You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Hello, and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching In. I'm Claire Pedrick, and today I'm in conversation with Ed Haddon. So, Ed, I'm sure you're going to tell us all about yourself, Ed, but Ed is a friend of Julian Mack, who's a coach that we've had on the podcast before. And last time I saw Julian, he went, read this book.
And he gave me a copy of Ed's book, The Modern Mavericks. So I contacted Ed and said, let's talk. So Ed, welcome to The Coaching Inn. Thank you very much. It's lovely to be here. And actually, it's lovely to be described as a friend of Julian Mack, not a title I've been given before. But I think it's going to be quite a theme of what we talk about, which is around the importance of looking after those people close to you and friendship. And Julian's just had a really tough spell.
with dyskitis in the hospital. And it's really reminded me the importance actually of friendship and looking out for your friends. And so I am very happy to be linked to him at the top of the call. So thank you. Well, what a pleasure. So tell us and a shout out to Julian, who is undoubtedly listening to this podcast. So tell me a bit about your journey, Ed, as a coach and as a writer and a human. Yeah, and a human is that I sort of love that question.
And I know when you ask clients, and that sort of first session, you know, tell me your story, I'm always intrigued about where they start. They never, they never start early enough. You know, like, come on back, let's go back, back, back, back. So I think a little bit, I will start quite early, both my parents were teachers. They also split up when I was eight, and that trying to understand that as an eight year old and trying to fix that as little children want to do.
I think set me down this path of being an observer and being interested in people, wanting to make things better. It was not a fun place to be. Our households were in those few years leading up to the divorce. My dad was an alcoholic. So I think that set me on this path. I read psychology at university. My sister's a clinical psychologist. my brother was going to be I think he was going to read also psychology. My mum was a bereavement counselor.
So there was a lot of language in the in the household. The shelves were filled with sort of Eric Fromm and Jung and Freud. So there was definitely that language growing up. And then I went into business for a while. And I spent time I think in that period, it was a helpful, it was helpful, actually, to see. organizations at work to see people at work. I did a lot of work in retail and hospitality, which is obviously where you're trying to understand customers. And I was very drawn to that.
But ultimately I wasn't, and I was quite, I was, I hope today we're going to talk a bit about this word success, which is very central to the modern Maverick, to the book, this idea of defining your own version of success. And I was there, I guess on paper, quite inverted, comma successful, but I was really unhappy. You know, I wasn't, I wasn't in a meaningful relationship.
I was, I did keep up on my friendship, my friends a lot and we'd talk about that, I think, as we go through the call, but I just wasn't happy. And in retrospect, I realized I wasn't living my purpose. I hadn't really understood what I was on this planet to do. I tried being an entrepreneur, which is what I really, it was my dream, I guess, that didn't quite work. And so in 2008, I was really at a low point, actually. I've been fired from a company I'd spent six or seven years trying to build.
My father had just... died, which is complicated. And I actually went to my sister and said, Hey, look, I'm thinking about doing a PhD, getting back in, you know, into psychology and getting you're going into the NHS. And she'd been in the NHS for 12 years. That point is looked at when you'd be you'd be hopeless, you'd be upset. She was totally right.
And she said, Look, you've got this background of business, you've got this kind of guess this sort of drive and this forward motion and this desire to make things better. Why don't you go and see a coach? And I was pretty skeptical at that point. You know, this is 15 years ago. Anyway, long story short, I had six sessions on telephone with an amazing coach who basically helped me realize that I was in the kind of right room, but not on the right chair.
So, or as I think about it now, look, I was in the right stadium. So, you know, small business, helping entrepreneurs was absolutely the right kind of stadium for me, but I shouldn't be trying to be sent to forward, I should be coached, you know, it's a yoga club, or whatever your, your coach. And that was massively helpful.
So I trained in eight, nine, qualified in 10, and then set up a practice and focused from quite early on, on founders, entrepreneurs, people with their own businesses, or people wanting to become more entrepreneurial. So people who are in the kind of corporate machine, if you like, trying to either escape it or change their relationship with it. So become more entrepreneurial job crafting as Amy was asking, talks about, which I love this idea of job crafting. Maybe we can talk a bit about that.
But the work I really loved and the reason I really became a coach was that feeling I had when I was really lost and really low. And I had had some therapy and that helped, but I wanted something that I could talk specifically about. Look, what's my... What's my purpose? What's my work? And work in a broad sense, not just your paying job, but really what's my work? What's the work of my life?
And I found that in coaching and that's the work I now really love is helping people who are a bit of a crossroads, who are not quite, maybe lost a bit of confidence, not quite clear on the way forwards. And that's who I wrote the book to and for. obviously one to one coaching is amazing, but it's, it's not accessible for everyone. It can be quite expensive.
