Going to a Place of Possibility & Committing - My Session with Steve Hardison Part 1 - Week #43 of The Awakening Journey

Right off the top, I’m just going to start with the perhaps most powerful learning I’ve had during and after my session with Steve Hardison: Storytelling and listening are experiential. You can transform your life through listening. These are strong words coming from a coach and facilitator who swears by experiential learning.

What I have learned in the last week, is WHO you are being, while listening creates the quality of your listening, which creates the level of your transformation. And, of course, it is the intention of the storyteller that co-creates that container with you. So for this story, I’m creating a container of powerful transformative experiential storytelling. 

So, I really want you to listen to this: This is not my story. This is YOUR story. Please don’t read this and think “oh, that’s Darla’s life. Or why is she talking about Steve Hardison?” 

Read this as if it is about YOUR life. Experience it. Be in it. Absorb its energy of it…

Steve Hardison and I in front of the famous 11:11 wall

Back in January, I was chatting with my friend in Geneva and he related to me his experience of watching this life-changing YouTube video called TBOLITNFL.  

The video, TBOLITNFL is about a life. It’s your life told through the experience of an NFL player and his interaction with The Ultimate Coach, Steve Hardison.

At first, I was skeptical. How can one video change someone’s life so profoundly?  I have had about 10,000 hours of training and development so my ego thought, “hmmm, I’ve seen it all, I am not sure I believe this.” 

But, despite my doubts, I listened to my friend's advice, and I followed his instructions: Turn off my electronics, set aside two hours to complete the entire video, and do not allow any interruptions.  

I’ll be honest, though I was intrigued by watching the video & I had some emotional moments, some of my previous skepticism continued throughout the viewing. In the end, I turned it off and thought, “I’m so glad that changed my friends’ life, I enjoyed it as well”. And I went to sleep. 

I woke up the next morning and felt something empty. I could not put my finger on it at the time, but in retrospect, perhaps what I felt was…the absence of anxiety, worry, and fear. Instead, I felt decisive in a way I have not felt since I was a child.  The wild abandon of certainty mixed with play.  And so, I promptly got in the car and took an unplanned spontaneous road trip with my giant Newfoundland Thorin Oakenshield. 

During our road trip, as the miles unfolded, something unfolded for me, on the inside.  A Personal Internal Commitment was beginning to form and that commitment created a trajectory that has changed my life. 

During this road trip, I also had a second awakening moment, but that story is for another day… 

Meanwhile, my trajectory was accelerating when I realized the avalanche that was falling was from the TBOLITNFL catalyst. I decided to do a little research and I looked up this guy, Steve Hardison. I was astounded to learn he only coaches in his home office in Arizona. His clients fly to him and they pay $200k a year to coach with him. 

At the time, that felt unimaginable! I couldn’t even fathom this. I thought to myself, that something for high rollers like NFL clients, CEOs, or presidents who come to him. 

Yet, the sleeping dragon was awakening.

At about this time, I was interviewing a business coach, Martin, for my business.  Through all of my many hours of training in the last two decades, I had not ever had someone focus solely on my business. It had always been more processing of the personal stuff that impacted my business self.  So, honestly, it was a bit of a stretch for me to be considering investing in a high-level business coach like Martin. 

In one of the conversations with my coach, where he and I were just getting to know each other, I shared that IF I hired him, our coaching goal would be to make and save the money needed to coach with Steve Hardison in a few years. 

He challenged me back by saying “you can work with Steve right now, Darla, you can have a one-time Being With Session - a two-hour session, you don’t need to sign up for the whole year.”  

His challenge took my breath away a little. The truth is that I had already seen the information on Steve’s website, so I knew this possibility existed, I just didn’t know it existed for me. 

Yet, I left that call with my coach feeling that somehow, some way, this was happening. I was going to meet with Steve.  

I was beginning to really create at a very high level.

At first, I surmised I would plan to have a session with Steve for next year sometime when I saved the money.  Then, I was strategically planning for winter when I would want to get away from the cold and travel to Arizona.  Finally, around hours after the session where my coach challenged me, I reached out to Steve through email and asked if I could have a Being With Session.  He responded back within hours and asked me to call him. I was deadly calm. 

We had a short chat and set up the next steps. In the brief conversation, Steve asked me what I needed. I didn’t think I needed anything, I was very present, peaceful and just being in the space. 

Seeing beyond my presence, he pushed back and said “You know that thing you are worried about?  You don’t need to worry about that at all, it’s going to work itself out all on its’ own.” 

I was surprised to hear that because at that moment I couldn’t identify a single thing I was worried about. He then shared a couple of stories about how he knew things about people that were impossible to know.  How he had predicted to people things that had life-altering results. 

And he then again repeated, “so that thing you are worried about, it is going to work out. I know these things. So stop worrying”.  And to my astonishment, I realized, I did have something that was in the back of my mind and had been there since childhood. A fear of security of livelihood. It isn’t logical, it doesn’t make sense, I know this. Yet, there it was.  

Hearing his words, startled something inside me. I had this feeling of being woken up to reality. Something inside me opened up and said “oh, yes, that’s right. You have always created security for yourself and done an incredible job”. 

Ever since that conversation, I have felt an impossible peace pass over me and have not had a single conscious or unconscious thought about security. The next day I spoke with my doctor, a health issue I had worried about for decades had simply disappeared from my life. 

How do these things happen?  Is it magic?  A miracle?

No, it isn’t. It’s very simple actually. It’s about committing to creating the reality we want in the world. 

This is about abandoning the idea that we need fear, worry, and anxiety to keep us motivated and achieving. This is about you taking your someday dream and making it into your reality now by committing.  

It’s also about being challenged beyond your limits as my coach did with me. And, as you will see in the coming weeks, it’s about YOU being, and loving/challenging/believing in others. 

Remember at the beginning, I said to read this differently. Read it as if it were about you.  You can transform your life by listening. I sincerely hope that by listening to this story something in you is shifting, something is awakening. And that something is your Being.

Because you have a story to tell. You have a truth to speak. You have a gift to give. Yes, YOU.

What is your story?  I would love to hear it. And so would the world.