 Do you sometimes feel like you forgot where you put yourself under all the noise and overwhelm of life and the pressure and do you sometimes scold yourself like like a Frustrated babysitter scolding a problem child instead of treating yourself like a genuine friend and ally If that has been the case Then you're gonna love this interview with Chris Kisling my guest today Let me read you Chris's bio and then I'm gonna bring him on Chris Kisling is a life coach and he helps people who feel like they've lost the plot of their own lives Beneath the conflicting messages demands responsibilities uncertainties and the wounds the old and new wounds of our busy existence Chris helps his clients to reconnect and live from their deepest desires and aspirations what he calls Your still point His own path took him from a career as an executive for a national consulting firm earning six figures and managing a high Performance team on a daily diet of an adrenaline and stress To his current love which is sitting across from one beautiful soul at a time Helping them to see to connect with to fall back in love with themselves to fall back in love with yourself Chris believes that each of us is on a sacred quest whether we recognize it or not and Without exception our lives are worthy of attention appreciation and compassion Chris welcome to our interview today. Thanks for being here. Hey George. I'm really glad to be here So I'm gonna be sure that people have access to your website There will be a link those of you who are looking for if there's a link to Chris's website and also Facebook page and also He wrote an article for elephants journal that was an editor's pick and I'll put the link to that as well so Chris you have a couple of things to share with us today and I'll just let you go ahead and share that and I might chime in with with a comment or question Okay Well Again, thanks for having me on and I'm just so thrilled to be talking to you and to the folks who are watching this First just a little bit about my business that my my company is called still point enterprises and that comes from Actually the inspiration for that was one of my favorite poems by TS Eliot The Four Quartets and he talks about Being a still point in the turning world and that for me is kind of a metaphor for what I choose to be in my life and What other people have reflected back to me that they are like wow you like this like spot of calm in all the stuff that's going on But what's really cool about that is the Elliot goes on to say Except for the point the still point there would be no dance and there is only the dance So even though I'm in love with this concept of the still point It's really not the point the point is the dance and to the extent that the accessing that that place of quiet Confidence and knowledge and self-appreciation and compassion allows you the freedom to move into the dance That's that's what the game is all about so I Love that. I love that idea and it's kind of integrating a Duality of life, which is that there's both rest and and confidence and groundedness and there's movement and progress and sort of uncertainty and all that stuff and As a coach, you are somebody who kind of helps people grapple with that, right? All right, because we're not these we aren't these fixed entities. We're actually unfolding processes throughout the course of our lives and just in the course of a day you You may go from one extreme to another you might show up depending on the circumstances With very different kinds of energy and they can all be you There is a there is a kernel a thread a pattern that runs through all of them, but In some way, I think of our my clients and myself as these marvelous vessels these containers under which all this different kinds of alchemy and magic can unfold So there's this idea that you share with clients called timeless moments Tell us what that means. Yeah, that's that's actually a really simple Actually kind of journaling strategy that I use with a lot of clients to When we're trying to develop a direction, especially early on in the engagement Asking them to do a life review and reflect back over their lives and Identify when were those what were those timeless moments those moments when I felt just Most in touch with the person that I want to be I felt most in flow using my gifts In sync with whatever I can see the the world and whatever may lie beyond it Really at my best and And so I have my my clients Reflect over their lives identify those and then journal about each one of those so that they can identify What was going on? What was I doing? Who was I with? Where was I? What was the setting and then we look at that? We look at all of them for clues commonalities So that we can start crafting a vision for okay, if this is what has really Given me mojo in the past. What are the clues there that will tell us where to look in the future and I was thinking this morning of a client that when he came to me he was actually a high school student and he he was a loner and he was okay with that he was He might have even been on the spectrum a bit. He was like very Very attached to the things that he liked to do and spent a lot of time alone and And said that he was fine with that But we did that Exercise and as we went through all of the different examples Every single one he was in relationship with other people. He was cooperating with them or doing something for them or receiving something from them creating something with them and So we had to have a little talk after that saying you know If this if these are the high points of your life and you want more points like this Wouldn't it make sense to try to get more comfortable being around other people and to to kind of get over those barriers so that you don't have this this resistance to some to doing that so that you can have more of that in your life and then that became like kind of an aha and a Guide post and a motivation for him to start doing the stretch And so we did that but on the other side too like You can't just do things on a conceptual level so with him and also had to be some practical pushing so So one thing I did with him he he had an assignment he wanted to get in shape so he had to go to the gym and He would go every day but he would go make a beeline to the treadmills because they were in the back and he could get on there without