Who have you given your unquestioned authority to? Who do you believe without question? For most, there are the obvious people, like doctors, lawyers, or police. From many, there are some less obvious ones, like bosses, some friends, or spouses. I know for me, I have given much of my unquestioned authority away in many areas, especially in the work environment. I work for a very brilliant entrepreneur, he has built one business and sold it, and has come back and built an even bigger business, and I have been with him through both of them. I have followed him almost blindly in both businesses. I have done things that I would never have done before, because I have given away my authority to question him to him.

As I look back at it now, I realize that I have let him control my life in areas where I should have pushed back more. The first example is when we were in the first company he built, we were installing a wireless network connection and the sales person made a mistake in scoping out the installation, which left me with having to build a 50 Ft TV tower on the top of a building. It was a scary and unsafe experience. I did it with another engineer tied to the tower with ropes, just ropes — not safety harnesses. After it was done, I remember sitting down with him and questioning why we had to do it, and he said, because it had to be done and I felt I was at the point of either I go with it or I leave. I stayed and I can feel that that is the point I gave my authority to question away to him.

I do not want to paint my boss with a bad brush stroke. He has been very good to me over the years. When things are good, I am treated exceptionally well. I have made more money than I expected, I have had trips, cars, and wonderful experiences because of my relationship with him, but he is really an unquestioned authority in my life.

Who else is an unquestioned authority in my life? Well, my parents. I have always followed what they have asked me to do. Growing up, especially when we are young, we believe our parents 100%. Usually when we become teenagers, we start to rebel. As I look at that time now, this is when we shift from having our parents as unquestioned authority figures in our life to a more equal relationship. I am not sure that I ever went through that stage, I still hold my parents up as an unquestioned authority.

Why do I do this? With my boss, I do not want to rock the boat, to give him a reason to fire me, but when I really look at that situation. He wants my opinions as long as when the final decision is made, it is executed. For my parents, it is because I never wanted to disappoint them. Funny, there are times that I did not ask them for their opinion, because I was afraid just asking the question would make them disappointed in me.

So, how do I move forward from this place of having unquestioned authority figures in my life? I feel the answer is within me. It is looking at a situation, feeling the question or statement that needs to be made, and standing up and asking or making the statement, and to repeat until a decision has been made, or I feel comfortable with the situation. I do feel some fear around what I have just said, because making a statement or questioning an unquestioned authority might mean that I might get in conflict with that person, and sometimes, I will have to be in conflict with them, because I need to be true to who I am first and ask questions, or make statements, when they need to be asked, or stated.

How will I do that? First, breath, breathing helps me to center in me and release some of the emotions that get stirred up in the moment, two, look at, or feel into, what question or statement needs to be asked or made, and three, step up and ask or make the statement. Will it be easy? May be not at first, but it will get easier as I practice and stand up and be me.

Up until a week ago, I thought Ubuntu was just another Linux distribution. I did know the roots of the word Ubuntu meant community, but that was a deep as my understanding went. I recently had lunch with a local minister. I had known him from some of the activities I have done in the community and had been to his church a few times. We crossed paths at the local “Living Bethlehem” presentation around Christmas time. At the time, he asked me to tell him about my Transformational Coaching and suggested that we have lunch to discuss it even deeper.

When we finally sat down for lunch, we had a good conversation, catching up on each other’s lives and activities. He took an interest in my Transformational Coaching and then began to tell my about Ubuntu. He told me the deeper meaning of the community described by Ubuntu, a community in such we celebrate the connection between all people and not the differences. When one person in the community hurts, everybody hurts. He talked about that even though there are different religions in the world, at the core, they all talk about a connected community, one of love and respect for everyone.

He pointed me to a book, “Ubuntu: An Inspiring Story About an African Tradition of Teamwork and Collaboration”. It is a story of a manager, who are a great individual contributor, but is failing as a manager. The story begins around a long weekend, where the manager realizes that he needs to work the entire weekend to “fix” his team’s work. As he shows up for the weekend, one of his employees shows up to help him. This employee, one of his star employees, is from Africa and begins to tell the manager about Ubuntu as they work on correcting the issues with the work and from there Ubuntu unfolds.

Ubuntu is something that is engrained in the African colture. Ubuntu is how South Africa went from Apartheid to Democracy without a civil war thanks to leaders like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, who embodied Ubuntu and kept Ubuntu in the forefront in the transition.

