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Camino de Santiago: People – Coaching Lesson

Hi and welcome to this month’s coaching lesson. As you may have guessed from the conversation this month, the experience of walking the Camino de Santiago was a very special one, a very powerful one for myself and for Joe both. As I think about that conversation, we talked about the people we met. And a lot of thoughts came to my mind.

The one theme, the one idea that kept repeating in my mind was this idea of shared purpose, a shared purpose. So it’s not just that we were all doing the same thing, for example, like going and playing golf together. That’s also nice. But the Camino experience was a little bit deeper than that because it was a…there was a shared experience, a shared purpose that lasted for, well for us about 32 days. So it lasted for longer than a month.

And this shared purpose had a lot of challenges in it. It wasn’t just all easy. It wasn’t just a vacation. It was also challenging. People got blisters. People were in pain. Sometimes I was tired. There were all kinds of things we had to deal with. And it wasn’t just Joe and I having to deal with those things. Everybody doing the Camino had to.

So there was shared purpose and shared challenge, shared problems, shared struggles. And what’s interesting in life is that oftentimes the experience of sharing a challenge, sharing and overcoming problems and difficulties and accomplishing a shared purpose together brings us closer and gives us a deeper and more satisfying experience than if we just do it alone or if we just do fun and easy things with other people.

I enjoy doing fun and easy things with people and on my own. I also enjoy facing challenges and problems by myself sometimes and I’ve done it many times in my life. But there is something special about doing it together, that experience of shared purpose.

Let me give you another example. Many years ago I was training for my second marathon, my second one. I ran my first marathon with just…in just under four hours, a little bit less than four hours. And I trained for my first marathon all by myself, just me. Now for my second marathon, I trained with a good friend.

So it was this woman who was also a runner and she was also planning to do a marathon. We weren’t doing the same marathon but we were planning to run races at about the same time so we decided hey, let’s train together. And then maybe, y’know, we have a little company so it’s not so lonely on the runs.

Here’s what typically happened. Many days it would be time for running, time for training, and I would feel tired and lazy. And I would think, uh, I don’t really want to do it. I don’t feel like training today. I don’t feel like running today. I’m tired, just got off of work, I don’t feel like doing it. But because I had a training partner, someone with the same purpose, I would think, but yeah, I need to do it because, y’know, because she’s expecting me to go. She’s relying on me so I don’t want to cancel on her.

So I’d put on my running clothes and I’d go and meet her and then we’d go for a run. And what happened is, almost every time, once we started running and chatting a little bit while we ran, I started to feel better. In just a couple minutes I felt fine and had a very good run.

Now, of course, what she told me later was that this also happened to her many times. That she would be thinking at home, ah, I’m tired. I don’t feel like doing it. I just got back from work. I feel lazy today. I don’t feel like running today. But, AJ, he’s expecting me. I don’t want to disappoint AJ. So she would put on her running clothes and meet me.

And sometimes, probably at home both of us at the same time were thinking, I’m tired. I don’t want to do this but I’ll do it because the other person wants to. This is part of the power of shared purpose is that you kind of pull each other up at times. Even, in fact, when you’re both feeling bad, you both want to quit but still the fact that you’re doing it together with another person, it actually prevents you from quitting for that day or even quitting completely. And so this happened again and again and again and again as we trained over several months.

Another thing I noticed that just happened naturally, we didn’t try, we ran a little bit faster whenever we ran together. I think it was because we would chat a little bit and it just felt easier. Maybe I didn’t notice the difficulty as much because I was doing it with another person. Or maybe it didn’t bother me as much because I was doing it with another person. In fact, that is the case.

That shared challenge oftentimes reduces the feeling of suffering even though our actual experience is exactly the same. Somehow sharing it with another person makes it a little easier and therefore we trained a little bit harder. And the end result of all of that was that my second marathon I ran it about 20 minutes faster than my first marathon. And that’s a very good improvement for a marathon time, especially just in about one year.

So about one year later, I ran a marathon 20 minutes faster than the first time when I trained by myself. And I see that as the power of a shared purpose. And I could actually measure it, 20 minutes faster. And, of course, it was just a little more enjoyable, a little more easy to train.

