“Look, I've gotta be honest with you,” the Client said. “I'm here because I want some answers about how to leave my job. I want to start my own business. I've done it before but that was over ten years ago and a lot has changed since then. I know you're an entrepreneur and you've started several businesses, plus I know you've got a reputation for helping entrepreneurs to launch businesses and stuff like that. So I'm looking to you for some answers and some guidance on how to pull out of this job and get going with my life.” His hand covered his stomach as he spoke. “I appreciate this conversation about streams and identity, but I don't see how exploring the nature of the universe and where our thoughts are coming from and all that is really helping me play the game of life over here.”

“I used to coach people on how to play that game,” the Coach said. “The game of life. I'd share my guidance and my instincts and my advice and quite often it was one or two steps ahead of my clients, so I looked like I was smart. Until I wasn't. Until what made sense to me clearly didn't make sense to the client, because of their experience or education or insight or my delivery or God knows what. I thought to myself, what's wrong? Is it me? These strategies worked for Jeena, Joan, and Jim! Then I started to realize that I didn't want to coach people to my own level of expertise or try to turn my past experience into someone else's results.

“I mean, if I told you how I entered that stream, and waded through it to the other side, and you wanted to get to the other side, you would listen to me, right? And I would tell you how I entered the stream and where I stepped on the rocks and how I dodged a frog and where I saw the fish and then, voilà, I came out on that bank over there,” he pointed as he spoke. “And you can too, if you just enter the stream right there!” he said, his voice rising, as he pointed at three rocks that might be a good foothold in the stream.

Not a bad place to start, the Client reasoned.

“Except it's not the same stream!” the Coach continued. “Thinking you can imitate someone else to find what's missing is … well, what's missing. It's useful to learn from others’ examples and gain other perspectives. But the most important perspective – the one that creates real transformation – is your own. Think about it: you're not me. Your stride is different, the weather is different, you might get stung by a bee, or slip on that rock, and then what? I'm not saying that my guidance isn't useful, but you have to consider that your path – your stream – is yours to discover. Some pointers are useful, yep, but what's really powerful is figuring out how to cross the stream on your own. Knowing that you can enter the stream on your own terms is the kind of coaching that creates transformation, not just tactics. Because transformation doesn't come from somebody else's experience. It comes from one place, and one place only. Real and lasting change requires insight. And the insight that will help you cross that stream? It's the insight that you are capable and resourceful and supported in a way that makes everything easier.” The Coach looked at the Client.

“Here, let me give you an inoculation,” the Coach said, pretending to stab a needle into the Client's arm, and deliver an imaginary vaccine. “This is a single dose of resourcefulness; it reminds you that you can do stuff, you don't need a template to follow, and it enables you to figure stuff out. Actually, you can already figure stuff out, but this vaccine helps you remember that fact even when you forget it. Remember, you have received the resourcefulness vaccine. I can tell you that it really works. Even if you don't trust this vaccine, your ability to figure stuff out is one hundred percent effective.”

“But this vaccine to get stuff done, it's imaginary,” the Client said, “you just made that up.”

“Ah,” the Coach said, “but having someone else give you a pattern and a worksheet for your life – they didn't make that up? That looks real to you? Doing what some mentor did in 2017 will create the same results for you today? That's a real strategy? Really?” He shook his head. “You have to play the game, where you are, and how you are, with a new kind of playbook.”

The men continued walking, following the stream, as the Coach explained, “I've done a few things in my career that some people might call extraordinary – probably because they happened to a guy like me,” he said, laughing at himself. “I've found that when you coach the player, the game takes care of itself.”

Underneath a long row of trees, the Coach launched into a story.

At an outdoor café in Silicon Valley, two coaches were sipping cappuccino when a man wandered up to their table. “Please help me,” the man said. Speaking in fits and starts, he explained to the coaches that he had amnesia. He asked both men to take him on as a client, and they agreed.

The first coach submitted the man to a series of personality tests. His IQ was off the charts. The man was well-versed in technology, software, and science, although he was prone to wild romantic notions and futuristic visions that seemed like pages out of a science fiction novel. The man could be belligerent, impatient, and quick to anger – often for no reason that the coach could understand. He was suspicious of authority and traditional systems, prone to repetitive behaviors, probably on the autism spectrum. Immediately, the first coach began instruction on how to become successful by leveraging his exceptional IQ and scientific knowledge – helping him to play to his strengths, which did not include dealing with people. He explained how to stay out of the public eye and cater to his introversion. He proposed extensive coaching to work on his public speaking skills, which were almost nonexistent. The coach crafted a plan to help the man to access success tactics, based on the coach's extensive experience in the energy industry. With his guidance and expertise, the coach reasoned, the man could find a rewarding career in engineering, or perhaps software. The first coach had a deep familiarity with those industries and careers and had coached countless scientists during his career. So he knew his advice would work.

The second coach took a different tact.

He quickly began doing everything he could to remind the amnesia victim that he was Elon Musk.

