WITH AMY AND MICHAEL SHERMAN OF COURAGEOUS LOVING

I’m going to be honest with you – I still don’t believe or even comprehend that I’m a father.  It’s been two years since we’ve adopted Twyla, and she’s the best thing on earth.  She calls me “Daddy” all the time – and I love hearing that – but it takes a little work to think of myself as a father.  Maybe because my father is gone?  Maybe because I think of fatherhood as being a grown up, and I’m still not into the idea being a grown up.

The beautiful thing about participating in an Imago Appreciation Dialogue, is it lets you receive what’s true about you as other people see it.  There’s an art to receiving.  When you listen to a dialogue, it may seem pedantic to “mirror” someone – to tell them – “So what I hear you saying is…” but that’s the whole point.  Stop talking.  Start listening.  Deeply.  Slow down.

And when you do, you will hear things about yourself that you may be disowning. Like my own fatherhood.  Listen how the way I play the role of father affects my wife, Amy.  Listen how what she says affects me. Hearing about how she sees me as a father awakens me to the fact that I’ve applied this loving dedication to my new family, but to my business.  It helps me to see the parallel between the personal and the professional.

There’s a dance to this work, and it takes practice.  I’m grateful to share it with you.

Please comment below. Warmly, Michael Sherman

As Amy and I attempt to take Courageous Loving to the next level, I feel like we are building a skyscraper brick by brick.  It’s a great project, an important one, and it’s becoming clearer everyday.

Teddy, my father

Our vision for this work directs us to take on this singular task: Helping people to answer the question, “Who are my relationships calling me to become?” By steering our clients towards this question, we’ve been a witness to amazing growth. I challenge them all to focus on this question with the toughest relationship in their lives.

When I think about answering that question myself, it helps me get grounded and brings me back to a place of peace.

Who is my toughest relationship? For me, that choice is easy.  My father, Teddy.

Teddy took his life 8 years ago.  He was paranoid schizophrenic, he suffered enormously from depression for most of my life, and his body was a pharmacy of drugs draining him as much as they sustained him.

I don’t feel the need to go into the details of my experience with my father, save that for another day.  The thing is this: I feel it within me that if I ask that question of myself now, thinking of my relationship with Teddy, I sense this place in me that pulls me forward, that asks me to be of service to the world through him.  It is as if I am inheriting a legacy of misery and suffering, and my role is to turn it around into tears and laughter.

Teddy, as he lives in me, wants his life to mean something. And I understand today that he is calling me to be a brilliant, to add value to people’s lives with my words.  To engage in a dialogue with his essence, as I hear it within me, and to share from this energy with stories that make people go “Wow.” This lets him smile, and that smile comes forward through me and my words.

Who is your toughest relationship?  Who are they calling you to become?  What is the vision that lets you connect to your own legacy?

Share your thoughts below.

-Michael