talking to anybody and Just do his thing and then leave and I said Well, what about the other stuff and he said well I would have to go like I don't know how to use them and I would have to go ask somebody for help and It would just be I don't want to be that pain in the ass and So he committed to doing it for homework he came in he hadn't done it so I said alright that's it let's go we went out jumped in the car and We drove to I think three different gyms within a couple miles of my house and he had to walk into each one and request a tour and And when he came out even when he came out of the first one, he's like wow that that wasn't so hard they seemed like really happy to help me and so but he had this concept of That he was a pain in the ass and that that That was getting in his way so Tell me what kind of clients you work with So you've got this this example I Imagine you work with clients of different age ages and different professions, so absolutely, yeah, I'm I'm working and I'm working with one who's a CEO in charge of several hundred people and multi-million dollar budget I I've worked with Really across the age range I've worked with College students people outside of college struggling to find their way Breathing widows People confused about Their sexuality like they're not sure they've received all of these messages and have grown up in certain cultural contexts And they're trying to figure out what their way is so it really I Haven't been able to define my niche so far beyond lost people Who especially are struggling to find their own way in the face of all of the messages they're getting around them But I was thinking about another client today who He had dropped out of college and He was facing several different Possibilities the his old job was offering in this potentially really lucrative sales position And he his father was a really successful business man I had definite ideas about what he should be doing and his mother they were divorced but his mother had very strong opinions about what he should be doing and in the meantime, he was a part-time waiter at a restaurant and living in an apartment without a couch and I'm convinced the first thing that I did that was Tell him the best thing I did At the beginning was tell him you could you cannot come back here until you have a couch in your living room Like you just have to do that that's your homework and he did and suddenly he had this big metaphor that wow I can do like adult things now. I have a place where people can visit me and sit and it's like Kind of really kind of helped shift his self-concept But we we did a kind of a spoken version of That the timeless moments and I asked him for okay when was a moment when you were really alive and he talked about He said it was Every once in a while, they let me run the front of the house at the restaurant and he said I love it He said like I feel like the ringmaster there are all these people coming in and they're having all kinds of experiences And it might be like super special moments in their lives and I'm making that happen I'm the person who's Kind of like the puppet master and making everything happen. He said I think I'd really like to own a restaurant at some point my lives and So we talked some more and it turned out the restaurant. He was in was super nurturing of their employees and really receptive to people who wanted to take on more responsibility and I just told him I said, you know, that is the only time in this session of all the possibilities you've talked about where you really lit up and You don't need to go to college. You're in college. Like this is the place so for him this big shift was finding out that he was already right where he needed to be and and embracing that and so we made a commitment that he was gonna become a sponge and ask for all it The training he could and become indispensable Volunteer and I think within six months. He was assistant manager within a year He was manager of the restaurant and then they built a new restaurant and just put him in charge of it That was his that's awesome What you just said you you helped him, you know with this timeless moments exercise you helped him Do that in real time and I'm wondering is that something you you work with clients on because I can imagine It might be hard for some people like myself to remember those moments to journal about it and having somebody like you Kind of pull that out would be really helpful Yeah, yeah, and Yeah, because I have to look by my clients coming with people have different modalities that work better for them and some people They frankly have some trauma around writing. I'm an English major by training and so I I love that stuff, but So it might involve a discussion it might involve putting them in like a slight meditative state and seeing what comes What bubbles up from there, but We've all we've all got those those moments and just by paying really close attention and responding to the cues in the moment We can bring them out and they really do serve as guideposts. Yeah, because they're ours Yeah, absolutely. I can see why those are so important to study. Yeah, and you have another exercise called The eternal return That's cool and what tell me about that. Yeah, the eternal return. These are those Those issues that just keep coming back for us and we all have One or two One of my teachers used to call them our unanswerable questions like no matter how much Time and effort and information we throw at them. They're just still up for us all the time Might be some need that we can't get met no matter how much people support us and talk to us about it we still feel this this particular ache and It's really I think useful first to identify them but then to understand that The thing that is actually Holding that issue in place might be beneath it And so what we do we tend to do is like keep working on the issue Where in fact there might be a supporting construct or concept or experience that is keeping it locked into place And that's where you need to work first in order to get some leverage on this That's that's a little abstract, but I can give you an example for my own life One of my unanswerable questions my From going way back is do I belong and they tend to be questions like do I belong? Am I enough? When will you leave? Just depending of we've been shaped by our experiences and