photo credit: mufan96

It has been a number of weeks since I last posted to this site. It is time to hit the ‘play’ button again…

I have been recuperating from surgery for thyroid cancer and attending to some needs away from the worlds as they exist on my computer. While the prognosis on the health front is excellent, it was quite the experience being on the the ‘big C’ roller coaster. One lesson learned was the limits of statistics (especially compared to the power of stories). I was told there was only a 3% chance that my growth was cancerous. However, when I was informed post-surgery that I was a part of the unlucky few, I realized that the emotional gap between 0 and 3 was much larger than the numerical one would suggest.

The mountain is still just the mountain

The power in that moment was in the story I choose to construct about my outcome—even to move beyond the need to frame my experience as either lucky or unlucky. It just WAS. I was reminded of the famous parable about the beginner for whom the mountain was just a mountain (fusion), the trainee for whom the mountain was not the mountain (separation), and the master for whom the mountain was just the mountain again, albeit with a higher level of consciousness (enlightenment). I came to realize the ways in which the labels we give to our experiences do not change the essential nature of the mountain, but are designed more to comfort our individual and collective egos.

Given that they were able to save half of my thyroid and the incidence of recurrence is rare, this brush with cancer is likely not to have any implications going forward. However, the narrative suggests differently in that I have accelerated a process that was already underway to examine the trajectories for my work and my life. It has been a time of getting down to the “roots” of who I am and what I feel called to do with my one life.

Look for changes to come soon

I am back to work full-time now and committed to re-engaging with you via this blog. Look for some changes to appear in the weeks ahead to help us all deepen our abilities to coach others and bring their stories to life. The world is waiting…

David

photo credit: Shereen M
It has been awhile since I posted. I’ve been quite engaged on two other fronts: One is an intense and wonderful coaching project in Australia.

The other arose just before I left when I followed a gut feeling (reinforced in my dreams) that something was not quite right in my body. I discovered through an ultrasound that I have a large nodule on my thyroid. The biopsies were inconclusive and so I will have surgery sooner rather than later to take part of it out – and find out for sure.

They say the chance it is cancerous is about 5%. However, I soon discovered that while the statistical difference between the 0% chance I had before and the 5% I have now is not all that significant, the emotional difference was huge. I’ve since moved to a better space where I’ve come to appreciate this wake-up call.

I found that in this time of waiting—and the not knowing that comes with it—it was hard to know what story tell about my situation. I was not well but I was not sick. In some people I evoked a story of great concern while others resorted to hurried optimism. I came to realize in some important new ways both the power of the choices we make about how we narrate our lived experience and the power of the stories that are told about us.

I am choosing to be grateful for what IS — an opportunity to recalibrate some elements in my life. Oddly, this re-balancing process mirrors a dilemma that surfaced in my Hogan assessment where I scored very high on ambition and fairly low on power. No wonder my thyroid is out of balance!

The fact that the problem is there has important symbolic, energetic and practical implications in terms of how I express myself and live my life. What a gift! Regardless of the biopsy outcome, I am using this time to be more courageous and clear about the story I tell through my life and work.

What story is your body telling you? What story are you telling through your body?