My time is quite limited, even though there are seven of us in the business, you know, so the book was really to give people a taster if you like. That's not fair. The book was, the book was to give people it's very interactive, lots of exercises. The book was to try and create a coaching conversation on a page, which is very difficult as you as you as you know, but that was the idea.
And it was, written to try and give people a sort of stepping stone into a conversation with themselves, I guess. Yeah, and I think one of the things I like about encouraging people to do their own coaching is that is that we can. And then we can't. Exactly. But when we can't, we're really clear about where we are. And then if we need a coach for a bit, we can pick up from where we've got to. Because otherwise you're working with people doing stuff that they could do on their own.
I love the question that I had someone ask the other day, which is what can we do together that you can't do on your own? and. Yeah, so tell me what you mean by the modern maverick. Yeah, what do I mean by the modern maverick?
Well, look, I think taking taking a step back briefly, what really, what really sat on mind, I couldn't get couldn't get out of my mind was something I read in about 2012, which was by Bronnie Ware, who's the terminal care nurse, spent 15 years working literally with people dying. And she wrote, this book called The Five Regrets of the Dying. If you probably came across it and I have it sort of here on my on my desk, you know, and it's, I'll give you a couple of them.
Yeah, but the first one is I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected on me. I wish I'd worked so hard. And then the last one, I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. And then this last one, which really, I couldn't get out of my mind was I wish I'd let myself be happier. And that that was a gateway for me. So the penny just dropped and said, Look, of course, we get in our own way here.
And of course, there are things we can do to get out of our own way. And I couldn't find the book, I couldn't find. And I found that conversation in coaching, absolutely. And I found that conversation with my friends. I couldn't find the book that tried to take the whole, the whole enchilada on as Mack talks about it, we talked about the whole enchilada. And of course, that's hard because it's a very broad topic. It's a very personal topic. But that's what that's what put the seed in my mind.
Could I write a book that just that just tried to give some give people a place to come and just ask those big difficult questions. So we had regrets. We didn't have the kind of how do you avoid how do you avoid getting through regrets? I felt I still feel it's very avoidable, right? To not be on the deathbed saying, I wish I'd let myself be happier.
So I started writing and then the Maverick idea really came through quite strongly when obviously working with entrepreneurs, there is this strong streak of independence and there's a strong streak of doing things differently. There's a strong streak of courage. And you do hear people talk about Mavericks, not just in the top gun sense, but there was a slightly negative part to it, rule breaker. maybe sort of outside of society.
I mean, the original Mavericks were the cowboys that actually rustled the Maverick. It comes from a term of unbranded cattle. So the original Mavericks were cattle that were unbranded. Then the cowboys who were to steal them became the Mavericks and it sort of grew from there. So epistemology is in sort of naughtiness and law breaking. So I wanted to sort of take that on a bit.
And the idea of the modern, the sort of modern modifier, if you like, is... I think sometimes in self -help, I think it can be quite inward, obviously quite inward focused, but it can stop there. And I wanted to take an idea that was actually, look, this idea of better self for better society. So let's not just work on ourselves because we think it will make us happier or live longer.
Let's work on ourselves because we can then go back out into the world and we can be this sort of ripple effect that starts at home. and ripples out into hopefully our community. So the modern Maverick really is an idea of someone who's independent, courageous, lives their own life, thinks about what matters to them, but all with a wrapper in service to others.
And the sort of the idea of as kind of some of the Maverick principles that are in the book is, look, is there a, I think people are looking there for a... framework and a guide, you know, the secularization of society has left this enormous gap. You know, I think a lot of us would subscribe to Christian values, but we've sort of lost sight of even what that is, or how to practice that without this framework of the church around it.
And while I'm not trying to compare what I've written to the, you know, some of the amazing religious texts, I am trying to give people some ideas that they some of which will resonate some of which won't, but that a kind of a call to action, both in terms of their extreme local home and community, but also what am I uniquely here to do? Because the world's in a difficult spot. We're in difficult spots individually. Our happiness scores are dropping. Something's not quite working.
So the modern Maverick is there as a set of ideas that I think will, I hope people realize their best life, a life well lived. And in recognition, that is not just a life inwardly, sort of promoting and serving, it's a life of actually being in relation and service to others in the community. Yeah, and I think that's what's unique about it. in that it is about. it It's always difficult to know how honest to be on the podcast, isn't it? Let's go for it. Come on, Claire.
I'm not worried about being honest to you. I'm being worried about being honest to our lovely audience. But I think sometimes there can be parts of coaching that become self -actualizing nonsense. Which is all about me. And it can just get so selfish. I had a conversation with somebody the other day about an aspect of our business. And I said, I'm not sure I agree. It was a consulting conversation, not a coaching conversation.
I said, I'm not sure I agree with you on that because actually one of the things that really matters to me is fairness. And she said, what do you mean by fairness? And I said, something that's fair to you, it's fair to me and fair to someone else. And that will impact pricing. Well, we didn't agree. We didn't agree. That's okay. We didn't agree.