“Ubuntu” is a wonderful story about how we are all connected. I picked up the book on the evening after my lunch with the minister and could not put it down. I would recommend it to everybody. As a manager myself, I was reminded that if there are problems with the work my employees produce to not associate the problem to the employee and look for the behaviour that can be corrected. Too many managers believe the problem is the employee and use it as a personal attack on the employee, which does neither any good.

We all need to remember that we are all connected and stop looking for things that make us different, but to look for things that bring us together.

One year ago today, December 3, 2010, my mother past away. Last night, I started writing a blog post in her memory. The blog post went on about her last month of her life leading up until she past away. I thought is was beautifully written, and I felt it told the story of her last month very well, but I could not come up with an ending for the post. Ending it with her death just did not seem like the right place to end it. Nothing seemed to fit. So, I put it down and went for my morning walk.

During my walk, I began to wonder a few things. One of the things was “have I been honouring my mother?” When I thought about “honouring” my mother, that felt like I needed to do something she did for others and as I felt into that, it did not feel right. I am not my mother and I do not think that she would want me to pretent to be her, or like her, especially just to remember her. I had to take a moment and think, “What would she want me to do?” and I got that she would want me to be the best me I can be.

As I continued to walk, I asked myself, “am I the best me I can be?” and, of course, I got “no!” and that made me feel really sad, because I know that I could do better, but as I walked, I felt into not being my best and then I felt a warmth, a love surround me, a that it is ok, you are trying, and I started to feel better. While walking, I started to get many ideas on ways that I could improve in my life and situations. I felt myself standing taller as I continued on my way.

So, I will “honour” my mother, not by being like her, but being what she saw I was to be. I know I will stumble and fall at times, but I will get up and be gentle with myself on the journey. My mother loved me for me as she loved everybody around her. I will be my best and know that she would have it no other way. I love you, Mom and I miss you!

I have a struggle with being nice. It is not that I am not nice, I am, but I am too nice.

Growing up, I was taught to be nice to other people. Use please, thank you, and your welcome into my daily interactions and I do. Along the way, I associated being nice with being liked. If you were nice to somebody, they would like you. Generally that is true, but for me, being liked became more important. As being liked became more important, I lost my way. I started to use being nice to be liked and when I did that, I was not always truthful – truthful to the other person and truthful to what needed to be done.

In dealing with other people, I would not always give them the full truth, or I would give them the answer I thought they wanted. I remember one time, I really liked a girl and she asked me if liked something in particular and instead of giving her the answer I believed, I gave her the answer I thought she wanted to hear and she said, “when you change your mind, come talk to me.” I felt terrible, if I had only been truthful!

Another example was when I was in high school, I was riding around town with a buddy and he took out a BB gun and started shooting at stuff. Instead of telling him to stop, because I knew it was wrong, I just let him. Later that day, the police were knocking at my door because we had damaged a car’s windshield. Lucky, I was an honor student and quickly paid for the windshield repair that I was given a second chance, or else I would have a criminal record today.

At a recent workshop, I was asked, “Are you willing to not be nice to get what you want?” and I really struggled with that question, because I did not see a reason not to be nice, but as I looked into the question more and realized that if I unattach being nice from being liked, I feel that most of the time, I can still be nice. In being nice, I am respecting the other person and being compassionate with how I deliver the information. Sometimes, it will mean listening to their reasons, while staying firm on the decision that has to be made. I think this will gain you respect from the people you are dealing with and respect is more important than being liked. Respect is a far more powerful connection than connecting with like.

I realize that sometimes you have to not be nice in delivering what needs to be delivered and when I detach being liked from being nice, I can live in that space knowing that sometimes not being nice is the only way to deliver the information and I am willing to go there when needed.

In December 2010, I lost my mother, which is a story for another day. In the beginning of March, I had a feeling that I should go and visit my father for the first time since my mother’s death. So, I called my father telling him I wanted to visit and he gave me a lot of resistance; he was working three days a week, which he was, and we would not have a good visit and thus, I dropped it.

