Michael Neill Weekly

Last week, we talked about the importance of "grounding" - our moment to moment level of understanding of who we are, what life is, and how it works. This understanding is the foundation on top of which we build our lives, and the more solid the ground in which we place our foundations, the higher and wider we can go with our lives...

Anyone who spends any time around principles-based practitioners will hear the word "grounding" bandied about a lot. It's become a sort of a buzzword - a currency in the "whose better at this game" game. There are conversations about how "her grounding is deeper than his grounding"...

As part of the final weekend of Supercoach Academy, ​one of our guest lecturers, George Pransky, shared a story of a conversation a friend of his had with long-time world number one tennis player Pete Sampras. His friend asked Sampras how it was that he was able to be so cool on the court, unlike many of his compatriots who seemed to be feeling the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat after every point...

One of the coolest things I ever saw at the movies was the scene in The Matrix where Neo asks Trinity if she can fly a helicopter. Her response is "not yet" - and then she closes her eyes and receives a download from outside of the matrix that allows her to not only fly the helicopter, but wreak some havoc on the evil machines in the process.

One of the first things that I tell pretty much everybody when we begin training, coaching, or working with the inside-out understanding is that the most important (and in some ways only) key to getting the depth of what's on offer is to "stay in the conversation". In order to understand why that's so important, I'm going to share a bit of my own story and what I've come to see by staying in the conversation even when it didn't seem to be going anywhere, and even more importantly when it seemed like I'd already "got it"...