But I think, but I think there's a lot of stuff that I find in the coaching space, which is about how can I earn more and more and more and more money and have a more and more and more and more perfect life. But that's not what you said when you read out those five regrets of the dying. None of those were about more and more money, and none of them were about a more perfect life. They were much more nuanced than that, weren't they?
And they were they were actually almost all in relation to others. They weren't all just in relation to self, right? I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. Yes. And I think that to borrow back into business for a moment. Well, we're, we're a B Corp. And I don't know how many of you will listen. I mean, it's interesting, always ask the question, who's heard of the B Corp movement and increasingly hands are going up, which is great.
But look, it's for those who haven't heard of it stands for short for benefit corporation. It's a move. In the States, in the Western world in the late 70s, certainly Reagan and Thatcher led a movement to change the way businesses are literally governed from thinking about, you have to think about your community, your suppliers, your cut to just shareholders, right? Shareholder primacy was born in the late 70s, early 80s to try and kickstart growth, maybe for all good reasons.
But it has clearly had some very deleterious effects as we're now wrestling with, you know, this sort of this call for capitalism 2 .0 and this great sense of unfair feeling of unfairness as you as you as you say. And so this group that started I think now 15 years ago went state by state in America lobbying to change the kind of basic articles of Association of Business to make it legal to think about people other than just your shareholders. It was an it was illegal as a director of business.
your fiduciary duty was to maximize returns for shareholders. And it's an incredibly onerous and complicated certification process that took us the best part of a year. But it forces you to think about all the different constituent parts of what business as a force for good would look like. And I personally feel it's incredibly public. And actually, as a sort of side note, it's quite a controversial thing for a coaching business to do because it implies you have a house view.
you know, we can maybe come back to that. Should we be empty vessels? Should we just be creating a container? Or are we allowed to sort of slightly put a shape on that container or have a frame that we look through to say, look, we're here to do try and do our little bit of good.
And so the going through a certification process made me really think about why isn't there a kind of L core like a life, a life course, you know, what can't we do this for ourselves, not just as a business, you know, we are. locus of control ourselves and an impact and this idea that it wasn't just self serving, it was in service of others.
I really tried to bring across into the book, even getting as far as there's almost a kind of life certification there that this LQ sort of tool I put really essential to the book is, let's just take a look at all the different areas and all the pillars of your life, including not just your own health, but your friends and family are in there and children are in there and communities in there, giving is in there as a really important part.
And let's kind of give yourself a score and then we can work from something. So I completely agree that I think coaching needs to start from a position of we are all in relation to others and ourselves. And actually all the researchers there, Claire, that supports this, you know, the the grant study, you know, out of out of the States, which is the longest running psychology study in the world.
1938, they took 200 of the undergraduates, then they added, I think, another 200 local teenagers and young adults from Boston. And they every year they've sat down and interviewed them, then they've interviewed their partners that have got married, then they've interviewed their children, then they've interviewed their grandchildren. I think there are five of the original study left.
And Robert Waldinger, who's the current sort of keeper of the guardian of the study, has just written a paper saying, look, you know, we've, we've got all this data and it points to one thing very clearly, which is that you can predict if you take someone at 50, the way you predict how long they're going to live, how, how flourishing they are, how happy they are is the, is the strength and the quality of their relationships. It is as simple as that.
Yeah. And so you're right to sort of, To coach with a view of how do I become happier is really looking at the wrong target. To coach with a view of how do I be a better parent, a better friend? How do I be a better keeper of my own physical and mental health, if you look at it that way? These are the ways that then happiness will fleetingly come and go as a byproduct of that. Yeah, and William Damon, have you read The Path to Purpose?
Yes. Yeah, because he says that that we find purpose when we connect to something outside of ourselves and we can't find it inside. And he says that's where religion and human development and the human development science meet, doesn't he? So. endlessly looking inside isn't the place isn't it?
No, it does come back to this quite interesting point you raised about you can only go so far with yourself or coaching yourself and I wonder it is a challenge with a book, a coaching book, you don't have that conversation and you don't have that you know what I think what we do as as coaches is we do we do sit with people and help them ask those difficult questions and sit with those difficult questions. And we keep going.
Whereas I think when left to ourselves, we, I think everyone has really good intentions, Claire. I think the number of clients I get is they look, I've really, I've been thinking about this for quite a long time. I've been, I've sat down, I've, you know, but you just reach a point where, think the answer is not in conversation with yourself. And sometimes, sometimes the answer is difficult. And we shy away from that, actually. And sometimes we turn away from it, and it's too complicated.
And, you know, we feel too tired, we feel too entangled, we feel too trapped, we can't see a way through. And, and that is the magic that that transformational piece of the coaching conversation about bringing clarity, you're creating insight from that clarity, then creating action.