“If you understand who you are, and what you are capable of,” the Coach explained, “whatever game you want to play becomes easier. Diving into the details actually isn't easier, although it looks that way because you think you have to figure everything out. That approach is based on a misunderstanding. Instead of playing the game, you think that you are the game. ‘How can I leave my job?’ is a great question. But let me ask you: don't you know how to leave your job?”

The Coach expanded on the question. “I mean, haven't you written a resignation letter before? Haven't you received one, from one of your employees? Haven't you had the conversation in the past, where you told someone you were quitting? Come on. You know how this dance is done. You know how these mechanics work!” The Coach was shaking his head.

The Client was silent. Yes, he knew how to resign a position. Yes, he knew what he needed to do. But why was it still so hard? “You've got to wonder,” the Coach said, “why you haven't done it yet.”

“The ‘how to’ isn't the problem, even though that's what it looks like on the surface. It's the ‘want to’ that's the real issue. Do you want to explain your choice to your wife? Do you want to face the blowback from your team members? Will there be people who are let down by your decision? Are you ready to deal with the disappointment, losing the consistency of your schedule, your salary, and the comfort that comes from knowing what's next?”

“Even if what's next sucks and keeps me awake at night?” The Client was looking down, asking the rocks and the dirt. He looked at the wildflowers, searching for some of that universal kindness and insight that the Coach was talking about. The Client wandered back on the edge of the trail, trying to find his next thought.

“Yes,” the Client continued, half-talking to himself as he walked, “Exactly. There's a want-to issue here, disguised as a how-to. There's just a lot of unknown repercussions and I'm not sure I can cope with the fallout or if I'm ready for that level of change.”

The Coach nodded in agreement, acknowledging the Client's honesty. He listened as the Client shared more about what he imagined those unknowns might look like. Financial considerations. Worry over his ability to find something new. Anxiety about where new opportunity might come from.

His fears would prove to be well-founded. While he was working with the Coach to “pack his parachute,” his company was planning on pushing him out the back of the plane.

“Isn't it true that we have infinite possibilities available to us at every moment?” the Coach said, pivoting on his left foot and walking backward. Two steps later, he reversed the maneuver, directing himself to walk like the rest of the humans on the planet. The Client considered the pivot, both literally and figuratively. He stopped. He turned to the Coach.

“I guess so,” he said, still processing the construct of infinity. “Like the different ‘self’ images I shared with my other coach. I was being defensive at the time, but now I see that I can access creativity and innovation at any time, if I choose to do so. My shifting self was just a changing thought, I guess.”

“That's how thought works,” the Coach replied. “We are living in the feeling of our thinking. Do you see that?”

The trail ahead revealed a grove of oak trees. “One person looks at this grove of trees, and says, ‘Wow! I can't wait to walk through and see what's inside!’ Meanwhile, another person looks at the exact same trees and says, ‘I'm not going that way; I want to watch TikTok videos and eat Cheetos.’”

That was random, thought the Client.

“The point is this: is that grove of trees something to be enjoyed, or avoided? Are those trees a good thing, or a bad thing?”

“Neither,” the Client said. “It's just a bunch of trees!”

“Exactly,” the Coach said. “But it is our thinking – the way we process the world around us, from the inside out, that gives meaning to everything and everyone around us. We are not wired to respond directly to the world; everything – and I mean everything – passes through the filter of our thinking. We experience life from the inside out. Our feelings are a reflection of our thinking, and we assign values to an impersonal universe. Those trees are neither good nor bad; they are just trees. But every human being on this planet can and does make up a story – an interpretation – of the world.”

“But that interpretation is just thought,” the Client observed. “And thoughts are … well, what exactly?”

The Coach replied, “Thoughts are just thoughts. When we overidentify with our thoughts, when our thoughts start to take solid form and create prison walls and steel bars and reasons to eat Cheetos, we might want to look at that. Not manage that. Not control that. But consider that our thoughts are just thoughts. They don't have solid form, even when we think they do.

“Consider the man, trapped inside a locked room, no bigger than a closet. He twists the knob, and it turns in his hand, and he pushes with all his might. He pushes and struggles, shoving his entire body at the door – leaving him a bruised prisoner with no hope of freedom. He begins to panic. He wonders how he will ever escape, how he will ever find the strength or the wherewithal to push the door open. His thoughts begin to race, his palms sweat, he begins to imagine what fate might befall him if he can't push that door open.

“It never occurs to him that the door might open to the inside,” the Coach said.

“Like, he wasn't really trapped in the room at all?” the Client wondered. The guy in the room, the Client realized, was trapped in the feeling of his thinking. “If only he could change the way he was thinking!” the Client said, sharing a realization.

“Trying to control our thoughts is actually the last way to create real and lasting change,” the Coach said. “What makes it easier to welcome new thoughts is a simple understanding. Namely, that new thoughts are always on the way. Haven't you been completely stressed out and overwhelmed by your own version of the immovable door, and then … somehow … a new thought shows up? Is that magic, or is that the way that insight works?

