UNEXECUTIVE

Unconventional coaching for extraordinary people

Is Your Love Life At Risk? Learn The 3 Reasons Your Relationship Isn’t In A Rhythm

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For 9 months I abstained from romantic relationships.

It’s a choice I made after stepping out of my longest romantic relationship (over 3 years) and my most committed (we were engaged).

Our relationship in many ways had been a fairytale. I first saw her across a dance floor and was drawn to her immediately.

We were friends for a while. My crush was apparent to both of us. Her attraction took more time to develop.

We had an intense first date in a far off city. That left both of us wondering if this thing was going to happen. After all, we lived across the country from one another.

And then I showed up on her doorstep with flowers two days later. Saying I was moving to her city if she’d have me.

She said yes and the fairy tale began.

But of course, there was a lot that wasn’t very magical. I had to work hard to adapt to her. Her diet. Her need for quiet. For things to always be a certain way.

We ignored the things that didn’t make sense. Like how differently we felt about having kids. Like how we fought when we played music together. Like how loud and messy I tend to be and how super neat she wanted everything.

We thought our love was enough. And it was… until it wasn’t.

Now after some time and space to reflect I can see ‘some’ of the mistakes I made.

And a lot of them had to do with how we never really found the rhythm to our relationship. This rhythm is something people don’t talk about a lot.

They talk about polarity and compatibility. They talk about good sex and communication but the rhythm is something else entirely.

EACH RELATIONSHIP HAS A RHYTHM

There’s your rhythm. The way you do life, laundry, shopping, eating. It’s more than just the method or process. It’s the beat to your life.

And then there’s your partner’s rhythm. The way they clean a kitchen, cook dinner, decide which movie to watch on Netflix.

And then there’s the rhythm of the relationship. How we do laundry, talk about our days, decide when to have sex, and dream about the future.

This is the rhythm that determines how a relationship works. It determines what gets talked about, what values are prioritized, and eventually what creates the feeling of a relationship.

But if you’re like most people, you never find this rhythm, because you don’t know how to create it. Instead, you’re probably doing one of three things

  1. One of you is fully adapting to the other’s rhythm:

This is a lot of what I did in my last relationship.

She didn’t eat gluten so I didn’t. She didn’t like watching scary movies so we never did. She needed quiet time at certain hours so I tried to be quiet.

In my mind, I was being chivalrous. I was loving her. But what I was really doing was denying my own needs. Until my needs came knocking like an angry loan shark.

Now it might be that one of you just has more of a rhythm to their life. That’s ok. You can use one person’s rhythm as more of a baseline. But you can’t just go by one person’s rhythm. At least most of us can’t. Because while it may work for that one person, it probably won’t work for the relationship.

And even if it does, one person adapting to another is a hallmark of codependency which makes for a deep but also very unhealthy connection.

So if one of you has a more established routine it’s ok to start there, but you have to find a way to adapt, to modulate, to include what the other partner needs and wants.

If you’re the more routine oriented person, the transition will be hard. You don’t have to change everything but it’s important to make space for the new rhythm to emerge.

If you’re not making space, you might be doing this instead . . .

  1. You’re both compromising all the time

This is another mistake I made later on. I mean luckily we realized we had to shift our dynamic. I owned up to pretending not to have needs. But then instead of owning what I wanted, we simply tried to find a middle ground.

This may seem like the obvious solution. You don’t like Thai food, I don’t like Indian, so we’ll get tacos instead.

And while it may make sense logically, the rhythm of a relationship isn’t simply the halfway point between your beat and mine.

Over time you’ll both end up unhappy. You’ll be eating Tacos and dreaming of pad Thai, while I dream of a fluffy dosa floating on a cloud.

There’s a time and a place for compromise but what makes a relationship workable isn’t just splitting the difference. It’s about each of you really owning what each of you wants: to feel, experience, do, and embody. And then working to create a rhythm that has those needs and desires met on a regular basis.