And then this final piece, this wonderful, powerful piece of accountability that once you've agreed in action, or the clients put forward and agree that then there's this piece of like, like having a piano teacher, you know, you practice in between lessons, right? You stop having a piano teacher. You get fired. That's what happened to me. Yeah, we get fired. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. How? Yeah. I just love this connecting piece, Ed. So how do you do it? What are the maverick principles?
I'm hearing a lot about connecting in lots of different layers. Well, I mean, actually, to do a bit of a not a U turn, but this idea that, again, this is this is from my mom a long time ago, but I remember pulling down the art of loving there from but off the off the shelf and probably about 16 and reading it and this line. This is Stay With Me, which is you cannot love until you love yourself. And so this sort of slightly contrasts what we're talking about.
But I think the phrase is very important, which is that what's the purpose of loving oneself is not solipsistic and narcissistic, it's so that you can then love the world and love everyone around you. So I do I do think there is a sense of getting one's house in order first or in parallel. And actually, I think the problem with feeling off track, or I call it some this idea of a path, the feeling was the problem with being off of feeling off your path is it becomes very absorbing.
This idea of I'm not, I'm not on the right path here. I'm not happy that becomes as we know, very absorbing, doesn't it? You know, I think people spend a lot of time and become increasingly withdrawn. And that can obviously lead to depression and, and beyond. So I talk about this kind of voice, this inner maverick, this voice that I think we all have at certain points in our lives saying, come on, this is not we're not on on the path here. This is something's not wrong.
And I think you ignore that voice that you're parallel, actually. And I think I've done it. I went through. years really of ignoring saying I can be an entrepreneur, I will be an entrepreneur, you're really fighting it. And I think life is challenging. I don't like this expression life is tough, actually, because I think the life is challenging implies a sense of, you know, an agency, which I really like life is tough, I think can sometimes set you down a slight path of passivity.
And I think one of the big problems I encounter with with clients is this like this sort of idea of passenger rather than pilot. Yeah, you know, I got offered this job. So I took it I got offered, you know, this house came up. So I went to live there. This happened, this happened, this happened. And it's, and suddenly you're in your 40s going, Wow, how did I get here? So I think the book that the principles, the book are really about saying, come on, let's climb out of the passenger seat.
And let's get you in the front of the plane, right? Let's get you flying the plane. I talk about three kind of ways of doing that. I mean, there are 50 tools in the book, believe it or not. But if I had to pick out three, the first one really is this word success is complicated. A bit like the word maverick is complicated deliberately. Success is a complicated word. I think it's become very tied up with money and power and likes and followers and profile. and sort of business, I guess.
But I think somehow deep down, it's a longing in all of us to have some version of success, to feel like we are something, to feel like we're in the world and we're doing something. And so I just ask people to start by thinking, where do you think you have borrowed your own definition of success from? Where have you, you know, think about parents, think about school, think about school where it's exams straight away, right? Yeah, been graded. I mean, crazy.
In a way, you're being compared immediately to your peer group. And your successes on how well you can remember. Exactly. It's such a narrow skill set, right? It's not on how nice you are or how kind you are. Or, you know, in fact, funny enough, you know, as a side note this morning, I was talking to my son, he's 13. And he had quite a it so he was still 10 11 during COVID.
And they had quite a boys are thinking that period, it's normally where they're trying to find their feet socially and understands how to interact. And they didn't have that. And so he had quite a tough year when he came back to school and he said a great year this last year. And I said, I said, Billy, what, how did you do that? What, what, what changed? And he said, dad, I just started being a nice person. And I was like, wow, okay.
And we talked to him about what that meant and how he came to that conclusion. But that, that's success, isn't it that that idea of actually how do I build positive relationships in my community? How do I become a kind person? And he's now much happier. I'm sure his exams have been okay. I don't but I mean, he's a much happier person as a result of that.
So I think we get daily kind of drowned with other people's idea of success advertising, the media, the news, I mean, goodness me, that's that's a literally a failure or disaster, not you know, I subscribe to this lovely magazine called Positive News, which once a month just brings us sort of injection of positivity and good stuff into my life, because we just swim in this pond of kind of negativity and people people killing and maiming and anyway, that's another topic of conversation for today.
So look, thinking about how do we where do our definitions of success come from? passive again, right? We just they just see that. And actually asking people to sit down. I ran a workshop on Sunday about this, right? 10 minutes, piece of paper. What is your definition of success? What is really important to you? What really matters to you? I sometimes ask people to write their eulogy. What would your eulogy be now in three sentences? What would it be? What would you like it to be?
What's the gap? I mean, that's quite a good setup for coaching, isn't it? What you know, what? Where are you now? Three sentences. Where would you like to be when you... And no one ever writes, coming back to regrets, no one ever writes on their final eulogy, you know, I wish I'd had more Twitter followers, right? Exactly. So that's the first... sorry. It's always going to be about people. Well, it is, except occasionally you do go to a funeral service where someone reads out someone's CV.
