I’ve been looking for ‘my’ coachable issue and perhaps I’ve got it, ‘enry ‘iggens (Henry Higgens).  Just you wite, ‘enry ‘iggens, just you wite.  (Song from My Fair Lady–sung by Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) to Professor Henry Higgens (Rex Harrison)).

Long ago, when I was a deputy sheriff, putting on the uniform created a shift in my attributes and attitudes. There was also a noticeable shift in how others saw me – casual looks became rare. More often, I was given looks that seemed to reflect each individual’s opinion of cops in general – hatred, scorn, machismo, fear and occasionally respect or gratitude.

Changing clothes is never just about changing clothes. Was I two people, civilian and cop? Or was I somehow fully integrated?

Adding to self-image are reflections upon times when I’ve been effectively medicated to treat a common mental illness and times when this has not been the case. Whereas donning and doffing a police uniform seemed like a “this” or a “that” me, being medicated properly or not is like a “this” and a “that.” I am a drinking glass on the counter and, with a slight movement, I am a broken glass on the hard floor. Tens or hundreds of dissimilarly shaped shards but all glass. A glass or a fragment of a glass and every fragment is an image of the glass (simplistic quantum physics?). Humpty Dumpty might fall and break irretrievably but I am never beyond assimilation.

It is an ambivalent life that confounds a cohesive definition of “me.” The coaching journey begins here. Pulling everything into a truthful and comprehensible package that is an unambiguous me. When I stand centered, secure, and confident then I can coach from this place. I am not there yet.

Welcome to the embryo of a dream – Fire Mountain (coaching, transitions coaching, transitions…)