The work I do is not sexy, in traditional marketing terms. I don’t make you more valuable to employers. I don’t help you be more attractive to the opposite sex. In fact, if upon hearing what it is I do you don’t feel a compelling desire to delve deeply into the subject, that’s a very good sign that we’re not right for each other, and likely never will be.

My clients have a deep, powerful desire to know what they’re made of. They respect and value people with integrity, with guts, stick-to-itiveness and class. They mark out people with compassion, generosity, and strength in adversity and watch them carefully. They want, above all else, to have those qualities, and they are deathly afraid that they don’t.

Because they know what they are capable of, and it scares them.

They know the self-deceit and ego-gratification they see in others might just as easily be present in them, and they have no way of knowing. My clients are smart, and the smartest people are the most adept at finding reasonable excuses to get away with things. They want to think that the are good people, with character, integrity and value.

But they’re just not sure.

People who want to act with integrity and uprightness have a tendency to put themselves in situations where they will be tested. Most people, if they’re forced to find a word to describe what they’re aiming for, it’s “character.”

Character is failing, and failing, and failing again, but never failing to get back up.

Character is doing the right thing and not the easy thing.

Character is pragmatic, but it never forgets about the human element, which is always the stickiest thing to navigate.

Character is consciously and deliberately choosing every single day to do yourself proud.

I read a story that perfectly illustrates character, in a book by an ex-Navy SEAL. He was talking about being out in a warzone, and out on night patrol with his platoon, and arriving back at their camp at dawn.

They came across two local lads, camp helpers, laying bloody, mutilated heaps on the road. An older woman was kneeling beside them, weeping. The girl who helped around camp was missing. “Where is Mai Le?” they asked. “They took her,” she said.

The commander looked at his crew and announced with a falsely casual drawl, “Boys, I think I’m gonna go for a little walk. Anyone want to join me?” because it was not exactly in mission parameters to go rescuing kidnapped civilians, it wouldn’t have been right to order them to go along with it. But, being who they were, they all nodded.

All but one. And he looked miserable, too. “Cap, I only got two weeks left of my tour,” he explained lamely. And although everyone knew the commander was a hard-ass and a dick, his eyes softened and he said to the kid, “Grab some sack. We’ll be back later.” He understood the desire not to tempt fate all too well, and didn’t hold it against him.

They melted into the jungle, following the dirt “road” the woman said they took Mai Le down.

A little over a mile away, they spotted her, tied to a tree in such a way that she was slowly choking to death. “Looks like a bear trap,” one of the men muttered — – — that is, an ambush. They tried to circle around, but the insurgents spotted them and started shooting.

Suddenly, they heard a chopper. It wasn’t a big Army chopper. It was a Seawolf, a mosquito of a chopper, a tiny little thing all fuel tank and propeller. A bird used only for small drops because it was a fireball waiting to happen if anyone got a shot off at it.

In it was Newman, holding the joystick in one hand and a 50-calibre machine gun in the other, zeroing in on the insurgents. As he flow over their position, he dropped grenades with both hands and the resultant explosion almost knocked the chopper out of the air.

Newman dropped it in a small clearing and as the commander bundled Mai Le into the cockpit he yelled over the roar of the propeller “What, you get lonely?” and Newman grinned and shouted back, “Couldn’t sleep. Too much noise.”

That’s character.

He was two weeks away from going home. He’d done his duty, and nobody, not even his hard-ass of a commander, would have thought less of him for risking his almost-home-free life to walk into what was obviously a trap.

But he thought less of himself. And he couldn’t go back home knowing he’d let his fear overcome his integrity.

Most of us are never going to go into a war-zone in order to find out whether we have character. It doesn’t mean you don’t have it. It just means you weren’t willing to risk dying — – — or perhaps living– — – to find out.

But there are other ways to put yourself in a crucible. Lots of them. And people – my clients – who are desperate to see what they’re made of find hundreds of ways to dig deep. They’re fighting, all the time, to be better, truer, honorable versions of themselves. I call them warrior spirits.

Do you have a warrior spirit?