This can be hard for many people to accept. Especially if you’re the partner who’s used to giving in and setting aside your needs. It’s vulnerable to say I want this.

I’d like if we went for a walk together after work, I’d like you to buy me flowers every week. I don’t want to go on vacation with your family. I don’t want to watch TV while we eat dinner.

Owning what you want is scary. Because you might not get it. Because it may create conflict. But without that honesty, you can’t find the rhythm of the relationship and you can’t see if it has the potential to last long term.

Then again even if your relationship has lasted a while it’s still possible to lose the rhythm. This leads me to the 3rd place relationship rhythms go to die. . .

  1. One or both of you has become resigned or victimized by the pattern of your relationship

This happens when one or both of you have created a rhythm that doesn’t work. Or you’re still following a rhythm that once worked but isn’t’ serving you anymore. Then, instead of addressing what’s not working you simply decide that it can’t be any different.

This happens a lot with people who have kids or for people who have been in a relationship for a while.

This happened to me about 2 years into my last relationship. I gave up on having the kind of sex life I wanted, I resigned myself to having a partner who was ambiguous about having kids, and I gave up on being able to feel heard when we fought.

It would be easy to blame my partner for this but my giving up wasn’t on her. Sure she contributed to our dynamic but it was really all about me just not advocating for myself anymore. I stopped sharing what I needed in an attempt to maintain a peace that wasn’t that peaceful, to begin with.

You see, a relationship rhythm isn’t the same as a relationship rut. It’s not a default position your relationship gets stuck into like the way you can’t help humming holiday carols in December. It’s not something that you just fall into. It’s active. It’s something you have to actively discover and bring life to.

A relationship rhythm is an act of creation.

You and your partner have to birth it together. You have to create it. And you can either do it unconsciously (like so many people do) out of old habits, childhood wounds, and baggage.

Or you can create it out of love, possibility, and innovation.

So if you want Indian and you partner wants Thai, maybe you find a farmers market that has a great booth for each. Or maybe you cook a meal at home that starts with thom kha soup and dosa and moves on to a fusion curry dish.

You don’t compromise and you don’t give up. You find what the needs are at the very foundation and create something that satisfies them both.

You create a rhythm that is something unique to the two of you. And then you see how that feels.

Because that’s really what makes a relationship work. It’s not the cuteness of one of your smiles or the ability of one of you to cook gourmet meals. It’s about how the relationship you create looks and feels to both of you.

To do this well you have to know who you are and why you care about buying organic food. You have to really understand why your partner loves cleaning even if you think it would be more efficient to hire a cleaning service.

To find a rhythm is to find real intimacy, to truly discover what makes you tick as a couple. And while it can be challenging, it is certainly worth the effort.

Love Toku

Can You Sing About Sales in Italian?

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I decided to write a poem and adapt it into a short Italian aria.

(Which yes I will sing to you at the end of this post)

The music comes from another aria about lost love.

Because lost love has taught me a lot about sitting in tension.

The Art of Sitting In Tension

About 4 years ago I met a girl at an entrepreneurship summer camp. She was pretty, smart, and funny. We became friends and over the course of a few months, I developed feelings for her. She liked me but she wasn’t sure about long-distance (I lived in Portland, she lived in NYC).

Two days after our first date (outside of LA) I bought an overnight plane ticket to New York and showed up on her doorstep with roses. I told her I was moving to the city and asked her if she’d go out with me.

I remember the whole plane ride I sat in the tension of what she might say when I arrived.

–

About 8 months after that I asked her to marry me. I hadn’t planned on asking her. I mean the thought had crossed my mind, but I was going to wait for a few more months. And then I just decided. I dug through a box, pulled out my grandmother’s ring, and proposed.

It’s funny, most proposals don’t have much tension. Most people know the answer, but this felt different. I remember sitting in that tension as she looked at the ring and me.