And that's always very telling, I think. Very interesting. But yes, it's beloved. Go walk around... graveyard. Not bank accounts, it's beloved grandfather, beloved husband, beloved son. So that, that first, for me, that's the first stepping off point, Claire, is what is your definition of success? And I do that exercise with clients. And sometimes the first the first one is quite narrow, and it might be about work or their business, particularly if they're entrepreneurs, but pretty quickly.
know, I say, what about home? What's what success at home look like? What do you mean success at home? What about your physical health? What does success look like in terms of your physical health? What about your charity and giving? What does success look like in giving? That's an interesting idea that blows people's minds sometimes. So that's that's the kind of map, right? Definition of success, create your own map, if you like.
Then I talk about this idea of, there's a, of what are you, what are you, I mean, lots of people talk about strengths. And again, it's interesting. I was in, I was doing this workshop and we talked about success, then we talked about strengths, then we kind of talked about goals. And someone put their hand up and said, these are all very businessy words. You know, I don't like these words. And I was like, you're tight, you're quite right.
but they are, they're effective, but they're, they're words that make you think and I like to sit at this intersection of business and psychology and coaching that I feel very comfortable there and I think there are there are there are things to bring across from business into coaching and psychology and there are definitely ideas to take back the other way. So this idea, you know, I get people to think about what their strengths are and people go, well, I'm, you know, I'm good at spreadsheets.
I mean, I get it. Hang on. Let's go. Let's let's let's dig in. let's go let's go a bit deeper than that. You know, I'm good at building relationships. Well, what is it that you're how do you do that?
You know, and so I think, you know, I thought a lot, you know, about, you know, I think as a coach, I'm good at, you know, creating a rapport, and therefore creating trust, and therefore creating a safe space that allows people to then explore allows me to ask very challenging questions, and for people to have the courage and the trust to reply and then for me to really listen. So there you get an idea of what's the next level down on strengths. Okay, I really can create trust quickly.
And I really can listen so that I can ask good questions that then you then you that's what I mean by really an idea of what's your strength. And then we say, well, what, you know, what about superpower? You know, can you see one in there? That's really your superpower. And people get it's hard. And this is and I tried to do it in 10 minutes. It's a blow stop. I say, look, If we were working together, we'd do two, three hours on this. But let's give you an idea.
So I think once you understand or have a feel for what you might be uniquely on this planet to do, that's a real clue as to how you might and where you might apply that. And so we take that strength and we say, well, where might you use it? Coming back to that stadium idea, what's your stadium and what's your position in that stadium? Better not be in the stands watching. I'm happy you can be anywhere you can be. You could be the person that mows the pitch. You could be the physio back of house.
You could be the owner in the owner's box. You could be the person that built the stadium. It doesn't matter as long as it's not. It's not because you're not in the audience. Exactly. Get on the pitch or get in the stadium. So that's the kind of second piece. And that fits as part of this wonderful Japanese concept of Ikigai, which is, what are my strengths and what am I passionate about? What does the world need and what can I get rewarded for? So we do the strengths bit first.
Yeah. And... I love that, you know, because I've done a lot of vocational coaching over the years. And it's that Aristotle quote that says where your talents and the needs of the world lie, can collide, there lies your vocation. It's beautiful, isn't it? So beautiful. And I think so many of us sit, and I did, you know, for my first 10 years of my career, I sat in that intersection between a strength, you know, as a consultant, a strength and what I get. paid for.
I was a pretty good consultant, right, but I wasn't passionate about it. And I, I think the world does need it in some way, but I wasn't convinced by that. So I was never gonna, I was never really going to rise up that profession, even though it was, I was, you know, even though they were saying that this is great, you know, stay, come on. But I knew the what the passion was missing.
And I, and I, and I think that's where you see people flame out a bit in the middle of their careers is where actually they've been doing a job that they're good at and well rewarded for, but they're not passionate about it. And they're not convinced the world needs it. You know, there is something about people's capacity to pay, to get the money that allows them to express their vocation.
But I, there's a book by John Adair called Discovering Your Vocation, and he talks about vocation and avocation. So sometimes avocation is the work that we do to earn the money. Yeah. To be able to do the other bit. And I, I met this guy at a conference where I was speaking about it and he was a bit of a super fan actually. We met over several years and he, I think, I can't remember which way around it was, but he made the plastic shower cubicles where you put the shampoo.
Yep. And his job was made redundant and he really wanted to be in radio. but he wasn't good enough to be able to get paid to do commercially paid to do radio. So he did hospital radio and we met at that point where he was really trying to, his job had been made redundant. He wanted to find something that was vocational that would pay money because we have to live.
