- In the field of the process. Process is a field in which things that seem impossible and happen in many cases without a lot of effort, just sort of flows that way, or things just drop away, like glaciers falling into the ocean, they just fall away even though they've been there for a long time. - Welcome to Love's Everyday Radius, a podcast brought to you by the Hoffman Institute.
I'm your host, Sharon Moore, and I hope that you enjoy today's conversation and that the stories shared by our graduates impact move and inspire you. Welcome everybody. Today my guest is James Flaherty. James is a graduate of the Hoffman Process, as well as the founder of New Ventures West, a coaching school in San Francisco. James founded this coaching school in 1987 with his wife, Stacy.
Through the years, they have led classes with thousands of people from all around the world, and these thousands of people went on to having a positive and profound impact on so many others. I'll let James tell us more. James, welcome to the show. Thank - You, Sharon. It's, uh, such a, an honor and a fun time to talk to you about the process that I did such a long time ago and have such deep respect for. - So let's talk about that. How long is a long time ago - When you're three years old?
A long time ago was this morning, but a long time ago was 1991, and I did it right after my wife, Stacy, Stacy did the process, I don't know, six months or something before I did. I watched her very closely to see if the process worked for her, especially in those days, had a really critical mind looking for any little flaw an in an inconsistency, an imperfection according to my standards, which of course were the perfect standards.
At one point I said to Stacy, you know, Stacy, I've been watching you and you know, I, I really think this uh, process, although you said it was really dramatic and a lot happened for you, I really think it didn't work. And she said, thank you for sharing your experience, but for me it was really wonderful. I went, oh my goodness, she's made some big stuff in individuation here of being able to speak up for herself and not give way to my view that I was strongly arguing for.
So that is why I went to the process and then so much happened for me there and so much happened for my friends. You know, my new friends that I met in the process got so enthusiastic that we started sponsoring the process back in Virginia, which meant we found a retreat center. We enrolled the people, we scheduled the teachers, we got the teachers back and forth to the site and so on. And I think we did that maybe six times over a few year period.
Yeah. So we were seriously committed to it and still are, although in a different way. - And in those that you sponsored, was it your community so you were able to see the impact or was it people who lived in the area? - A lot of it was people in New ventures West community. That was this company that Stacy and I started in the late eighties. And that's why we were doing it in Virginia. Part of it was our friend Melissa lived there and so she knew the territory.
She was born and raised there, but it was also because we had a number of graduates of our program there that we could reach out to and in invite into the class, you know how it goes once one class goes through, the word gets out of what it's like and then it, the enrollment into the next class is much easier. So that's how it went. - And so these were people that were in your community basically, you were able to keep seeing the impact that graduates of the Hoffman process had.
Is is that a true statement or am I stretching - What I see in people and why I rec, I still recommend the process. I see people who are of good heart and good intention and something is stopping them. Lots of times by the time they come to our school, they've done a lot of work on themselves already. They've tried this and they've tried that. So the issues that seem intractable, that's when I think the process is really fabulous for them.
And that's what I would see is people who were say unable to fully say how they felt or unable to genuinely connect to someone or really couldn't say what it is that they wanted in their life. Those kind of things that seem, uh, natural and easy for some of us are really difficult for others because of their past, because of the situation of their early years. So yeah, that's the changes that I saw.
- Beautiful. And you must have had a powerful experience because clearly not only did you get inspired from your wife, you did it and then you continued to sponsor it and talk about it. And as you say, you still currently refer people to the process.
So is there, I know it was in 1991, so excuse the time travel we're gonna do here, but is there a moment that you could actually pinpoint like, ooh, this was a moment I remember in the process that really spoke to me or really cracked me open - At one point? I don't know. Um, looking at what we're afraid of. And one of the things I said to my teacher was, I, I'm really afraid of strong men. And he said to me, that's probably because you are one now that sounds really pedestrian.
And I don't know like psychology 1 0 1 or something, but it was said with his deep presence and his deep caring for me, and I was several days into the process. So, so I was uprooted from my usual automatic responses and things and present in a different way myself. So when he said it, it really shifted. I might be a powerful person. The point for me, Sharon, about being powerful wasn't so I could get a bunch of stuff that I wanted in the world.
It was so that the gifts that I've been given, like everyone's been given gifts to bring to the world, I would be able to do that in a better way. So that was gigantically relieving. It wasn't just an insight. It wasn't just like, oh yeah, I understand that it was, uh, a weight that had been carrying dropped and uh, a space that I didn't know was available. I was suddenly there and I could expand my sense of myself into that space. So that was a really big moment for me.
