The Client was unable to speak for a moment. The Coach sat down in a nearby Eames chair.

“You okay?” was all he said.

A verbal avalanche cascaded out of the Client. The latest request was further evidence of massive mismanagement, built on an inconvenient truth: his division was out of sync with what the market wanted. Despite the company's best efforts, or half-hearted tries, more nimble competitors were providing responses that went unmatched. He explained to the Coach how he loved to win, but the company and its products were ill-positioned to do so.

The Coach listened.

He heard the disappointment. The frustration. The veiled rage.

The Client felt strangled, shackled, subverted. He had ideas, but those ideas had fallen on deaf ears. Because his ideas required investment, or transition, or transformation – things that, for whatever reason, the senior leadership would not embrace. Why? He didn't know.

The CEO's request for more information was another shoulda-coulda-woulda exercise. It coulda been handled in real time by the software systems the Client had proposed. They shoulda gotten closer to the customer, before a “cone of silence” descended on the bid process, then they woulda shaped the proposal to their capabilities. The bid was lost, in part, because of outdated technology, and a lack of investment in innovation. An investment that competitors had made, but his company had not.

His job, in part, was to outline the forsaken investment for evaluation. The request was a rehashing of a similar exercise he completed prior to the pandemic. The Client wondered aloud what they had missed in the original report. The findings would be similar, although, he admitted, not the same, because of other new entrants and changing regulations, part of the technical details of his industry. Like a similar recipe with substituted ingredients, the Client explained that he would be starting mostly from scratch.

He felt alone. Isolated in his intentions. He was the lone ranger, finding justifiable investments that the CEO would not endorse.

He had to return to Dallas in the morning, and cancelled their Friday coaching session. He needed the day tomorrow, after the nearly four-hour drive, to touch base with some of the team members involved in the failed bid. On Saturday, he was attending a wedding. The event was an all-day affair, so Saturday was spoken for. The report, he knew, would be written on Sunday.

His lazy Sunday afternoon would be anything but.

“I know exactly how this is going to shake out,” he said, standing up from his seat. “I'm going to spend all day Saturday at a wedding.” The ceremony and reception were already on the books. He couldn't get out of it. In fact, he didn't really want to – until this last-minute request showed up. “I can't believe I have to burn up my Sunday working on this ridiculous report!” He was pacing in the living room, marching past the bookshelves, chopping the air with his left hand as he spoke.

“On Friday I'm going to call people and email people and pull information that should be in a database somewhere but we aren't smart enough to operate that way so we will jockey our spreadsheets together. I'm the effing principal at the old school meeting and the work is going to take time and I'm not looking forward to any of it! I know exactly how this is going to go!”

“Really?” the Coach said. “You know how to predict the future?”

The Client wanted to explain himself, but the Coach jumped in before he could open his mouth.

“Do you have a crystal ball? I get that you might have a feeling about how this is going to go, how your weekend is going to unfold, but how it's actually going to occur is a complete and utter mystery. Can you see that there are about ten thousand variables that could impact what your actual experience is going to be, starting with the fact that no one can predict the future?”

“I'm just saying,” the Client said, looking to win this one, “that I know that the weekend is going to suck!”

“Ah,” said the Coach, speeding up his cadence, “Is that an actual fact in the real world, like the fact that water boils at one hundred degrees centigrade, or is ‘the weekend is going to suck’ a matter of opinion? Has your fate this weekend been predetermined?” His voice was firm, the challenge was clear. The opportunity for defensiveness – or discovery – was encircling the Client.

“How can you know the feelings that will accompany this premonition of yours, unless you are making a decision to manufacture them? Or could it be that your feeling is looking like a rock-solid fact, when really it's just a natural manifestation of a thought?”

Silence.

“I'm listening,” was all the Client said.

“I'm not saying you don't know what this weekend might look like. I'm not saying you're wrong, or anything like that. But perhaps there's a misunderstanding about how the future actually works. We think it's easier to say, ‘I know what's next,’ when in reality there's no way we can know exactly what's next. I mean, I don't even know what I'm going to say next. Artichoke hearts. Copernicus. Miley Cyrus. You see what I mean?

“Life is not scripted, no matter how much we want it to be. We say ‘I know’ to help calm the uncertainty in our minds, especially around a potentially disturbing or uncomfortable situation. But the fact is you have no way of knowing what your experience will be like this weekend, until you go through it. What would happen if you realized that your experience is never predetermined? Life doesn't have to suck. You don't have to be sentenced to some horrible fate. What if you don't have to confirm your Sunday feelings by Thursday evening so that you can have seventy-two hours to manifest this emotional disaster area that you're envisioning for yourself? I'm not saying that you can and will enjoy your weekend. Maybe you're right, after all. But there's only one way to find out.” The Coach paused. “Look, all I am saying is that there's a way to face the weekend that makes everything … ”

“More complete?” the Client said. “More … predictable? More … fulfilling?”

The Coach liked this guy's style. Clearly the Client was a fan of sarcasm. The lines around the Coach's eyes wrinkled again.

“How about easier?” the Coach said, shaking his head.

The Client was smiling, too. He wasn't sure if this weekend could get easier. But if there was a way, he had a will to find it.

“Grab that notepad, and let me share some ideas,” the Coach said, pointing at the coffee table in front of the Client. “Let's stop trying to predict the future.”

The Coach explained that planning wasn't a complete waste of time, but adaptability was always a part of human nature. Like the surfers in the ocean, it's a good idea to wear a wetsuit if it's cold, wax your board, and start at a time when the waves are breaking. “But think about it: should you have a plan for exactly how you are going to surf a wave?” he laughed. “What if the wave has other plans? Best to play it as it comes, because locking in on some well-thought-out plan could land you at the bottom of the ocean.”

“What I'm about to share are some tools, not rules, for facing difficult circumstances. For tapping into your deeper nature, when life gets complicated.”

“Gotcha,” the Client said. He noticed a large painting above the fireplace, a mix of bright reds and blues. It was a child of four or five, but the child had pale blue angel wings and a halo on her head. She appeared to be flying across the canvas. Glancing at the Coach, the Client saw how the angel – undoubtedly the Coach's daughter – shared many of his features.

“Take this moment, right here, right now, not a projection of some future one,” the Coach was saying. “Ask yourself this question, about this weekend, or about any difficult circumstance: What else could this mean?

“Working this weekend could mean that your Sunday is going to suck. But what else could this mean?”