I read this in one of my morning meditations this week. Considering Ronn and I are both coaches, but in different capacities it was particularly meaningful to both of us.
Who coaches you? What older, wiser, and more experienced person stands on the sidelines of your life and watches with the big picture in mind? A coach doesn’t try to run the race for you. No, he sets the standard for the race and makes a judgment on your performance. Who does this for you? Who stretches your mind? Who makes you wince as they expose the many faces of your ignorance; who will not let you get away with spiritual and intellectual superficiality. Who listens to and encourages your dreams? Dreams are not intellectual propositions that must be proven. They are the work of visionaries; they are out-of-the-box, frequently awful and occasionally good. These are the folks who, when others laugh and say you’re trying to build castles in the air, remind you that God “calls those things which be not, as though they are.”
In short, we cannot discover ourselves by ourselves.