- Wow. What happened with those gifts? What did you end up doing with them? - Those were the early days of New Ventures West. So, uh, we were still sorting out exactly what our program was and who would teach it. So from there, new Ventures West was a big success. We had full trainings. It expanded to England and Canada and Singapore and South Africa and sometimes into, uh, south America.
And we protracted a really powerful community of people dedicated to this work and also a faculty who are really strong and beautiful and wise and compassionate. So yeah, it got modified. It was like a light going through a magnifying glass got way more powerful.
- You know, this this thing you said, to your point, when you've been in the process for a couple days, you've been to use your words uprooted from your life, no more of the regular defenses and he's speaking to you from a place of full presence. It was like you were able to hear it in a completely different - Way. Right? In a way that affected me, not just in a way that I understood it, it was something Sharon that could have easily read in a book.
Oh yes, we project onto others what's in our shadow. Thanks check. But you described it beautifully in that moment, in that situation, in the field of the process, the process is a field in which things that seem impossible and happen in many cases without a lot of effort just sort of flows that way. Or things just drop away, like glaciers falling into the ocean, they just fall away even though they've been there for a long time. - Yeah. Oh, that's a beautiful metaphor.
It is something special to experience as a teacher, which I know you can relate to 'cause you've been in that role for so many years. But it's so beautiful to witness that transformation for people. - Oh yeah. It's about the most inspiring thing in the world as far as I know. Yeah. - So, um, you've mentioned New Ventures West, but we haven't actually paused and explained what is New Ventures West.
So can you give us a little bit of background of what, what new ventures West, maybe how you intended it to be in 1987 and and how it transformed if it transformed and evolved? - So New Ventures West is a school that my wife Stacy and I started in 87. As we've said, the idea was to train people to be coaches. In those days, no one knew what a coach was. So if, uh, I was sitting next to a person on a plane and they said, what do you do?
And I say, A coach, they would immediately say, what sport basketball coach or the tennis coach or something. And now of course, partly because our school and other schools, everyone knows what a coach is for coaching that we did though was always about lessening suffering.
And we would say that in the first day of the class, people would come in and be expecting, I don't know, tips and, uh, hacks for getting ahead or reaching goals faster or, um, getting famous, whatever they had in their mind that they thought they wanted. But this was, can you show up in a way that helps other people find out who they are and the powers that they have so that they can drop away a lot of the suffering that they have. So that's what it was for.
- So here you are feeling passionate about helping people lessen their suffering, but your vehicle is to do so by creating space for them to help others lessen their suffering. - Yeah. One of the great studies I read years ago was somebody who was teaching a, a mentor program at Boston College and 'cause it was an academic situation, he was doing, um, research about the effectiveness of the program.
So the way it would go is students who were really strong in the first year of the program in their second year would mentor new first year people. And it turns out the people that were selected to be mentors, the people who were dedicated to helping other people, assisting other people, had a lot more happen for them than anyone else.
So part of the, the magic formula of New ventures West and why so much personal development and skill gets built in a pretty short amount of time is because we do it for the sake of other people. So you're a parent and there's lots of parents maybe that will listen to this. So there's many things that we will do or we find ourselves able to do because of the love we have for our children. We just, there it is.
I'm willing to overcome my little doubt that I have about myself in order to help someone else. So I think that's the intention, that turning of the heart that really unleashes the power of development is when we do it for the sake of others. - Do you believe that innate in everyone is is a desire to do for the sake of others?
- I do. Yes. That's why it's so fabulous that the process exists, because that beautiful purity and goodness of our, of our human heart gets thwarted and crushed and twisted and encased. And for some people that's it. It happened in their first short period of time in their life. This innate goodness never gets out. There's too much scarring, there's too much trauma, there's too much self-criticism, there's not enough confidence, there's not enough feeling of safety in the world and so on.
It gets stopped when that stuff starts to melt away. A lot happens in the week of the process, as you know. But one of the things that's really one of the strong suits of the process is people learn techniques, tools, I think they're called to use afterwards. It turns out this may be surprising for people to listen to this. We have a lot of patterns to work through more than, oh, I, I, I never can show up on time or when I am, uh, pressured. I don't really ever tell the truth.
Yes, thank you very much. It's, it's great that you have those patterns, but you also have like 10,000 more. The process starts when you sign up, it starts, you're now in the field of the process and then you get this homework.
And this is, I think where my eyes started opening for the power of the process for me as a individual was when I did the homework, I listed all the patterns and behaviors and attitudes and so on that I didn't like about myself that were causing me trouble or causing trouble for the people around me. And I had this long list and then do the same thing for your parents. And then what do you know, it's pretty much the same list.