And he couldn't, and we talked about the difference between our vocation and vocation and sometimes our vocation is, is the thing we earn the money for. And he'd hated the job in the factory doing the plastic thing. The next year he came up to me and he goes, I've got a new job. It's not my passion. But I love it because I started it knowing that it means that it pays for the other bit.
So his attitude to work in the new place of change, and he'd got a job making blinds for windows, which which which didn't in of itself inspire any passion in him. But every morning he told me he would go to work super happy, because he knew that he was there to earn the money to do the other thing. So. So the things that we're talking about here are accessible to all, aren't they? And in different ways.
Yeah. And I think, look, I'll throw the biggest criticism of the book on the table here, which I get asked, well, is this all some nice middle class luxury, right? To be able to think about our passion and think about what we really want to do when actually, how do I pay the electricity bill? Yeah, exactly. And it's a really valid... critique and particularly, you know, I come from a privileged background and I get it leveled at me a lot. And it's a really fair question.
And I, and I sort of talk about it in two different ways. I try and answer that question in two different ways. One is, yes, I totally agree. Like the story you just told, that sometimes we have to do something we're not passionate about. But I think of it like a mixing deck, like a DJs mixing deck, and you can have different channels. You can have a vocation, a vocation. Yeah. And he had the vocational child.
Yeah. And the issue was that he had lived his life being angry that he wasn't earning the money from the money from the from the vocational one and he was having to do something else. So it was it was a mind shift that enabled him to really recognize that he did have everything he wanted. It just wasn't as you say, on the mixing deck. Yeah, it wasn't in the traditional expectation or fantasy or whatever it might be.
And it wasn't, and it wasn't his, it wasn't, he wasn't passenger, he was passenger, not pilot. The moment he said, I've made this plan, I'm going to do this so I can do this. You become a pilot. And I think in coaching, I almost think we've had some of our benefit the time that they give the first phone call, right? You've taken action, you're creating a plan and sometimes somehow the misery becomes a lot less.
Yeah. when you have a plan or when you have the context of why you're doing it and the mixing deck, you can move things up and down, right? You can things change. And that is a Maverick principle saying, look, don't throw the don't throw the keys away. Don't throw the toys out of the pram. Transition. Think about how you how you move through. So, yeah, I completely, completely agree with that. So we've done that we've done just to finish off the kind of third.
There's always three steps on there. But the first step is think about your map. That's that's the definition of success. The second is. What's your sort of superpower that I think of as the car, you know, how you're going to drive or walk through the map. A third piece, which I do think is important, Claire, and we've touched on this already is change is hard. Change is challenging. And it's particularly challenging when we're kind of depleted, this sort of resource depletion idea that I like.
I can't remember who sort of talked to it. But so look, you know, if you're if you're trying to make even try even thinking about this stuff is difficult if you're exhausted, or if you're drinking too much, frankly, or. if you're sat alone at home a lot or so. So that's really where the LQ this life quotient idea comes in. Let's take a sort of baseline of where you are. How charged are your batteries? You know, your battery is full or half full or empty.
And let's work on that in parallel with this because when you do get into the passenger seat, when you do want to find a new job so you can support your vocation. it needs energy and it needs you in your sort of best frame. So that's this idea of come on, let's charge the batteries, you know, you know, you've got your map, you've got your car, let's fill up the batteries or fill up the petrol tank and then, and then off you go.
And that's, that's the sort of architecture, if you like, of the book. So it's both, there is a kind of almost spiritual element to the beginning bit, which is who are you? What are your dreams? What do you want to do? But there's also then a deeply practical second half of like, come on, how are we going to do it?
How are we going to get you started, how we're going to build that momentum and how we're going to keep that momentum going, even when as inevitably happens, you hit a speed bump, right? Yes, things don't work out and your plans do fall apart. But let's go into this knowing that's going to happen and create a way of keeping going. And where do you intentionally recharge your batteries? My brother has just bought an electric car. Yeah. And on Friday, he's taking my dad to visit my daughter.
And my brother said to me the other day, He said, it's stressful. It's going right. It's going right to the limit. And he's looked up where to recharge. He thinks he can put a little bit when they get there because he thinks he's found somewhere that he could put a little bit. And then of course he knows that when he comes home, he's going to have to not use it and put it on a proper overnight charge so that you can eat again the next day. But that's such a good metaphor, isn't it? Isn't it?
isn't it? Because, yeah, because we talk about recharging. But when you think about the fact that the car won't move, you recognize that different types of recharging really matter. Well, also, what's fascinating about that, just to really go with the metaphor a bit is unlike a petrol car where the AA can come along and put some petrol in, I've got an electric car and when you run out of you have to get towed, right? There's no sort of mobile charging station.
So And also you've raised a really lovely point, which is kind of top up, like how do I, and then, and then actually make, you know, hang on, the batteries are completely flat or worse. The batteries are basically broken and I've got to replace the batteries. And I do, we do see clients, don't we? And sort of in that breakdown territory in the burnout territory.