–

Over the next two years, things shifted. Slowly at first, though if I’m honest the cracks were always there. We started fighting more, it became harder to communicate, she revealed she was more ambivalent about having kids than I had originally thought.

We had good moments, but it was hard. Probably harder than a 2-year-old relationship should be. But I was committed. I had proposed, I had chosen her, even when things were hard, I didn’t want to give up.

The Beginning of The End

One day during a couples coaching session, it hit me. She was hurting. I was too. I gave it some thought and wrote her a letter suggesting we find a way to end things. It took me two weeks but I finally read it to her. She took a couple of weeks and finally said she agreed.

We took 3 months to say goodbye. We divided our stuff. We did a small ceremony in our empty living room. And then it was over.

The tension that got created when I gave her that ring, finally released.

What this has to do with Sales

When I teach coaches about sales, I talk about the power of a proposal. The possibility it holds.

Inside this vision of the future you create with someone is a tension with the way things are now, a tension created from the resistance that we have to overcome.

This tension is a powerful force that creates both fear and clarity.

If you’re not grounded and honest, fear can easily take over.

Some salespeople use this fear to push people across the line.

Scarcity, pain point selling, hard closing tactics.

But if you slow down, this tension reveals everything.

It reveals the things that matter to you.

  • Things like wanting to have kids.
  • Things like a fear that things can’t change even if you try.
  • Things like how you have different visions of the future.
  • Things like a doubt that you will actually rise to the occasion when it finally arrives.

If you can sit with someone in that tension, you can sit with them in the very fire of change.

The important thing to remember is that any exit is a good one so long as you choose it powerfully.

You could say I failed to get married.

You could say our relationship failed.

But in some ways, our proposal, the tension, did exactly what it was meant to do.

We saw how we were no longer able to see the good in one another.

When our plan shifted, other things shifted too. At least for me, I found it much easier to love her and see her beauty when I took a future together off the table.

She was and is an incredible person. She’s just not my person. And I’m not hers.

The tension revealed that.

This is what is possible with sales. At its best, you see the best in me:

  • The insight, skill, and talent I can bring to the table as a coach.
  • The features and benefits of your signature product.
  • The talent and experience you have as an employee

And I see the best in you:

  • The commitment, openness, and passion you bring to the table as a client.
  • The drive you have for serving your customers and solving your toughest problems.
  • The culture and vision you have as an organization.

If it’s a fit, if we can defeat fear and create an incredible relationship. We create a commitment that becomes the foundation for change.

If it’s not a fit for either one of us for whatever reason, we say no and we walk away.

Ideally, we do this from an empowered kind of place.

Not an apology. But a choice.

If we can do that together, the tension serves its purpose.

It clarified and helped us to see what’s important.

But no matter the answer we have to sit.

  • We have to propose.
  • We have to choose to see the best in one another.
  • We have to have the courage to say yes. (hard)
  • We have to have the courage to say no. (even harder)

This is why I love sales.

It’s also why I still believe in wild, crazy, passionate, romantic love.

I am probably a sucker, but I have slowly learned that I don’t sell myself in love.

What I sell is a vision of the future.

And the vision I’ve got is one of adventure, play, romance, passion, and the beautiful simplicity of life.

I think I’ll find a buyer.

And until then, I’ll sit in this lovely tension.

The same tension I invite every person I coach.

To sit inside.

Love,

Toku

And here is the aria –

And here’s is the poem it’s based on –

To see the good in someone. Simply for being themselves Is a sacred gift To sit in the tension of commitment Is an act of courage and love Easy with an open heart Impossible in thought and comparison

–

Riconoscere il buono nelle altre persone. Solo per ciò che sono È un sacro dono Sostenere la tensione del fervore È un atto di coraggio e amore Se hai un cuore aperto è facile Se ti perdi in pensieri e confronti è impossibile

7 Questions for Every Writer

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It’s easy to go on an endless chase for likes and popularity, but more and more I keep returning to a fundamental question.

