PATRICIA SARAH MITCHELL
life coach blog
PATRICIA SARAH MITCHELL
life coach blog
Great Questions!
Turning points are my “thing”; isolating them, locating them, discovering the exact moment and conditions that set free a new thought, disclosed a new path, open an otherwise locked door.
Many years ago I interviewed Candy Statton who famously sang “Young Hearts Run Free”. After her success she became an alcoholic binge drinker. By the time I met and interviewed her she was well into recovery. I asked her what had turned things around, what brought on the moment of the up turn. She said, in what might well be described as a tone of absolute knowing:
“One night, I was so drunk, I went to the bathroom (in a club), I looked in the mirror and what I saw was so dreadful I didn’t even recognize myself. I asked myself how had I got like this? And in the same moment I thought: no more, never again! And that was it!”
The interview carried on, she plugged her new revival single, and we went our separate ways. I was left wondering; ‘where did that thought came from?’.. If she was that drunk, how could she think so clearly, know so absolutely, decide so categorically … Do those types of ‘thoughts’ come from another place in our consciousness, another place with-in our very being.
Some time ago I interviewed a Native American shaman. The life he was born into is markedly different from the life he will exit. I asked him how the change started? He replied “one question” … a single solitary question he asked of himself; a question asked from a different place inside him; “it came from a voice I paid reverence to”
Maybe it was a place similar to my internal voice which asked where my father had gone when I saw his body in the coffin, or the internal questioner that asked where the head strong winds on my vision quest came from. It was not a tone of voice I was familiar with, and yet nor was it unknown. Maybe you know your own inner ‘reverent’ voice, and maybe not, but it is powerful. I wish heard it more.
I questioned the Shaman further; was there perhaps a little melo-drama in the statement, exaggeration at the very least? I asked the question again:
“One simple question lead to all that?” He looked back at me and said with a slight pause and a tone and depth and almost continued surprise: “Just one question!” And the interview continued.
Could one simple question open a door to a different life?
As an interviewer the thought of one question being that important intrigued and troubled me. And then I remembered my first confession:
Unlike most (good) Catholics, I was confirmed at twenty-six. It was part of my desire to understand the ‘other’ world: the world that lies beyond this existence, or maybe just beyond our understanding. I thought I would pick the religion I was born into to help fill in the gaps of my knowledge. I had been so stuck in my head all my life, with a rigid academic regime that dismissed the more ‘spiritual’ side of life.
I had explored what lay beyond at the tender age of six, and no-one seemed to be able to answer my questions. Doing it all alone at six was too confusing and frightening, so I shut the door on it. Twenty years later I picked up where I had left off; confused, fearful and deeply burdened with conditioning, disappointment and suspicion.
In order to be confirmed and receive communion I had to have my 1st confession. Catholics, in theory, cannot be confirmed and partake of communion until they have confessed all their sins and are cleansed. You may well have seen confessional boxes in the movies even if you haven’t indulged in the experience. Fortunately I did not have to go through that. Father Michael, my confirmation teacher, said we could have our confessional in the living room of the Vicarage and the confirmation class should congregate in the kitchen of the vicarage and one by one we could take our turn to ‘confess’ the sins of a lifetime.
When it came my turn I sat in a room resembling a staff room. We sat opposite each other with a comfortable distance.
“OK, right, well, forgive me father for I have sinned” I said to Father Michael, a lovely young English priest.
“Oh look Father, this is silly, I can’t confess anything, its not going to work” I had hit an internal wall and I could take this no further.
“What is the problem?” Father Michael was completely genuine and perplexed.
“I just can’t sit here and tell you things that I am supposed to want to confess, and frankly I don’t have a problem with them, but I have to say I do because that’s just what you are supposed to do in a confessional… Its just too hypocritical to me, and I promise, I am not deluding myself, I really have no problems with the things I am doing, so I might confess them but I will happily go and do them all over again, probably very soon.”
“Like what?” asked Father Michael with a look of slight fear, maybe at that moment he thought he was about to hear the psychotic ramblings of a mass murderer.
“Well, like sleeping with my boyfriend; I’m sure the church doesn’t approve of sex before marriage, and then there is the contraception issue. And if I do go and confess that I do that to you now, frankly, I don’t have an issue with it, and more to the point, I am going to go and do it all over again, probably sometime over this coming week-end.”
Father Michael sat and looked; he re-adjusted himself in his seat. Propping himself up at an angle. I assumed we were at a complete impasse but Father Michael, God bless him, was not going to give up on me; my confirmation was more important to him than me. He leaned forward softly, and said: “OK then, I want you to tell me something in your life that you don’t like, what do you really want the chance to confess?”
That question went deep.
“Father, I don’t’ like what I do, my work!” there was a pause, a nod, and continued silence from Father Michael; it was worthy of a Harley Street psychiatrist. It made me go deeper.
“I manipulate people, I tell them what we want them to know about the product, I tell it to them in a way that I know is going to make them really want that product. It doesn’t sit well with me, and its too easy, or I’m too good at it, and it troubles me.”
I was on a roll now, and I was beginning to see the appeal of the confessional.
“I basically spend my day working out how to manipulate people, and then I justify it with facts and figures, research and trend data. I want to work on projects that really ignite my passion, that I feel are worthwhile, that have some sort of currency for me.”
“What would you like to do?” ask father Michael almost serenely, and without judgment.
I almost wanted to cry. No-one had ever asked me that in such an innocent, genuine way before. He just wanted to know and appeared to have no preconceived idea about what would ‘suit’ me.
“I don’t know. I always wanted to work in television but everyone wants to do that.” I was 26 at the time and I felt like I was both an eight year old and a 78 year old simultaneously, powerless to effect change in my life.
“Well, at least you know what you’d like to do” said Father Michael. It was a wrapping up comment; we were done. I had confessed something from my heart and I had been given an insight into myself, and a possible direction to go in. I realize now that was the first time in my adult life I had vocalized my desire to work in television.
“So, how about three Hail Mary’s” offered Father Michael, as if it were negotiable.
“Great, Thanks Father” I chose not to negotiate.
“I really enjoyed that” he added, and much to my surprise so had I.
Ten days later I was confirmed at St Thomas’s Church in Fulham, SW London. I have never been to confession since. I very rarely go to mass and when I do, in my head I argue with what is passed down from the pulpit. I have no devotion to the church and the politics of organized religion and the religious institutions troubles me greatly.
I have to acknowledge that Father Michael tapped into something that until that point I had not accessed. He asked a question I dared not ask, and no one else had any reason to ask.
Within 2 years of the confession I had moved out of advertising and was taking my first steps into the world of television.
Maybe I would have moved into television anyway, but I have a feeling Father Michael helped me unlock a door, and I will always be grateful for my one and only ‘confession’.
Here are some questions to ask yourself. Pick ONE, contemplate it, meditate on it, try to come from ‘that’ place … the one that goes deep, that catches you by surprise:
1.What will I regret if I die having not tried to do it?
2.What am I frightened to admit to myself I want to do?
3.What is really holding me back from doing what I want to do?
Friday, April 13, 2018