Psychedelics may feel like 10 years of therapy in a single session, but if you want your day to day life to reflect 10 years of personal development you are still going to have to do the work.

A Transformation Guide. Interview with Devin Martin

Insights from an elite coach in an essential field.

BY TOM MORGAN

The quote above, attributed to a Greek poet 2500 years ago, is generally used to inspire debate. Should you be a specialist, going deep in one area like the hedgehog? Or a generalist, traveling across many areas but staying on the surface, like the fox? What if this is a false dichotomy? What if the problem is the either/or thinking it demands? Might there be a both/and solution instead?

I coach leaders for a living. Almost all of them have spent more time in school than me. As a proud college dropout I took my education into my own hands decades ago. I took ownership of the information that enters my mind and the values that I assign to it. This has made me a bit of a weirdo; a necessity when people come to you for a new perspective.

The picture above is me wading into a random river on day 2 of 6 hiking over 100 mi on the Appalachian trail. I jumped in way over my head. I’ve never hiked with a backpack, never mind up and down mountains for 10 hours a day, never slept alone in the woods, never drank water from streams, and never carried all the food I’ll need for a week on my back. It was hard. My body hurt at the end of day one. My ankles swole up like balloons and screamed at me to stop with nearly every step.

If you have been following my journey over the past 10 years you might have noticed that the way I identify myself professionally has morphed and evolved. How I work with clients has largely stayed the same, but my title has not. Depending on how people find me, they think of me as being one type of coach or another.

Does the phrase The Fertile Ground of Bewilderment perfectly sum up the current election to you? Does it point to the real path forward when it comes to climate change? How about the way to figure out what to do with your career or your health? If the fertile ground of bewilderment does not point towards a solution, perhaps it should. This is the argument that one of my favorite thinkers on the planet puts forth in his forthcoming book and in the lecture that gives us a preview below.

Ever wonder, what is my purpose? We all want to wake up energized and engaged. We want to live with purpose. Check out this great new podcast all about living with purpose. I’m featured in episode #3

How do you feel about your coworkers? Are they your friends? Your best friends? Do you do your best to keep your work life and your social life separate and distinct? One of the reasons I became a Life & Career Coach was to work with people that I love more. I wanted to blur the lines between friendship and work and see what kind of beautiful mess I could create.

Think back to the last time that you can remember disagreeing with someone else’s actions. Perhaps they acted like a jerk or a fool. Perhaps they were mean to someone else or spewing anger at the room. Perhaps you can think back to a time that you saw someone being wasteful or seemingly unconscious in their actions?

How does your developmental stage impact who you choose as a partner? What skills are needed to co-create healthy, sustainable love relationships? How does your sexual selection process and mate choices impact families, neighborhoods, communities, societies and the world at large? How about the environment or the economy? What does all of this tell us about our authentic evolutionary purpose and how we can discover it? What are the benefits of knowing this purpose?

Shadow work reduces our emotional suffering and enables us to see ourselves and others in a more realistic, undistorted way. Liberated zest for life and increased empathy are inevitable side effects.

Any one here read Men’s Health? Did you check out the September issue yet? Notice any familiar faces? Yup, that’s me on page 3. This issue marks the beginning of the “Grow Your Game” campaign presented by Men’s Health and Rogaine.

You don’t yet have full control over your schedule. This is the situation. No reason to struggle with it. But, in the process of dealing with it, perhaps you have given up too much of your mind. This dream journaling practice is a subversive way of tapping into your subconscious. It is about shifting gears before you go to sleep (if not much sooner). It is about preventing your day job from cannibalizing your dreams….literally.

Why is a meditation practice so hard to stick to? Do you ever tell people you meditate even though you rarely if ever actually do it? For that matter, is meditation even “worth it?” What’s so great about it, anyway? If you’re anything like me, you think about these questions a lot. As curious thinkers and, ideally, doers, who have stepped into integral waters, we encounter plenty of advanced spiritual teachers encouraging us to embrace a sustained spiritual practice.

I have been involved in the Integral community here in NYC for many years, but last year, while I was off living on a mountain for a year I got to know the Asheville, NC community in well. It was great to see how another sangha has coalesced around Ken Wilber’s work, make new friends and take part in both their discussions and practice group. One of those new friends is Terry Poling, the president of Integral Leadership in Action or ILIA.

This past Monday I hosted another Integral Meetup. Our local hero Gilles Herrada presented a preview of his (then) upcoming presentation at the Integral Theory Conference. If you don’t know Gilles, aside from being a former leader of the Meetup with me, he is the recently published author of The Missing Myth: A New Vision on Same Sex Love, a book that asks questions such as: “If homosexual behavior is an aberration from the standpoint of reproduction, why is it widespread among humans, primates, and a myriad of other animal species, and why has it been favored by evolution?”

Have you felt that at times your life is getting better while at others it seems to stagnate or just get worse? Do you have good moments and bad moments? Of course you do. We all do. The reasons for this are many. The world is a tumultuous place. Most things are out of your control. Some are not. You can have some impact on your circumstances. Most of the time this is what we focus on. How can I change my life?!

Traditionally, rites of passage are the ceremonial rituals surrounding the transition from one life stage into another. Birth, childhood to adolescence/adulthood, marriage, childbirth, adulthood to elderhood, secret society initiations, and death are some longstanding examples from indigenous communities.

Michael Phelps has won more Olympic medals than anyone else ever. I have heard a number of stories about how he achieved this. Some people cite his natural physique, his arm span, the size of his feet, his height or the fact that he is double jointed. Some talk about his diet, his workouts, his unwavering commitment, his attitude, his bong hits (really). Some say it was his coach.