- What do you know? I always wonder when I'm reading the homework, 'cause as the person who reads it, teachers read the homework of their students before and I always wonder, okay, so do they see it as much as I see it? 'cause sometimes when you're in it and you're just writing it, believe it or not, you don't actually see the, the fact that you're connected. - It was, uh, flabbergasting and embarrassing but also good because now I know that I was working
with the right people on the right issues. Yeah. - Oh, I've heard so many comments from students about the homework. You know, even sometimes I'll hear, I've never been asked these questions or I've n never taken the time to go to this level of depth. There are a lot of first times just within those pages of the homework.
- I, uh, one of the recent people that I recommended to the process is a, an executive in a big construction company who's been there for 30 years and is a really warm and terrific person and had more self-awareness than I would say the the usual person walking around in the world. But when he did the homework, I was, uh, I'm in a coaching relationship with him. He said, they asked me things that I never thought about before. How come I never thought about that?
It's so obvious and when I look at it, I, it so shows me so much, you know, because the process has been going on for decades and decades and decades that the questions have gotten really honed so that, that people can really engage with something that will reveal aspects of themselves and how they're living that they know about before even in the homework.
- Yeah. And, and even in the homework, I actually feel like, remember how you talked about how Stan talked to you and he said something so obvious and so what others would call Psychology one oh one and yet boom, it landed. Same thing goes in the homework. I don't know why we haven't thought about it. I don't know why people haven't asked. It's really quite foundational to the exploration of who we are and why we are.
This stuff puts a smile on my face and I can hear your smile just talking about it. I wanna real quickly go back to this, uh, concept of for the sake of others in, in New Ventures West. You also said though that it's a focus on lessening suffering. Is there a sequence, like is it important that the people who become coaches lessen their suffering and then help others? Is there an order of events here? Does it happen together? Can you elaborate on that?
- Yeah, well you're an experienced person working with others, so you know, it has to start with the individual person. So yes, the first third of the program is all about the individual person suffering. So helping them become more self-aware, which as you know, is different than being self-critical. We all have our postdoctoral degree and self-criticism, but we don't have the basics about how to self-serve, how to be a compassionate companion to my own life and to my own experience.
So that's the first part of the class. And then engaging in practices that start to bring more energy and awaken some capacities that have been dormant or maybe never even attended to. So the first part of the program is just listening their own suffering. So everyone has their own development plan, has a coach that works through with them, with them throughout the year and so on. Yes. So that's where it starts. - So yes, you called me out, it was a leading question.
It's true. I knew the answer and the reason I knew the answer is because I myself, you know this, but listeners don't know this am a graduate of New Ventures West. And guess what? At New Ventures West in my development plan, it was recommended to me to go to the Hoffman process. So full circle, - That's the funniest loop of how that happened. And here we are talking - And here we are talking.
So it's, it's, it's a beautiful thing and I, I remember looking at different coaching schools and choosing new ventures west specifically because I saw the emphasis was on myself first. And that is, that is exactly why I, I chose that there are, like you said, there are other coaching schools and there are other coaching schools here, but that is the one that spoke to me because of the priority that you put on it. So it's been 30 plus years, 19 87, 20, 23, 36.
Not necessarily how did New Ventures West evolve, but for you, I can see how in 1991 you had this experience through the Hoffman process of boom. Here you have to direct crystal access to your gifts and there you channel it all into New ventures West as the decades go on, how did you evolve within the relationship of the work you're doing at New Ventures West? - Yeah, so I'm gonna take uh, three years to answer that question. Sharon. I'm sure we have enough. Oh, we've got - Time.
We've got three years, no problem. - That's what I have in my schedule three years. Talk to Sharon. The main part of it is integrating more and more so the method of the new ventures West is integral coaching, which means integrating ourselves. It's really compatible with the Hoffman process, with its notion of there's four um, aspects of us and some of them are acting in a way that splits us apart.
We all know this, there's things that my heart wants to do, but I just can't get my mind to accept it. Over the years of new ventures West, it was including more and more things. So including neuroscience, including attachment theory and self-regulation. The fabulous discoveries about how the vagus nerve works, the nerve that has a lot to do with our feeling safe and social situations. So it was openness to include more and more.
When I started New Ventures West, I had a background in the kind of coaching that I learned from someplace else that had a lot to do with language, being able to make good requests or make good assessments and so on, which is really powerful and revolutionary in its own way, but is limited.