our lives kind of coalesce around these ongoing concerns and So for me it was like do I belong and in every context I would be asking that and being paying close attention like oh Here's this group of people that I kind of like but they all seem to like belong to each other in a way that I don't and it probably goes back in part to the growing up as a gay man in a strong Catholic Republican military environment and feeling kind of like an outsider there But when I did some Some gentle inquiry around it in some ways it's all akin to a less formulaic version of Byron Katie's the work the construction I Realize it underneath that was this concept of consensus like I When I would walk into a room I would size it up as me and everyone else and I would kind of like make them this homogenous whole and Assume that they knew something about each other and they all knew something about me One thing they knew was that I didn't get the same instruction manual that they did and so just like even before I walked into Room that was the way the board was set up in my mind so I had to look at the rules of the board but instead of just the situation like each situation and so as soon as I started Picking that apart and realizing there actually is no such thing as Consensus about me that they are not this homogenous. Well, they are actually all individuals And so I had to make it a practice when I walked into a room to look around at Individual people one at a time and see them and see how they were interacting and realizing that they weren't just part of this Monolith a coal but they were actually just individuals and they were sometimes they seem happy sometimes They seem connected sometimes. They seemed in a mood they were just like me and And so by doing that I kind of was able to dissolve That construct that was keeping me isolated It still comes up from the other night I was in I was in a bar and I was sitting with a group that knew each other really well and I was kind of a relative newcomer and I decided rather than settling back into my old story I leaned forward and started connecting with each one of them Individually and I just I had the best time at the end and we were all hugging everything was great That that never would have happened couple of decades ago And that's that's the kind of stuff I like to do, you know with my clients identify those situations where these things come alive and then what kind of a An experience or experiment or homework can we improvise around that? Yeah It's brilliant great example and Yeah, those questions That's a fascinating one because I think yes, we all have something sometimes it's you know We share some of those unmanageable questions with others, but sometimes it's Feels unique and always feels unique I think so how do you say more about how if somebody is watching this and they Resonate with your energy. They like to be in a session with you What's the next step? How does somebody move forward to work with you? Well, I would recommend That they go to my website And it's find your still point calm and it'll be in the links And just have a look around I really poured myself into that and so it has a lot of how I feel about These things the way I look the particular way I look at life and if that Speaks to you then there's a contact page with a really short form just click on there and I'll get right back to you And we'll schedule a conversation. Just I'm not into high-pressure sales or anything I just want to we'll have a gentle conversation and see if we seem like a good fit and Sometimes we do and there are other times I've gone to somebody said, you know, you really don't need me you need somebody like this And then I'll recommend somebody else The important thing is that you Get support whoever that is and if And if you are any time you are inspired to take action and reach out to me I know that like, okay, the iron is hot. It's important to strike now And so if I'm not the right one, I still want to help push you towards resources because we only wake up Every once in a while and get the courage to reach out and take that kind of action because it's you know It is vulnerable. It's like admitting that I need some help. I don't have all the answers and By the way, I don't either Right, but I found that like two of us two minds working on a problem can Be a lot more creative and have a lot more space Then just one person being alone Absolutely. Yeah, I think of coaching which is what you do as a partnership for the clients Progress and kind of stepping into potential greater potential and optimizing their life making it even better Then then somehow, you know, the coach has all the answers. In fact, it's so so funny. You said it because he just yesterday. I was Talking to a potential coach because I use coaches myself and what worried me was when he said I know I have all the answers that you need I know that I can get you exactly to where you need to go. I'm like, wow, really? We've been talking for 10 minutes Know anything about me and you know exactly where I need to go Yeah, I think people who know how how life really, you know journey how we really develop Understanding it's like, there's a lot more there than meets the eye. So but thank you. Thank you for Anyway, thank you for being here in this conversation and kind of for doing the work that you do So as we complete is there anything else you want to say to to those who are watching? No, just I I hope that you will take exquisite care of yourself and If you're if you are struggling that you will reach out if not to me to somebody To to get the support that you need and Also, if you mentioned earlier that the link to the elephant journal article that was about a series of extraordinary events That led me into this work. I call it the night the owl called my name and If if you are interested in the way that signs and synchronicities working people's lives I encourage you to go there and check it out and Yeah, it was pretty extraordinary Awesome. Awesome. I I'm gonna go read it myself, too So Chris, thank you so much for for being here today And I hope those who are watching will reach out to you and click on the links in the notes of the video Your website once again is find WWW dot find your still point dot com find your still point dot com Yeah, all one much Chris all one way. Thanks, Chris. Thanks so much George