And it's, it's a long way back from there, but I think looking at answer your answer question, I'm going to pick, I'm going to separate out those two categories. So how do I do the little top ups and then how do I do the major actually replacement? Right. Yeah. For me, the little top ups come from sitting with friends. So, you know, I went for a lovely walk with with Julian yesterday and that is deeply recharging for me.
And, you know, I do, I think a lot about this Mother Teresa quote, if you want to change the world, go home and love your family. And I think we spend a lot of time doing exactly the opposite. We think if you want to change the world, go to work, build a huge company. be part of a corporate global conglomerate. And I just think it's the opposite. So that is one of my little top ups.
The second of my little top ups is, is exercise, I run quite a lot, and I walk and I have a dog, which is I mean, every time I take a dog for a walk, that's a top up, isn't it? You know, you're walking. And I and I and we live in a lovely, we live in Somerset. So I think nature is that for me an instant top up. I mean, my sister, her soul. lights up when she goes down the A45 are coming into Maribor and so everyone has a different way of topping up.
She gets an urban top up so she lives in Hackney. Great. But I think knowing where your soul soars a bit, mine soars in greenery and nature. So that's the kind of the daily top ups and I have just done a major kind of batch replacement. I try and do every five years, try and take some form of sabbatical and really do something completely different, a bit of a reset if you like.
And I have just took a month to run the southwest coast path, which is 630 miles 1000 kilometers for those of you metric, it's you climb Everest four times during it. It is the UK sort of longest toughest trail, but that's not the point. The point for me is it's all by the sea. Yeah, the use of it, I spent 31 days with a sea on my right. That was how I knew if I see was on my right, I was going the right direction. Some of it was alone.
A lot of it was with friends and family who came and did days or two or three days with me. And when I said to people, I'm going to take a break, and I'm going to go and run 22, 23 miles a day and climb Ben Nevis every day, they looked at me and went, that is not a break. That's not my definition of a sabbatical. But for me, it really was because there was a huge simplicity in every morning, I had to get up, feed myself.
get myself ready, stretch, run for between four and eight hours a day, recover, eat, sleep and repeat. And there was a great simplicity in that, the complexity, the entanglement that we all have in life. I was completely unentangled and it was a wonderful reset and a wonderful reboot that to be honest, I'm still, I finished two weeks ago, so I'm still sort of processing it.
But what I do, what I do come back and as I layer back on, my life as I sort of put back on the coat and then put on the overcoat. And then, and I, what do I notice? You know, I notice the things that really matter to me. I notice the things that make my heart sing. I notice the things that charge my batteries, which are around really meaningful coaching conversations, spending time with friends and family. And I notice the things that don't give me energy.
And I think that to do that once every few years or when you can. is it is a look at it may be seen as a luxury. I understand that, you know, people, most of the people I met who take two or three years to do this path, because they do it on weekends, how can you get a month of work? And I said, when I work for myself, and I've been planning it for two years, and it is it is possible, you know, it is possible. I did the Camino in September. There you go.
So I really Yeah, and the coastal path is on my long walk. Yeah. Well, it's wishlist. It's magical. Lots of people I met had done the Camino, you know, as obviously as a link, there's a sort of, yeah, there's a link there. But I absolutely agree with you, that there's something about or because people say to me, but it must have been exhausting. But and I'm going, but all you all we had to do was get up, eat, walk. Get in the shower with our clothes on.
Because we have very little soap and very few clothes. Eat. Go to bed and do it again. A friend of mine who I saw actually the other day, when we were young mums, she invited me to go on holiday with them to Dover. And we sat, which for those of you around the world is on the coast. And, And we sat on the beach and she said, the reason you need to go to beaches when you're stressed is that all you can see if you look at the, if you look out over the sea is the sky and the sea.
So you can only see two things. Whereas normally, I mean, I'm looking at you now and you've got a really interesting books and some interesting pictures. And I wonder what that book is on the desk. And I think it might be the same book that I've got on my desk. And. Have you got an Apple Mac because look at the plug in the wall, you know, all of that stuff. But you know, what a gift is a sabbatical when you only have to get up and move and go to bed and eat.
Yeah, and I think there is a sense of pilgrimage to you know, I'm sure the Camino obviously is literally a pilgrimage and what does pilgrimage really mean? And I think it's an interesting idea in a sort of modern again, this idea of what have we lost with? sexualisation, whatever you like this sense and arriving somewhere on foot is an extraordinary experience and arriving into a, I was very worried about 31 different places to stay. And I sometimes find that quite hard.
So settling in and, you know, what's the, you know, I remember Craig and his, his, his, his Cornish American theme, themes diner, you know, in his, in his BNB and all these characters and, but somehow arriving on foot, I've never, I haven't thought about this until now is, I found it very gentle and easy to just cross thresholds. Yeah, go on. Because you're not getting dropped in. Exactly. You're not getting out of a metal box where you spent three hours stressed on a motorway.