“I suspect that for our prisoner, when his thinking settled down, he pulled on the door and found the freedom that had eluded him. It's counterintuitive, but when his state of mind changed from absolute panic, he saw new possibilities. That process isn't something to be managed or controlled but realized. Understood? Because if we see how thought works, we see that we don't have to control our thinking, manage it, or overidentify with it. Sometimes, we feel panic and constriction and all kinds of things, because we are human. But when we recognize our higher nature – namely, that new thoughts are always on the way – things get easier.”

The Client considered the grass beside the trail, spreading out in all directions around him. Thoughts were like the grass, he supposed – always growing, always showing up. He was unable to imagine how many blades of grass there might be, just in this small patch of nature in front of him.

The idea of infinite possibilities, in the world of thought, became something he experienced. The nature around him pointed him back to his own human nature – an identity that was something before his thinking. And, just like the grass beneath his shoes, he didn't have to manage those thoughts, or control them, or overidentify with them. He was moving through a stream of thought, but at the same time able to choose different directions and desires. He could wade across the stream, for example. Or go off the trail. Or sit down, right beside the bright orange flowers that dotted the field in front of him. He was more than just his thoughts, to be sure. His thinking wasn't something to be managed, just something to notice – like a blade of grass, or a tree.

The Coach had picked up a stick and was dragging it in the dirt as he walked. “In 2020, scientists in Canada identified that human beings have over six thousand thoughts per day.¹ The National Science Foundation found that the average person has about twelve thousand to sixty thousand² thoughts per day.”

“So, which is it? Six thousand or sixty thousand?” the Client wondered.

“I'll have to give it some more thought,” said the Coach, crinkling the lines around his eyes. “The point is: our thoughts are constantly changing, like the wind.”

The Client nodded as the Coach continued. “When I worked with my snowboarder client, she came to see something that might be useful. I call it the YAHOO strategy, and it always makes things easier.”

“Yahoo, like the search engine?” the Client asked.

“No, it's an acronym,” the Coach replied. “You Always Have Other Options.”

“So many times, when we get stuck, we get wrapped around an identity of ‘that's just how I am.’ You know what I'm saying?” he asked. The Client did know, because that was just how he was.

“We lose sight of who we really are when it looks like who we are is fixed, unmovable, and limited. That identity doesn't empower us; it restricts us. Keeps us tied to the patterns and prisons of the past. What can we do to make things more fluid and less fixed? That's where things get easier.”

There was a quiet truth inside the conversation. The Coach chose his next words carefully.

“I'm going to lay something on you,” the Coach said, lowering his voice, “And you may or may not be able to hear it, but just consider what I'm about to say.”

The Client was curious about the request for permission, but he was here to learn. He encouraged the Coach to go on.

He did. “You are part of the universal wisdom and stream of consciousness that's all around us. Wisdom isn't reserved just for billionaires, or astronauts, or leaders of industry. We all have incredible power inside all of us. The power to access this universal intelligence. It's where our thoughts come from. I'm talking about that unknown force that's turning acorns into oak trees, making waves hit the shore, you name it.”

“It sounds like you're talking about God,” the Client said simply.

“I'm saying we are not separate from God,” the Coach replied, “although some of my clients call that connection to source, universal mind, or lots of other things.”

He continued, “Can you identify with that?”

For the Client, a door opened to the inside of his imagination. He didn't need a leap of faith to see that he was part of the universe, that he was part of something much larger than himself. What if he didn't get lost in labels, or dogma, and just looked at the way things are? What if he saw the tiny miracles happening in every minute of every day, both inside of himself and all around him? As he walked, he looked at the stream, and the trees, and the bright blue sky, as if for the first time. Because he saw something new.

In the flowing water, a heron of some kind stabbed its beak into the stream, creating a serious problem for whatever prey would soon be in its stomach. The universe brought both miracles and challenges. Difficulty and delight. Sometimes the sun shines, sometimes there is rain; he knew that. And, while it was no resolution or simple answer, he saw that injustice, disease, and even pandemics were part of nature. So was loss. So was pain. But he also saw that there was a kindness built into the system, to allow us to somehow find our way through it all. Life wasn't always pleasant; life wasn't supposed to be. But the world didn't have to be difficult, even in the midst of difficult circumstances.

Looking at nature, he saw his own true nature. His human nature. And he realized that he was connected to a source that wasn't separate. A source that made things easier. Not easy. Because life wasn't always easy. But this source that was driving the stream, and bringing new thoughts to mind, without fail: he could call it God. Or universal mind. Or Bob. Labels didn't matter. Discovery of his true nature did. That true nature was connected to the divine. The unknown. The source of everything seen and unseen. That connection wasn't “out there” – it was inside of him. He discovered he didn't need a priest or a rabbi to access the way things are.

The Client stopped walking. He turned to look at the Coach.

“Holy shit,” the Client said.