To be fair, that’s not totally accurate. He told me I was fading into my background, that I was not seen while against the busy backdrop of the room I was in at the time. I took it to mean I was invisible.

In short, I was hiding amongst the clutter of my office.

He was right. I was hiding. Seems I was only looking for someone to call me out, though. 12 sessions later, I am offering myself to the world to a degree I never have before. People are scheduling coaching calls with me, and I’m doing “Random Talking Videos” to get my name out there. I’m also doing a lot of work for the Earthwaking University Visionary Leadership program, which Mark and I are both involved in.

And I’ve started writing a book. Correction, two books.

In the background of that first call, Mark saw hats arranged on a pegboard across the room. “Do you wear any of those?” he asked.

“Not really,” I replied. “It’s hot out. And with this virus, I never go anywhere anyway.”

“What would it be like for you to wear one, though? Just to tell yourself you’re in ‘writing mode’.”

So I tried that. And it worked. I wore the hat when I wrote, I wore the hat when I edited, and I wore the hat when I read books on the craft of writing.

Wearing the hat made me feel like a writer. A world-class writer. I had no idea such a simple change could affect me so much. I didn’t know it at the time, but this “hat training” was a great way for me to learn how to be inspired on demand. Indeed, I can now become inspired on demand. I am inspired at the drop of … a hat.

I now have several buckets, metaphorically speaking. I put my ideas in one bucket, my client information in another one, and links to my growing list of published pieces in another. I keep track of all my projects in one place. This is helpful because I no longer have to scramble to find information in one of several places it could logically be — that was my previous method of working. I’m also much less likely to overload myself, once I got in the habit of checking my work board before accepting any new projects.

Now I can quickly drill down to what I want to work on, and I can start riding the Inspiration Train sooner.

Sometimes, my days are buckets too. Riffing on Mark’s idea of “Category Days,” I now devote one day a week to learning. Another daily theme is “Wrap-Up Wednesday,” where I devote time to closing open loops in my life.

I can personally attest: Having lots of open loops in my life has been rather draining. Closing them has given me more energy. It has also made more space in my head for grander ideas and greater visions.

Would you like to take back your days as well? Learn about Mark’s Time Creation Dashboard!

The first time Mark and I got together on a video call, he saw where I work: In the middle of my wife’s cluttered sewing room.

See, I own a 4 bedroom house, and have lived there around 25 years.

Yet even with so many bedrooms, my computer was in the bedroom for a very long time.

To be fair, the other rooms were filled with friends, some of whom actually paid rent. So allocating a whole bedroom only for me to use as an office seemed somehow sub-optimal.

Since then, my wife wanted me in my own space. So we set up an office area in our living room.

Then one fine year, our central air conditioner went kaput. The portable units we brought in to remedy the situation drew too much power, and they eventually killed all the power in the living room.

We couldn’t fix this easily, so I moved into my wife’s sewing room. Here I have power and a desk, but the space isn’t mine. This is the space Mark first saw me in.

Mark asked me a question. “Is there a reason you don’t have an office in that big house of yours?”

I related to him the issues I’d been having, and about my theoretical plans to use one of the rooms as an office.

“What would it be like,” Mark asked, “to commit to taking some action towards making that happen? And to do it every day?”

Somehow, Mark knew I was not inspired using a small computer, on a small desk, while buried under the weight of things not mine. All in the hottest room of the house. Anyone who knows about the heat in Central Texas knows this is saying something!

I’m still not in my office. We have yet to fix the electric in there (it’s all a process!) But I’ve moved in a chair and some other accessories; my work environment is more office-like, more homey, and more ‘me.’

In short, it feels better.

It will be even better once I move into my actual office — which Mark inspired. Thank you Mark!

Maybe I don’t know all I could know about these subjects. But I can dive into them on my own. Mark’s assistance has been invaluable, though, in showing me doors I didn’t know were there.

Like most people, I approached Mark saying, “I gotta work harder. I gotta be more productive. I’m not getting the results I want or expect.”

What I needed, though, was some deeper work. Mark saw I was ready for this, and didn’t hesitate to dive in with me.

This “deeper work” is invaluable. Yet it is also ineffable. Even I, the writer, find it too great to be described in mere words.

The possibility for this deeper work appeared only after I was ready. I was ready when I had constructed a solid base for it to appear on.

It’s difficult to become the best you can be if you’re also worried about whether you’ll be able to have something to eat tomorrow. The deeper work does not come until you have a solid basis in the foundations of your practice.

My foundational work can be seen through Mark’s paradigm of “Find It, Document It, Track It.”

Creating the client spreadsheets and buckets for my ideas helps me to Find Things.
Knowing how I use my tools and knowing where everything goes helps me to Document Things.
Keeping track of where I am in the writing process, and where clients are in my funnel helps me to Track Things.

Put another way, Mark helped me connect to the greatness already inside of me.

But it wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t ready.

It wouldn’t have happened without my being open to the synchronicities that happened just before one of our last meetings.

And it wouldn’t have happened had Mark not been there to facilitate it.