At the end of March, the urge to visit my father was even stronger. So, being am engineer, I figured second or third week of April would be a good time – plenty of time to plan, but I could not find a flight with air miles that would not have me staying for less than 10 days. Being frustrated, I said, what about the first weekend in April, which was only a few days away and I was able to get a flight which arrived on Friday and left on Wednesday. Perfect because my father worked on both of those days and we would visit in between those days.

That would be a wonderful story, if that was the end of the story, but the first weekend of April was the Final Four Weekend for the Men’s NCAA Tournament and my father’s team, the UConn Huskies, was in the Final Four. I knew this, but when I was booking my trip,it was never on my mind.

On Saturday night, we watched the UConn Huskies beat Kentucky and then on Monday night, we watched UConn beat Butler for the championship. My father was very happy, you can only imagine a 74 year old man jumping around like a little kid! To top it off, my sister called and suggested he put UConn #1 on a friend’s van. So, he bounced down the street a soaped up his van.

An exciting memory that I would not of had, unless I followed the energy.

In my first post, I told you that I went from being an engineer to being a manager of 25 people. I should clarify that even when I was an engineer, I had a manager title, but I really wasn’t managing – I was still in the field day in and day out working with customers installing technology and making it work. There is nothing wrong with working with customers and I still work with customers today, but at a different level. The problem for me was that I was one of the founders of the company that I work at and the company was growing, but I was doing the same thing I did when the business started and I knew that I should be contributing at a much higher level within the organization.

In working with Christy Whitman, she taught me a process called the Desire Statement. In a Desire Statement, you become really clear about what you want and write what you want out clearly in as much detail as you can come up with. So, one evening, I got myself focused and really thought about what I should be doing in the company I was working at and as I got clear, I began to write everything that I could think about for the position that I felt I should be doing at the company. I wrote how the organization would look like under me, I would have a team of managers that reported to me and they would have engineers reporting to them. I wrote about what I would be doing for the team of people and how I would be leading them. I put as much detail as I could put into this statement.

And then, I put it away. It was a clear statement in my mind but I was not focused on making it happen, I believed that it would happen and focused on keeping it clear in my mind. Within three months of writing that statement, my role changed from being an engineer to being a manager of a small team and I was supposed to be managing, not doing the engineering work. Within three months of that, my team doubled and within three months of that, my team became what I had written down. All because I got really clear, wrote it down, and believed it would happen and I wanted it to happen.

One key that should be pointed out is that I not only believed it would happen, what I wrote was believable. It was a stretch for me, but it was not an unbelievable stretch and I believe that helped me attract the role.

Plus, I prepared myself for the role. I started listening to podcasts about management. My favorite management podcast is Manager Tools. Mark and Mike break management into simple manageable actions that you can take and they leave the theory out. Plus, I am an avid reader and included many books on leadership in the process.

I believe that we are all here for a purpose, but I believe most of us are just living day to day, pay check to pay check. I know that I have been there at many time during my life. Why? Because Purposeful Living is not a one time event in your life, it is living your purpose every day and every minute of your life.

As I said, there are times in my life when I knew I was living my purpose, but there have also been many times when I know I was not. For example, about two and a half years ago, I was working for a company that I helped found as an engineer. I am a very good engineer and do great work, but I had a yearning inside of me that said there had to be something more in my life. Something more that I was here to do and that started me on a journey of discovery. That journey started me on my path to be a coach. I started working with Christy Whitman and her Quantum Success Coaching Academy. It was a great program, if you are interested, check out more information here.

One of the major jumps that I took from Christy’s program was to focus on what was next for me. I went from being an engineer to a manager of a team of 25 people. So, instead of affecting one customer at a time, I now affect many more through my team of engineers, plus I am helping to lead those engineers to do bigger and greater things.

From there, I joined David Morelli’s Enwaken Coaching Program and that after Christy’s program, really got me connected with Purposeful Living. When I got connected with Purposeful Living, I realized that I am not only here to live a purpose, but I am also here to show others how to live their purpose and thus Purposeful Living was born.

Am I living my purpose every day and every minute, not yet, but I am living closer to my purpose than I have in years. I am watching it unfold and being present in its message for me. I hope that I can inspire you to do the same.

If you are interested in working with me as a coach, please go here. If not, keep checking back as there may be something here for you and connecting you with your purpose.

Hello,

I thank you for visiting.  I am in the process of rebuilding my website.  Information will be added here as I rebrand my website.  Thank you for your patience.

Sean