137the greatest thing he has taught me is the value of coach-
ing itself.
Once you open yourself up to being coached, you
begin to receive the same advantages enjoyed by great
actors and athletes everywhere. When you open your-
self up to coaching, you don’t become weaker—you grow
stronger. You become more responsible for changing
yourself.
In The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck writes,
“The problem of distinguishing what we are and what
we are not responsible for in this life is one of the great-
est problems of human existence...we must possess the
willingness and the capacity to suffer continual self-ex-
amination.”
The best coaches show us how to examine ourselves.
It takes courage to ask for coaching, but the rewards
can be great. The best moments come when your coach
helps you do something you have previously been afraid
to do. When Hardison would recommend that I do some-
thing I was afraid to do I’d say, “I don’t know if I could
do that.”
“So don’t be you,” he would say. “If you can’t do that,
then be someone else. Be someone who could do it. Be
DeNiro, be Bruce Lee, be anybody, I don’t care, as long
as you do it.”
Coaching’s contribution to my life is illustrated in
these words by French philosopher Guillaume
Apollinaire:
“ ‘Come to the edge,’ he said.
They said, ‘We are afraid.’
‘Come to the edge,’ he said.
They came.
He pushed them.
And they flew.”Bring on a good coach