A warrior is not a person who seeks conflict. A warrior is a person who seeks to know himself intimately and will face the brutal, ugly truth of himself unflinchingly.

A warrior wants to know what he’s made of. He wants to know, above everything, push come to shove, that he has what it takes. That he lives up to his values instead of taking the easy way out.

He wants navigate complex and sticky situations in his life to with the highest integrity. He wants above all, to be proud of his actions. He devotes his life to the discipline, learning, and upright action.

The Warrior soul knows he has a dark side (he’s one of the few willing to admit it.) But he is always on guard against it, fighting bitterly to keep it from gaining an advantage.

There’s an old Native American tale about an elder giving advice to a young warrior. He said, “Inside of you, my son, are two fighting wolves. One of them is a vicious, bitter, vengeful. The other is compassionate, loving and wise.”

The young man asked anxiously, “Which wolf will win the fight?” and the elder answered:

“The one you feed.”

The problem is we often don’t know which is which. We hope we are feeding the good wolf, and we think we are doing the right things, but in the midst of pain and chaos, we cannot always be sure. We know we are capable of great self-deceit. We know we are capable of justifying anything we want badly enough, and if we are truly, resolutely honest with ourselves, we know that we can’t ever truly know whether we’re on the side of the angels.

The anxiety and pre-emptive guilt we feel over that reality devours us. It saps our strength. It drains us of our intensity, our fervor, our passion and desire.

No-one can walk this path without help.

No one can. Even I have a coach, and a small cadre of trusted advisors for when I’m in a sticky situation where I need to tread carefully. And you get better at it over time. You do gain a sort of trust in your warrior instincts, a confidence in your character, in your courage, a commitment to those around you that you will never, ever, let them down.

But that’s where you’re going.

Let’s talk about where you’re at. And what I can do to help.

Right now, you don’t know who you are. You’re struggling with the reality of what you’re capable of — both good, bad, and ambiguous, and you don’t quite know which way is up.

That’s where I come in.

I catch you in the lies you tell yourself. I tell you what’s true for you, what’s real, and what’s illusion. I show you how to deconstruct the narratives you’re enmeshed in, and from there, we’ll distill all these things down to their purest essence, and after that, you can watch your life unfold excitingly, challengingly and profoundly in front of you, in total alignment and centred with your values as an Warrior, proud, pragmatic, and strong as Damascene steel.

How do I do this?

When I work with you, I will go into a light trance. In that trance, I am listening not only to your words, but to whether your essence resonates with what you’re saying.

When you’re not aligned with what you say, when you’re not clear on what you know, your energy or essence is likewise hazy and indistinct. However, when you are clear and centred, your essence is grounded, clear, sharp and powerful.

Because this is so evident to me, I am the ultimate lie detector. I will tell you when the things you’re saying are true, when they are false, when you are superficially making sense and yet motivated from fear, and when things are just off.

This is what makes me fundamentally different from all other coaches.

At my root, I am healer. It makes me uncomfortable to be a healer. I have fought it for a long time.

Because often, when people say they want healing, all they want is for their pain to stop. They are so deep within that pain that trying to help them is like trying to save a drowning person: in their fear they cannot even stop reacting long enough to accept help.

Therefore, I began to call myself a coach, because at least the people who came to me came prepared to work.

But even that didn’t help, as I found that many clients simply wanted action steps, and didn’t want to face the truth of themselves — – the great, and the terrible, both.

The people I work with — – — the people who transform, who ascend, who flourish — – — are not boddhisattvas or paladins in disguise. They are not necessarily daredevils, commandos or heroes.

They are simply people who, when as children were frightened by monsters in the closet, did NOT cower under the covers, did not call piteously for help, but went and got a flashlight and confronted their greatest fears head on.

They are fierce. They are brave. And they don’t back down from honour’s challenge.

If you want to know more, here’s what you do. Email me now at feedthespark[at]gmail.com, or use the form below. Ask for a free 30 minute session for me to show you exactly what I do. I’ll send you a link to my calendar and instructions on what to do from there.

“Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.” Richard E. Byrd