I noticed a similar effect on the Camino. I can think of specific example. One day in the Camino, I don’t remember where we were, I can picture it though. Going through these kind of winding hills and the woods and we’re getting near the end of a long day, one of those six or seven hours days. And I’m just, of course, feeling kind of tired, kind of worn out, exhausted. But we still had another couple hours to go.

And I was just feeling tired and grumpy and just, ugh. But then suddenly I came up and came upon these two women, these two friends of ours that we had met. And it turns out they also were feeling tired. But we started chatting together. And we started having a great conversation. And we’re just walking along. We actually started walking a little bit faster.

And suddenly I didn’t notice feeling tired anymore. I didn’t notice feeling grumpy anymore. In fact, I stopped being grumpy and started getting in a good mood. And the two hours seemed to go by very, very quickly. Suddenly, boom, we arrived. We were there. And we all talked about how, just by sharing the walk together, it made it so much easier for all of us.

How can we use this in our life in general? Well, it’s this idea of shared purpose. It can mean sharing difficulty together, sharing challenges, sharing tough times together, but also sharing a goal together, can make us stronger. We can accomplish things that maybe we would have a harder time doing by ourselves.

So this month I want you to seek out a shared challenge or purpose. You decide. What could you do? What are the kinds of things you can do this month to find a shared, so not something you’re going to do alone, that’s fine, but this month you’re going to focus on something you share with other people.

For example, one example, you could volunteer. You could volunteer somewhere for a non-profit, for a charity, for something. But it needs to be not just one day, preferably something that will take three or four weeks or more. There are so many non-profits, so many charities out there. Every town has them and most are looking for volunteers.

So find one that is interesting to you and go and sign up as a volunteer and volunteer there for at least a few weeks. When you do this, be sure that you’re volunteering with other people. So don’t volunteer for a job that you’ll do alone because then it’s not a shared purpose. Volunteer for something that you’ll be doing with other people. That’s one example.

You can also volunteer at an event. This is a great shared purpose. I have also had good experiences doing that. So say some special event, a big event, a big party, a big fundraising event. You go and you volunteer and you’re working all together with other people. It can be quite fun even though the work can be difficult, there’s something special about it. It feels good to be sharing that purpose with other people.

Another option, another opportunity for a shared purpose, is to join a group that has a shared goal that works together towards something. For example, Toastmasters. Toastmasters has groups all over the world. They focus on public speaking. So every member in Toastmasters is trying to improve their public speaking and they’re all doing it together.

When you go to a Toastmasters group sometimes you will stand up and speak but most of the time you will be in the audience listening to other members speak. So you’re sharing both experiences. You get to experience being a speaker and how nervous and scary that might be. And you also get to experience being in the audience listening to people speak.

And both of those will help you become a better speaker but you’ll also form a closer connection with everyone else in the group because you’re all sharing that fear of public speaking, because it is difficult for most people. You also share the feeling of pride, of facing that fear and improving. And also just being in the audience and listening to other people and helping them. So there are lots of great things about groups like Toastmasters or Dale Carnegie and other public speaking groups.

If you’re more of a physical athlete, then join some group that has a physical goal. You could, for example, try to run a marathon or train for a marathon. But instead of doing it alone, do it with a group. Here in the United States we have a lot of charities now that they raise money by running marathons, but they do it as a team.

There’s one called Team in Training, I think they raise money for leukemia. There’s a lot of them now. And what they do is you sign up and lots of other people sign up in your same town. And then they have group training runs so you’ll get together as a group with the other people and you’ll train together. You’ll do a nice long run, maybe once a week, all together.

Also together, you’ll all be raising money to support the charity. So it’s a great shared experience that will help you get in, y’know, better shape, better physical shape, better fitness, but more importantly to face this challenge together with other people, having that shared purpose.

If none of these appeal to you then just find another area in your life that you can join up or sign up, join with other people working towards that shared purpose.

And, of course, as the final step, please get onto our social site or contact me on Twitter on contact us on Facebook, whatever, and tell us about your experience. Tell us what was your shared experience and how did it feel and who did you meet, what was it like? Please tell us. Communicate that to us. That’s the final part of your homework for this month.

Alright, I will see you later. Enjoy your shared purpose this month. Bye for now.