“-You work at a gas station
-This is a service station. There is no higher purpose
-Pumping gas?
-Service others”
                                                               The Peaceful Warrior

As I walk in my path to becoming a Life Coach, I have encountered certain definitions and ideas about what it means to be a Coach, some of them depend greatly on what coaching is not. Seems to me that, being a relatively new field, a solid definition that applies for every situation and for every one is yet to be found. On the other hand, coaching is a field that depends greatly of the coach and even more of the coachee, depends on learning style, cultural background, life experience and indeed is impacted greatly by the every day circumstances that arise for each and everyone of us.

Right now, according to my experience, my stage of learning, my perspective, I can say that for me:

Coaching is one of the most noble professions one can be involved with. Coaching is being a helping hand, is to listen, to observe, to question and to challenge, but most important of all is to help the coachee make their dreams come true. Is to help design the action plan that will lead them out of the current set of circumstances and into the achievement of their goals. Coaches live their life with their hand outstretched waiting for the client that will come along and grab it, and from that moment on become a partnership. Coaches provide a most important service by listening, and support and be there for the client, without regret, without judgement, without prejudice. How many of us can say that we have someone in our life with those characteristics? How many times in our lives have we found a companion like that?

I truly believe that values, goals and dreams represent the highest of the human spirit, they are the purest form of an idea, represents the good in every one of us. They connects us with ourselves and serve as a abridge that puts us in touch with our surroundings. A coach is in service of a client who wants to achieve goals and make their dreams come true, my conclusion is that we are in service of the best that people around us has to offer. We remain in touch with the best part of our coachees, we see the light inside them and help them bring it out for the world to see. We are in the business of bringing the best in people out for all the world to share.

With this belief in my mind and my heart is that I wake up everyday and try to live my life and conduct my relation with my family, friends and, of course, my coachees.

Until the next time we meet, I leave you peace, love and light.

Copyright©2011 Leonardo S. Sevilla B. All Rights Reserved

“Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. “
Khalil Gibran

Dear friend, let’s play a game for a moment. I’m sure that in the course of today you have to make a decision of some importance, I’m not guessing, but in the course of any given day we are bound to make a couple of those, so take one and now imagine that through you door enters a man, you see him and immediately sense something a little off about him, you can not exactly pinpoint what, but you see there’s something that catches  your attention. The man sits in front of you and smiles, asks your name, but you feel that he already knows the answer, just by the way he’s looking at you. He then proceeds to ask you about your day and little things like that. After a few minutes of conversation this stranger comes closer, gives a little touch on your shoulder, looks deep into your eyes and with a big smile on his face tells you frankly “The decision you’re going to make is the right one.” you ask him how he knows, and he tells you he has the gift of second sight, and he’s absolutely sure, he’s seen the future and he knows for a fact that the decision is the right one, he has seen you happy and successful in the future.

Next, in this little game of us, I ask you Fellow Traveler: How would you feel? How would you go about making the decision? You’re now sure that you can not fail!! If you are not completely sold, imagine that instead of a stranger, the one telling you about your success is a future version of yourself! Now? would you completely trust? You’ve known yourself for ever, you know you can not lie to yourself. How would you face this decision now?

My guess is that you would be worry-free, that you would completely trust in what you’re doing. Failure would be a word you would not use anymore.

Well, Fellow Traveler, what is stopping you from feeling this way now? The answer is: only yourself. You’re hearing the present You, the one afraid that you can fail, or a past version of You, the one that only remembers about your failures and mistakes. Imagine this future version of you coming to you and telling with a smile that you are right, you are always right, and then make him the present version of you. Listen to what you really want, stop the lies that you tell yourself, be aware of who you really are, here lie the answers to every question, to every decision and are the beginning of every action. Be one with yourself and nothing will stop you.

Face the day knowing for a fact that you can not fail, everything we do leaves us a teaching, leaves us a moment to remember, but be not a slave of memory, let it speak from a place of wisdom.

