1) DONE! Email Pastor Andy back to release him.
(3) Security guard at Villa Siena
- I don't want to interact with him because I don't know what to say! Well, then don't. But…that's not what God would have me do!

3 Methods for dealing with Unfinished Business

Get it DONE!
- Stay up late, push through
- Preferred method.
Renegotiate the terms.
- If you don't have a conversation, you don't have a hope of renegotiating the terms!
Get out of the commitment

Now, label your unfinished business. Start tonight with the #1's.

Other points

Don't let the fact that the conversation will be uncomfortable keep you from having it. Do it. Fail. It's okay, it's normal for those who want to win in the end.

We want things fast and easy and hot and think that's the best / best we can do. Man…what a lie.
- What's sad is that that's the only thing most of us know. All of the thinking and hard work is already done for us.

If you want to have a different result, you're going to have to do something different!

We want to develop our ability and our knowledge, but don't want to respond to it. We usually know what we want to do already!
- If we want

The brain functions better with risk / danger than it does with ambiguity. Abiguity and indecision creates foggy minds.
- When you have risk your brain is at least yelling at you that you're dumb in doing this!
- The tension of risk and ambiguity will always be there if you are improving!

Don't let the fear of sinning with lust/pride/selfishness keep you from doing something. You might sleep with the girl before you're married, true, but you won't ever get married unless you start the process (which the Bible clearly says is a good thing)!

My Questions

How do I relate with people in my workplace? Do I actually care about them? Should I?
- What sort of things should we talk about?
What are goals worth pursuing?
What does Jesus / <insert religion here> want us to do?

QUEST Workshop Take 2

Hendre is a firm believer that whatever is revealed can be transformed.
Specificity = Probability of getting it done. The stakes are higher now.
“What we're doing here is from psychology: objectifying the subject.”
Understanding creates the illusion of transformation.
America is infatuated with potential and possibility.

Being emotionally/intellectually weighed down is not the same as participation.

People really want affirmation. “Oh if I were in your shoes, I would do exactly the same thing”. We spend a lot of time affirming our internal conversation instead of transforming it.
It's a lot easier to move a car when it is moving already.
Knowing “Why?” only creates the illusion of change. However, it does not move you to change.
The life you have is the life that you've settled for. It's not bad enough to change.

Point A to Point B

Instead of dealing with Point A, look forward to point B.
You need that despair and tension that comes from seeing what's possible (point B) and what you've settled for (point A)

The way we hide
“You're not a thinker/philosopher, you're an avoider!” Philosophers write down their stuff, put it out there, and get criticism!

Coaching for Nolan

So you're trying to get a high from the workshop?

I feel like I'm not “supposed to” do anything right now.
God calling us does not mean we should become passive.

The vision of Team WorldVision is not to run a marathon, it's to break you. If you aren't breaking by running a marathon, then do something that will break you. This is so that Jesus can work. This bread represents my body, broken for you, do this in rememberance of me
- Faith-based people, “depending on God”: Even Lazarus (the man raised from the dead), died again!
There is no try, only choosing to do or choosing to not do
- “Try to grab my hand”

Risk

Our brains function better on risk than it does ambiguity.
If you are committed, you will find a way.

Before you're 30, don't commit to something longer than 2 years. The big thing is that you finish your commitments. It will eat at your soul if you don't. You can't afford the voice in your head that rightly says “you're a quitter”

By committing to something, the metaphor of solving and working through it will bleed into other areas in your life.

Are you trusting God or testing God? Are you making it so hard for God to work that it has to be a miracle?

Commitment Precedes Creativity

Gravity is True

What else is also True?

Wings, thrust, lift, speed = Flight

Am I committed to getting out of debt? Once you do that, you enable your mind to think of ways to get it done. Or am I settling for committing to feeling sorry for myself?

Do I trust God with having the best in mind when Philippians 2 says “be like Jesus, who *sacrificed* for those that could not give back”.
- Is it doubt when you discover
Follow up with Christine…hah…why?

Table of Contents

Personal Notes

Introduction

What Is Important To You In Your Life

Nolan Hergert

Importance of Art (and other lunchtime conversations)

Pick an area

Point A to Point B

Unfinished Business

3 Methods for dealing with Unfinished Business

Other points

My Questions

QUEST Workshop Take 2

Point A to Point B

Coaching for Nolan

Risk

Commitment Precedes Creativity

What else is also True?