Who am I as a writer?
What do I want to say to the world?

So I offer this mostly to myself and maybe for you to consider as well.

How will it change people?
I want to change people –

Seth Godin says all marketing is about bending culture and I guess some part of me wants to change people, to change the way they think about life, about themselves.

My life’s purpose is to serve those walking the path of awakening. I want to wake people up, to life and to what’s possible. So this is what I want from my writing.

Does it change people? Does it wake them up? Or is it simply a distraction?

How will it change you?
I want it to change me –

When I write about my life I truly begin to understand it, it’s probably why my writing often feels like a stream of consciousness. I process as I write.

I want my writing to change me, the way I think, the way I view the world. If I challenge myself as a writer I will also challenge my way of thinking. I’ll become better. I’ll be more kind, more loving, more open, and more wise.

Is this writing making me better? Is it pushing me? Is it challenging the way I think?

Will you make art?
I want to make art –

I’ve wanted to be an artist my whole life.But I can’t paint, I can’t draw, I can’t code. It took me a long time to see words are my code and the reader’s mind is my canvas.

I don’t just want to write to inform or compell, I want to write to make art. I love reading other people’s writing because I can see the art of it. I want to do that, I want to keep making art, to write in a way that get something done with brilliance

Is this art? Is it creative? Can I say it with fewer words? Can I articulate it more clearly?

What will you leave?
I want to leave something –

I’m going to die. We all are. My writing too will also die. Few books and writers live on. But I still want to leave something.

I have an image in my mind of my grandchildren holding a book I wrote. Maybe it’s a book of poems, but I’m not sure yet.

I’ve read writing by both my grandfathers. It’s just these little snippets, but they are so lovely. It’s like they’re reaching across time.

It would be cool if my books lasted generations, but really I’d be fine if it just survived in my family. A small thing to leave, even though nothing really lasts.

Is this what I want to leave? What would I want to write that would matter 100 years from today? What about me is important to know? What have I learned I want to pass on? How might it help?

Can you love it?
I want to love it –

I don’t need to always love the process of writing. Sometimes it’s work. But mostly I want to love it. I want to feel the words flow out of me onto the page, even if the page is just 1’s and 0’s. Even if the writing is terrible.

Are you enjoying this? Are you inspired? Are you creating beauty? Are you seeing the beauty you’re creating?

Who will read it?
I want you to read it –

This can’t just be about me, it has to be about you too. I care about what you want, what you want to change, and what you want to be different about your life.

At the intersection of your concerns and my insight is where a conversation can happen. Even if my half is on the page and your half is in your mind;I want us to talk. And that means making a guess at where you are and doing my best to meet you there.

If I do this well we can meet each other even if we never meet.

What do you care about? Why should you read this? What might make you turn away? What can I say that would help you?

Will you write?
I want to write it –

At the end of the day, there is simply a commitment: to writing, creating, and spending the time crafting words. I am a writer. I almost don’t need anything other than that.

Writing can be its own justification. Like the best kind of love. You don’t love to get something or to give something. You love to love. You live to live.

As circular as it is, there’s a truth to it I can’t explain. Maybe that’s why I’m a writer.

Are you writing? Why not? What if you started? What if it being bad was ok? What if just writing was enough?

To be a writer.

It sounds so significant and grand, but it’s also humbling. I get to join this conversation. I likely won’t be the loudest voice, or the most poetic, or the most successful, but I can still add my part, my words, my love, my commitment to the mix.

This is who I am as a writer.

Who are you?

Using Feedback to Improve Writing

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As a coach, I’m good at helping people produce their best work. But that doesn’t always translate to me producing my own best work.

Last week my marketing and writing assistant informed me that I’m entirely too hard on myself. That my writing is good, she enjoys reading it, and many other people do as well. Yet I’ve had this feeling there has to be a better way to make my writing better.