Until we learn something new together, Fellow Traveler, I leave you peace, love and light.

Copyright©2011 Leonardo S. Sevilla B. All Rights Reserved

Fellow Traveler I invite you to click on the next video.

A friend of mine sent this link to me on an e-mail. I clicked and waited to see something funny, as this links tend to be. So I was prepared to have a couple of laughs and then dismiss into oblivion as one tends to do in those cases. Then I first this person, and hear his breathing, then I thought that it was something from the Cirque du Soleil. Then the guy in the video started doing his thing and from that point on I was captured by this real magician. At a certain point during the video they show a woman in the audience, her mouth open in surprise and as it is in these cases, she was not aware of such a gesture, I’m sure than many of the watchers of this video had caught themselves with the same expression in their faces, maybe one of them is you My Dear Fellow Traveler.

Right about now, you must be wondering what does this video has to do with what I usually write in this electronic pages of ours. Well, as I was watching this wonderful act, a couple of things came to my mind that related to coaching and to life in general. As you may have deduced by now, I try to find parallelism in every art expression, may it be movies, music, books, graphic novels, tv, paintings and almost everything that involves an act of creation from a fellow human being.

Let’s walk thought this video together my friend, and let’s see what we can learn from it.

The performer stands first in concentration, right? See his expression as he prepares, hear and feel his breathing, the man’s face shows no anger, no rage, and most importantly, no fear. His is a calm concentration, he is in the here and in the now, hes oblivious to everything else, there’s only him, his breathing and the twigs he’s about to use. You can tell that in his mind he already saw what he wants to achieve, his whole being is aware and is in accordance with what he wants to do. The state of mind of the “here and now” is something we hear a lot about, most of us think that only belongs to yogis, ballet dancers or that it is a cliche used by every professional sportsman when interviewed after a superb performance on the field or the court. The truth is that it is a state achievable by every single one of us, if you choose to, and have a little discipline, you can achieve it, and not only when performing or playing, but on your everyday activities. This state can be reached when we abandon the judgment state of mind, when we stop looking out and start looking in. The shortest path to this state is by eliminating the negative emotions from ourselves, fear, anger, envy, impede our peaceful awareness, they contaminate everything as they become filters under which we observe everything around us. When you stop comparing, when you do what you have to do, and do it with joy, not only because you are getting something out of it, but because you love what you do, every moment, of every day, and be sure, you will get more out of it if you do it this way.

Next, he walks to the pile of twigs, and he is already balancing one little piece of wood in his finger, his feet seem to barely touch the ground as he moves, his eyes fixed on where he is going. As he gets next to the pile he stops and picks up the next twig he is going to balance, only after he looks at them all and decides which one is next. Now, think of how would it be if you got this state of mind, where there’s only you, your breathing and your doing. How would you move? If your answer is, “I would move with purpose, there would not be a wasted movement” I tend to agree with you. Sometimes we move in our life walking in one direction with our eyes put in another point in space different from that where we are headed. And now I ask you, how many times have you or someone close to you have hit a post or some one else, while walking this way? It is the same with our lives, if you walk like this on the path of our life, eventually you will find your goals having a violent meeting with a hard object, in turn this will result in sadness or anger, disillution  will follow and heading straight for depression.

The performer then starts to place the twigs one by one in perfect balance, and after each piece he gets down, flexes his knees and picks up the next piece of his creation. If you watch the arm of the hand which is holding the ones that are already in place, you see that it stays quiet, unmoved, almost fixed in space. This is where things start to get even more interesting, he finds the next step of his creation, do not loose sight of it, but at the same time he keeps perfect balance of what he has already achieved. How many times we get lost in our own path? how many times have we heard the question: How can I achieve balance? We find friends and family saying things like this every day, and many a day, we ourselves scream inside our heads in desperation, because “twigs” keep falling from our hands as we try to achieve something new.  See how carefully, this man picks up a piece and gently puts it in place, how gently he makes it part of the whole, but if you watch closely at his face, he keeps a calm face, focus expression, clear eyes, maybe even a little glow of happiness. That is exactly how you can achieve balance in your every day life, with careful and peaceful attention, with a peaceful breathing, with every little goal being treated with the same attention, the same careful approach, always being aware that there are no such things as little details, every little piece contributes to the creation of the grand scheme of our own creation.

