Average and extraordinary lives

My email signature reads “Coach to extraordinary people”. One time, a client replied to me in an email saying this:

“I have to share something else: I’ve just read your new(?) sign-off line for the first time, and here is how I processed it:

– wow that sounds like too much, calling all clients extraordinary

– i mean, how does he know?

– oh yeah and it also means I’m extraordinary as well, that’s a stretch

– well anyone can be extraordinary in their own special way and seen from a specific angle, so maybe that works

– probably I’m also OK to be called extraordinary, and should try to take that association with that word without the extra, negative layers accumulated “

– I like this line 🙂

I loved seeing his train of thought laid out this way. This struck me as the ideal moment to explore this further. When I get in touch with the extraordinary, I don’t associate it with a sense of the accumulation of any kind, the way that it is conventionally understood. This isn’t about wealth, success, fame or the like, although I don’t think those things are “bad”, yet they seem to rarely serve and unearth the extraordinary and I’ve tasted some of each of them.

Instead, extraordinary means that we have looked, felt, experienced or witnessed something beyond the ordinary. Going beyond the ordinary and making a life there, in the groundlessness is no small feat. It requires tremendous courage. The poet David Whyte from this wonderful interview says this:

“To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or to do anything, except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply, and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.” 

David Whyte

To me, this is a definition of living an extraordinary life. A continual deepening into the mystery of our own existence, without clarity of where we might end up as we explore it. And without a reference point. 

Average 

Average, on the other hand, is what we get when we don’t do that. When we don’t deepen vulnerably into our own uniqueness. When we settle for the loops and roads we’ve traveled over and over again and know so well. 

The dictionary gives the mathematical definition of average as: “constituting the result obtained by adding together several amounts and then dividing this total by the number of amounts.” Living there, as most people do, in the middle of the, first added up, then divided experience of several is a tragedy. A tragedy where, instead of deepening into our own experience, we are settling in between everyone else’s. And it never quite fits. It never quite sits right. This seems and often feels safe, cozy and serving survival. Yet we also fidget forever. Because it also robs us of something deeper, our own sense of vitality and unique experience of the world. 

When we settle for the average is when we settle for accepting other people’s opinions and advice, including that of religion, science, wealthy people, famous people, our parents, our mentors and teachers as the whole truth. When we make that more valuable than our own direct experience with the world, stopping ourselves from unearthing our own truths and clarity of view. 

I’m a coach to extraordinary people because I invite my clients to go beyond the ordinary. Every session! There is no recipe for what that looks like, yet without fail, every coaching session I can remember has an opening, where we can go there. An opening to go beyond the ordinary, beyond the world that we know, and dive into the unknown, the unstable, the mysterious. And those of us that practice that, living beyond the ordinary are those that by definition will be extraordinary. And this extraordinary space, or the mysterious, in the words of Albert Einstein is “the most beautiful thing we can experience.” 

How would you like to go beyond your ordinary today?