So as the years went on, we included more and more and that got even more full as you can imagine, Sharon, when we had new faculty members who would come in Adam that we brought in to when the graduate department, right before he worked for us, he was working for a company or an organization, a not-for-profit that was dedicated to ending slavery in the world. So it was the kind of people that we would discover and they would bring these gigantic hearts and great abilities.
Yes, it got kinder and kinder. As the years went on, it got more precise and it got more inclusive of all different kinds of views and all different kinds of methods. - What I hear in that is that you are a leader who continues to work on yourself.
So, so just because you're the leader doesn't mean you don't need to look at yourself, but also you were open and you knew how to discern all the stuff that's out there because from 1987 to now, like you already alluded, you know, coaching was back then, are you basketball or soccer? And now it's a whole industry reflective of that is also the literature and the opinions and the, all that information that's out there.
And it seems to me like you were able to discern and say, okay, well this is good neuroscience, I'm gonna bring this in. Okay, attachment theory, I'm gonna bring this in. So it's not just everything that comes your way, it's specific. It's stuff that you filter through and discern and then bring into your organization. - That kind of intelligence or that kind of discernment or that kind of heart intelligence about being able to detect what is for me, what's for what I'm up to and what's not.
I is, um, something that most of us in our upbringing never attend to. We just think what I want or what I desire, what my preferences are, I have to go by that. Even though some of those desires and preferences get us into big trouble. So there's a different turning towards the heart that opens up a channel to what's really important in what's really true and what's contributory.
There's a kind of intelligence of the heart that can awaken that lets us discern, tell know, feel, sense, all of that. What is for me and for what I'm up to, it's also really good in relationships, being able to be with, oh yeah, this is the kind of person for me to be around. Not just a romantic partner, but this is the kind of friends to be around or this is the kind of colleagues to be around. Not just because we like to drink beer and play pickleball.
That's that's good. But then can I really discern how this is a person that I can trust, this is a person I could be vulnerable with. This is a person that I can extend myself to and be open to being affected by. - It's interesting 'cause where I went was how important, like you said, that heart awakening is for a leader in an organization that is helping people become helpers. Especially since you stayed for, you know, for for several decades.
It's one thing to start it off in and then you're out in 10 years and somebody else takes over. But for me in an organization, I, I wanna know that my leader knows how to discern, knows how to evolve, knows how to continue to stay open so that we are continuing to evolve as an organization. - And so that what we're doing doesn't become dog one that can't be questioned.
That everything is an open system and which we are exploring our hearts and minds and bodies and spirits to find out and to um, sort what's more useful, what really helps and to let go of Yes. But that's my favorite part. I really like that part. Yes, thank you. That's, I understand you really like that part, but it doesn't really work. No one really likes it doesn't really help at all.
The other element of the heart, as you well know, is the heart is both the discernment but then also is the foundation or the source of the courage for us to act on what we discern to be the case to be true. - Right? It's two steps. One is discerning, the second is we put it into action.
Were you connected to the responsibility you had as somebody who was certifying so many coaches who were then going out into the world helping and talking and influencing and impacting so many other leaders in the world? - , I'm laughing because that's pretty much all I was was that Oh my goodness. 'cause once people are in the program, sometimes they stay connected here and there in d different ways, but mostly not, mostly they're off somewhere in the world.
And yeah, that was always one of our primary principles is even if the person isn't the most brilliant coach in the world, because of course like all skills, there's a continuum of skill and regarding coaching, but could they connect, could they be present with someone else? That as you know, alone is totally relaxing and healing and integrating for people. So that's where we are always working to help our students be able to be in a relationship like that with their clients.
Being able to have a, a certification process at the end that would be rigorous enough to make sure that people really had trained themselves that way towards being present. But it wasn't so punitive or so grinding down that people would be discouraged 'cause it was too hard.
- Yeah. I'm sure you think about this, but I'm struck by it too, is the ripple that you put out there because of you realizing what your gifts are and act like you said, discerning and acting, discerning and realizing, whoa, these are the gifts I was giving. Then having the courage to act on it, starting and continuing to evolve and grow the school that produced these other people who also do the same thing and help others. I mean I, I can't help but see the visual ripple of that.
And then I'm imagining, okay, 15, 20 years in having a quiet moment with myself if I am James and being like, wow, this is a huge responsibility. It's big. - Yes. And at some point it stopped being me and being mine. It was just something that life was up to. Like life is up to growing redwood trees and it's up to putting whales in the oceans and it's up to, uh, rabbits, hopping through the fields. It's up to this way of coaching coming into the world.