You're arriving in a very calm, exhausted calm. I remember arriving in Lyme Regis and there was an ambulance outside the place I was staying and I was like, hello. They seem to know I'm coming. And was a heck of a scene going on some someone had a heart attack in one of the rooms and the lovely person behind the bar said like, I can't check I can give you your key. I can't check you in because there's a bit of a situation. And I was like, Okay, fine.
And then later, I met the manager of the place and she said, I'm really sorry, I couldn't check you and I was giving someone mouth to mouth and I was like, gosh, don't you know, don't worry about my check in. And she said, Yeah, it's the third time I've had to do it while I've worked here. And I said, And it's immediately kicked into kind of co I said, Are you okay? Yeah, how are you feeling? You know, do you want to go home? Do you need you? I was so kind of staggered.
She's just sitting there, having saved literally just saved someone's life. It's like, yes, that we got I got her breathing again. And I'm waiting to hear from the hospital because we think she might have been not breathing for quite a long time and worried about brain damage. And I just sat down. I sat down. I was very, I was still in my running gear, right? I was still this sweaty ball of I just sat down next to her. And I sort of sat with her and I said, that's incredible.
You know, she said, I always seem to be in the wrong place. I said, no, no, you've been in the right place with those three lives you've saved. You've been in exactly the right place at the right time. And you've had this training and you've done this incredible thing. And it was sort of moments like that, that really, I think if I just arrived in a car and I would have gone to my room and I don't know, there was a change in the flow.
and nature of time, and therefore of your relationships to others in, in that I didn't have anything or anywhere I need, I mean, yes, I need to get somewhere by the end of the day, but those little interactions and I again, I haven't really thought about this until we started talking about it. I hadn't really thought about this, this gift of having the time and space to really meet people. And I don't mean sit for hours and talk.
I mean, just, be present and be aware of what's happening to that person. Are they walking? Are they what? I don't know. Maybe I hadn't, again, yeah, this is all just sort of pennies dropping. You can hear pennies dropping, but I think that was probably a big part of it is not rushing to the next place, not feeling, I've got to get on my email, not worrying about my to -do list and just being very present. You need to come back and we need to talk about sabbatical.
Yes. Because I think that dialogue would be really interesting for our listeners, but also I think it would be great meaning making. And I love the fact that Ed, that we started this conversation by talking about your friend, Julian Max. And we've ended this conversation by you talking about your friend for a few minutes, who was the person who did the mouth to mouth in the hotel, who you probably don't know her name. And you'll probably never meet her again.
And yet you were deeply a friend to her. I will never forget her and I'll never forget. I mean, she's made me sign up for first aid training. You know, I've never forget what, what she did. And, and, you know, just to finish a bit on, on Julian, you know, having, he had a very different experience while I was running, he was in hospital, very ill. and we met yesterday and we talked about what we both took from these experiences.
And we were very much in contact a lot, you know, I had this lovely WhatsApp group where he and a number of people were hugely supportive to me during this run and I hope vice versa for him. And you know what we took, we took the same, we came to exactly the same conclusions, which is we spend our life worrying about work, then we get a little bit of time and energy to think about our family and maybe our friends. And then maybe we think a little bit about our own physical and mental health.
And we both had to inverse that for different reasons. me because I was running him because he was literally fighting for his life, actually, it turned out. And we had to think about our bodies, our minds, then we had to think about our friends and family, these lovely people who came to join me. And then we had a little bit of time to think about work.
And we, we both committed to each other to try and keep this right reverse in the telescope, try and keep that set of priorities, my own physical and mental well being. health and well -being of my friends and family and then what work can I do not the other way around. Wow. So how do people contact you Ed?
Yeah well look, by the book, the Modern Maverick is a start, there's a website that goes along with that, the coaching website is Haddon Coaching, so you can find that online and yeah, this is the work we love doing so please do. reach out. We're, we're quite active on LinkedIn. but yeah, I'd love to start a conversation with anyone. and I also particularly, I think like you, Claire, you do a lot of work helping encourage new coaches. I'm always here.
you know, the one thing I, if someone wants to get in touch and say, look, I'm thinking about becoming a coach or I'm starting my coaching practice. I don't, I don't formally supervise, but I will always spend half an hour an hour with someone who's wants to. have a conversation about how to build a practice. I make that offer, you know, very openly. I love doing it. Brilliant. Well, thank you, Ed, for coming to the Coaching Inn. And thank you, everybody, for listening.
And Ed, we must, we'll have you back maybe at the beginning of next year to talk about sabbaticals and pilgrimages and those things, because I think that will be such fun. I'd love to do that, Claire. Thank you. It's been a lovely conversation. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. So thank you, Ed Haddon. And thank you all for listening. Bye bye. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, we'd love you to share the podcast with a friend or leave a comment on social media.
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