See also how after putting some of the pieces he goes back, to the last one before that, and checks its position, his hand feels a little of the balance is lost, and he corrects this by moving it a millimeter or two. You too have to go back a little, check how the last thing you did works with the rest of you day, and then do not be afraid to go back a little, and check what ever factor has to, and can be moved and adjusted, so the rest of the pieces won’t fall down.

When he finishes putting pieces the artist moves in a complete circle, he takes the whole thing and lifts it above his head and then moves it down and places it on top of his head, for every one to see. This, of course, is not only valid, but necessary, we want to be acknowledge for the milestones that we reach, it is food for our souls. It motivates us and keeps us going with even clearer concentration, with better and brighter goals. You need to see this part of the process not as gloating, approach it not with an “in-your-face” attitude, but with the same joy that you found in creating your own piece, with the humility you needed at every stage of its construction. Feel the joy of sharing your creation, do not fear to loose it, or you will become a slave of it.

See and appreciate the final structure, is ephemeral, but it is beautiful, the pattern is wonderful. That is the look of a balanced life, when you are concentrated, when you are at peace, when you have a place and a time for everything you see and feel that you have a beautiful life, this fuels your motivation and strengthens your inner peace creating a powerful and virtuous cycle in your life.

Until our paths cross again in the Grand Scheme of the Balance of Things, I leave you Love, Light & Piece.

Copyright©2011 Leonardo S. Sevilla B. All Rights Reserved

“A work of art is finished, from the point of view of the artist, when feeling and perception have resulted in a spiritual synthesis.” Hans Hofmann

When I was young, I, like many young boys, enjoyed drawing, it was a nice way to get away. I remember putting into paper naval battles, air battles, Star Wars battles… yup, a little belligerent and agressive. Then started drawing football players (a different kind of war, but war none the less), and sometimes soccer players, worked my way up to flowers, isolated eyes and more complex things. When I was around 12 I started attending drawing classes, my first and only work there was the drawing of a mayan building as it was discovered by a spanish expedition, there was a big sky, the building itself and way too much vegetation. When I was halfway through it, I stopped attending the school, it was way too slow, and way to detailed for my taste. I also remember drawing a rendition of an Iron Maiden poster, it was Stranger in a Strange Land. It showed Eddie dressed in a Clint Eastwood coat and hat. Trough the open coat one could see the body of Eddie, a yellow skeleton with muscles and electronic and mechanical parts intertwined, for some reason this drawing was something that I was going to deliver as homework. I did the hat, then face and the chest and part of the abdomen, and without modesty I can tell it was going great, awsome, the shadows and light were there, giving the impression that the drawing was coming out of the page, the trace were lines in the paper, but the colored parts were jumping out of it. I felt the usual rush that one gets when halfway trough a job well done, the little pinch of pride was there, glowing. Then I took the dark purple pencil and started coloring a shadow on the yellow skelleton right next to the coat… the result, in my eyes, was merciless, horrible, it completely ruined the whole thing, from top to bottom. In a split second, rage boiled inside, tears came to my eyes, my fists where two red stones with white knuckles, maybe there was even foam coming out of my mouth, or something like it, because although I was being loud and nasty, no one dared come to the door of my room, after a little steam had been vent, my father came to my room and very calmly asked me what was going on, I could barely express any rational thought, so I half explained and pointed at the shameful rendition on my work table, as if I was pointing to a rotting carcass on the floor. My dad eyes wondered on the table, came to the paper and glared top to bottom and top again… finally he turned to me with a little admiration, fear and confusion all mixed on his face and asked: “What are you talking about? I don’t see anything wrong in it.” I screamed my answer to him, pointing directly to the unforgivable mistake on the paper, he said again that there was nothing wrong with it, it was a little odd, but surely it could be fixed or obviated when the drawing was finished, in his eyes no one would notice it. I wanted to start all over again, trace it, and colored it all over again, it was a sunday no stationary store open, no more paper to do it. Still mad, I finished the thing, and presented it at school. Next, I bought another piece of paper, started doing the drawing, trace it, colored it, came to the point when I had to color the problematic shadow, did it, looked at it, appreciated it for a minute or two, then I put the paper on the table, put away the color pencils, and never finished the rest of the drawing.