And I was the vehicle, the method that it came through. So the more and more I could relax into that and have it be not, oh, look what I did on one side, or oh no, what have I done or really, do I really think I could do this? You know, all that. And instead of that, just trusting that life was happening through what we were doing and we then we could cooperate with that, harmonize with that. - That's beautiful. And yeah, of course.
I I hear exactly what you mean in that trusting and surrendering and harmonizing. It got to a point where you must have acknowledged. Okay, I think, I think our we're we're ready to turn the page to the next chapter. - Yeah. So, uh, around 2015, Stacy and I decided, let's find a way to turn this over. And part of it was it got to be so much on the administrative side of things like other people in the world. We were getting older. I didn't think that was gonna happen to us.
I thought if you were really a good person, you wouldn't get old or something. I don't know what I thought. Anyway, so we were getting older and it was getting more complicated with all the trainings happening around the world and all the leaders and all the traveling and all the finances and the finding of staff and training of staff and getting supplies everywhere. So Stacy did all that coordination beautifully.
And I could tell that it had gotten so big and so complicated and intricate that it was wearing her down, that it was hard for her to really stop working at the end of the day was always working her. So in 2015, we said five more years and turned out that way that in January of 2020 for graduates of the program took it over. Of course, fantastic timing for us. We didn't have to figure out how to navigate Covid times, but they did. They found a way to make the class available for a while online.
'cause otherwise it wouldn't be available in any form. And they're doing a great job. They're being really creative. They're coming up with new programs, they're reaching out to different communities and they're keeping the spirit of it, but they're keeping it vital and alive and not know some dusty comments that someone made decades ago that we have to pull out
of the vault and read to people. It's not like that - Any, you know, uh, feelings come up for you as you close such a significant chapter. - It wasn't a big deal for me, Sharon, and maybe it was because we prepared for it a long time and been talking about it for a long time. Maybe it was because the people that took it up were so, so trustworthy and we're such good friends with them. And I think over the years I've learned, at least in a lot of parts of life to not be so attached.
It's a weird thing that even though I was fully doing that, my identity wasn't that. So it wasn't that if I stopped leading the classes or training trainers or working with students, I would wonder then who am I? Because who I am is happening. Whether I'm in front of a, a class or whether I'm in the grocery store or walking down the street or everywhere. I don't have to have that. I didn't feel it as a loss.
- That's incredible. I I don't know if you've got other members of your community who have also closed such significant chapters, but it is a testament to the work you did throughout the years around attachment, around suffering, around identity to have experienced such a significant closure and been able to, to recognize, wow, you know what, it wasn't my identity. I I'm the same person here as I was 10 years ago. It's still the core self right here.
- Yeah. And that's one of the other reasons I like the process so much because people have probably numerous encounters during that, the week of the training and afterwards because the training unfolded unexpected ways after the week is over.
So people have this meeting of themselves and who they are beyond their conditioning and who they are beyond the compensation that, that they do because of how they're raged or the defenses they have to have against the world because they were so hurt before. So when all that comes thinner and more porous, folks have this chance to meet this amazing being that they are and then a chance to live from there.
And when that happens, there's way more degrees of freedom and joy that doesn't seem to have a source. It isn't. I, I'm joyful because I got a great Christmas present or I gave a great Christmas present, but just, I don't know why. I guess I'm joyful 'cause I'm alive. It's, I'm 'cause I'm here. That's kind of enough. - Well, James, I know you wanted to talk to me for three years every day consecutively, but I feel very full and very whole and very inspired and moved through this conversation .
- So you're so nice Sharon. I'm, I'm so glad we got to meet this way. Me - Too. Me too. And I wonder how many other people will also be, uh, new ventures, graduates and Hoffman graduates. I know, I am both and it's such a treat to speak to you and thank you for letting us into your journey and your heart and um, I hope we find other reasons to connect again soon.
- Yeah, me too. And um, for everyone who is listening to this, who is a Hoffman faculty member or staff member, thank you so much for the dedication to take care of hundreds and hundreds of people every year for such tender, unique responsiveness without ever it becoming a machine that's just grinding something out. The care with which everything is done is very deeply loving and humane and a great exemplar for all of us about the world that we can be in.
So thank you to all the Hoffman people for continuing to do that all these decades. - On that note, we will, we will conclude our interview. Thank you again, James. - Alright, you're welcome. - Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza Insi. I'm the CEO and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. - And I'm Ra Rossi Hoffman, teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation.
- Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love - In themselves, in each other, and in the world. To find out more, please go to hoffman institute.org.