I studied design, and all the way through school I did illustrations with color pencils, Eddies, warriors, dragons, landscapes, flowers, cars and a couple of drummers. After school I kept drawing as a hobby, by then I was drawing comic book heroes, and a couple of Darth Vader portraits. Something that remained with me all the time, was the anger I felt when I made a little mistake, and also when realizing that the finished drawing was not “perfect”, I could always find the mistake, the wrong light or shadow. And this came accompanied with a ting of anger, dissatisfaction and a little shame. My friends always told me that I could become an artist, that studying design was a mistake, I should go to art school and become an artist. I always dismissed this as compliments from their part, also I could not draw or paint a portrait that looked exactly like the person I was trying to draw or paint, ever. So after a few years after school I stopped drawing altogether.

Some thirteen years passed, some months ago I took a piece of paper, a pencil, a photograph of a blue jay and tried to draw the little blue bird, the trace was awful, disproportionate, of course I just let it there and didn’t come back to it. Recently, after coming into coaching, I decided that I wanted to push my own boundaries, and getting motivation from my daughter, my little brother and a new friend, I decided to take drawing lessons again.

The day came and there I was, faced with a blank piece of paper, and a still life to copy from, did my grid and started tracing… suddenly I was transported to the land of wonders, it was all there, the flowing of the hand, the feeling of the pencil against the paper, the shaping fo the objects, but now every sensation, every look back forth from the paper was enhanced. I let it flow and at the end I was surprised with the end result, a beautiful still life with awesome lights and deep shadows. Then decided to dive into the deep end, took a portrait of Mr. Bean and decided to copy it, grid it, traced it and applied shadows, the teacher came, looked at it, surprised at the result, showed it to his wife who is the co-responsible for the classes, then congratulated me and went back to the class, I was hypnotised by my own drawing, then my friend came closer to me and whispered, it’s so much better than the one you copied it from, it was a moment of pure joy.

From that moment on, I’ve been drawing comic book characters, pin up girls, and yes, portraits. The other day I was in session with my coach and she asked me, what I felt was different now in my drawing. The question hit me and stopped me cold, I had felt it but not thought about it, it was a world of difference. After a moments thought I answered that now I am more patient, mistakes are made but I don’t dwell on them, I don’t let them beat me or anger me at all, they are after all, part of the process. Then I went on to tell her that my hand is so much softer, my trace is lighter, I don’t hurt the paper anymore. At last I came to the most important part, and that is that now I let things flow, I let them be, I let the drawing come out of the paper as opposed to put it into it. At that point I remembered the story of Michelangelo, that when asked about his David, he said that it was already in the block of marble, that all he did was take out what was around it. I’m not Michelangelo of course, I’m not a sculptor, hahahahaha. Seriously, I’m not that as big an artist, but I understand what he meant. When we let things flow from us, and form everything around us, they just are, they appear in front of us naturally. When we work towards a goal detached from that goal, it becomes a natural process, and we flow with it. We prevent ourselves from becoming a slave of that goal, we learn more from the process, the process becomes the goal and the goal become the process.

Some of my portraits look a little the person I’m portraiting, some not. But in the end they are beautiful, they all are alive, they all come out of the paper and invite us all to their world. Now, I draw knowing that within every blank page already lives a face, a dancing body, a flying super hero, a deep pair of eyes with a gaze into infinity, a landscape that may or may not be from this world, my job is only to open the window that will allow us to look into their world, my hand only accompanies the pencil and lets the drawing flow out of the paper. Fellow Traveler, I invite you to let things be, to let them flow and then flow with them, patience will come along, and I’m sure it will give you a feeling of love for whatever you do, happines, then, can be the only obvious result.

Until we meet again or I have a chance to draw something for you, I leave you Peace, Love and Light.

Copyright©2011 Leonardo S. Sevilla B. All Rights Reserved

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
T.S. Eliot

Today I made a little experiment, as I tend to do, in Facebook. In my wandering through the internet I came across a couple of very interesting japanese bands, one is Galneryus and the other is Liv Moon. On Galneryus I found a wonderful guitar player and an equally amazing bassist, they play with astonishing speed and accuracy, but at the same time one can sense the passion and artistry. The second band, Liv Moon, is a symphonic-gothic-metal band (hehehehehe now, there’s a mouthful, isn’t there?), that features a very dark and heavy band in contrast with a sublime but potent opera female voice. The experiment is this: I posted videos of these musicians on my Facebook wall and waited to see if anyone clicked and posted any comments.

There was the usual click and “Like” from a friend who is himself a bass player and loves heavy metal, actually he was instrumental in my liking of many bands I love now. The surprise came when a couple of female friends watched the video and commented. These friends like the usual ballad, 80’s and pop music, all in all they are very mellow when it comes to music. Of course they didn’t like the heavy speed of the music, but both of them found the voice of the singer to be beautiful, and the contrast to be interesting.

The comments in themselves are maybe obvious, no surprise there. What I found really surprising is that both of them, clicked and listened to a genre that is not their natural habit. They were curious, they adventured into a land never thread before and found something they like, a voice.

I was once told that learning and evolving are processes in which one has to let go old structures and ideas, and hold to new ones which in turn will be discarded when no longer needed. I would add that between letting go and grabbing there’s a moment when one is floating, and there’s nothing but air. This is a moment of pure joy, fearful yes, but joyful none the less, this is the moment when I feel a very particular kind of freedom, let’s call it Intellectual Fly (more on that, some other time). Right now, what I love about my friends is the willingness and courage that took for them to jump over the fence and walk into an unknown. Maybe right now my dear Fellow Traveler you are thinking that this maybe is an overstatement, but in return let me ask you, when was the last time you voluntarily listened to something new? and moreover, when was the last time you removed judgement, and listen with curiosity to that new band, song or genre? I can see your smiling face from here, telling me it has been a while.

Now, Fellow Traveler, remember the last time you let go of an idea, a belief, a value, part of a structure. This, right here, is a critical part of the process of Personal Evolution. In order to move to the next level, you have to be able to leave the one that you’re on right now. That implies wanting to, having a motivation to do so, then taking action and then and most importantly, get rid of anything that’s in the way, may it be fear, an obstacle or an old belief. The unknown as seducing as it may look from where you are now, doesn’t stop being an unknown, some territory you’ve never been to. One of the most basic instinct is the one of survival, and in the moment when we move into somewhere we’ve never been to, this very instinct kicks in, warning us at a subconscious level, the scale does not matter, it warns you that you’re getting into a place where you don’t know where food and shelter are. The old reactive mind takes the command of the brain and push the red button that declares “Stop Right Now”. Then, and only then, the part of us that wants the change, that needs the change, has to take a deep breath, take a leap of faith and let go… we will find ourselves in new grounds, and our bravery and curiosity will be rewarded with the treasure of new experience, new knowledge about the land itself but most importantly, about ourselves. Paradox, is it not? In going farther out we gain a deeper knowledge from within.
Beware, Fellow Traveler, for this new feeling is intoxicating, addictive, and in no time you will find yourself to be a Magellan of knowledge and experience.

Hoping to meet you at the other side of the strait I leave you Peace, Love and Light, Always.

Copyright©2011 Leonardo S. Sevilla B. All Rights Reserved