After all, I’m a coach, I give people feedback and perspective for a living, so how could I use that skill to improve my writing?

I found the answer in an online course

ALT-MBA

For the past two weeks, I’ve been taking Seth Godin’s ALT-MBA which is a crazy business learning sprint where you ship 12 projects in 4 weeks and give feedback to your peers along the way.

After shipping my first two projects I noticed something.

Every time I gave feedback on someone else’s project I improved my own.

I started to realize that something interesting was happening when I gave feedback to other people. A different part of my brain was turning on.

When I published my own projects I thought, this is pretty good!

I couldn’t really see what was missing. As much as I tried to look at my work through other people’s eyes I couldn’t do it.

THESE ARE MY WORD BABIES AND I LOVE MY BABIES

But all I had to do was take a stroll around the nursery and see what other people had made and I found all sorts of stuff that could be different.

I saw what I liked

  • Clever titles
  • Explanations of the process of creation
  • Fun stories about team members

I saw what I didn’t like

  • Vague descriptions
  • Missing information
  • Hints at gold but no gold to be found

After giving 1-3 people feedback I immediately had 5-10 ideas about how I could make my own project better.

And so I would go back and edit my project, make it better, and smile.

Don’t get me wrong, my projects aren’t perfect, but I’ve been blown away by how simple this trick is.

Ever since I’ve found it, I’ve used it to improve my writing, work on my website, even my coaching ability.

Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1) Find something you want to improve – your writing, website, pictures, whatever

Step 2) Create a rough draft, a mock-up, a few sample shots

Step 3) Find other examples of that thing you want to improve

Step 4) Give it feedback using the following format:

Brilliance – here’s what I loved about this, here’s what worked, here’s what I enjoyed.

Opportunity – Here’s what would make it better, here’s what I wanted to know more about, here’s what was missing

Step 5) Go back and look at your work and integrate the feedback you gave to other people into your work.

It’s that simple.

Creativity never happens in a vacuum, it’s always a conversation, if you’re willing to invite a different part of yourself to the table, you may be amazed at what you discover.

The 5 Minute Guide to Choosing a Coach

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Coaches are brilliant at making it seem like anything is possible and challenging your way of thinking, this makes them both highly skilled at helping you but also highly skilled at making promises they may not be able to keep.

Despite that coaching is still one of the most effective and powerful ways to make a change in your life.

Here’s a short guide to choosing a coach:

1) Ignore their website – It’s not that their website doesn’t matter, it’s just that it doesn’t always correlate to reality. Some of the best coaches I know have sort of ok websites. Most of the most over hyped coaches I know have AMAZING websites. A good website will soften you up for your conversation with a coach, and even sell you on the person you may become if you work with them.

Sometimes a website is a reflection of the coaches brilliance, sometimes it’s a beautiful artifice for them to hide behind. Look at it, but don’t decide because of it.

2) Pay attention to how they make you feel about yourself – Spend some time talking to a coach so you can tell what working with them will be like. But be careful not to get caught up in their bright, shiny, charm. You need to pay attention to how you feel around them. Just be careful about putting them on a pedestal. If you notice yourself doing this take them down, if you find you can’t it might be a red flag. If you feel a bit like a fan-boy/girl/being that may be a red flag.

We all project greatness onto people we admire, but if you feel like you’re dying for their attention and approval, that’s an indication that you may not be grounded in your choice.

Instead, look for someone who makes you feel inspired, powerful, and connected to your deepest desires. You should admire them, but you shouldn’t be obsessed with them.

3) What are they all about? – Great coaches are about you, your life, and your desires.. They might have a system or process laid out for you to use, but they will design their coaching to what YOU want and need.

Some coaches are very much about themselves, same as any industry. It can be hard to grow with a coach who’s attention isn’t on you, so look for someone who puts their attention on you, your needs, wants, and desires.

4) Do you actually like them? – You should enjoy talking to them. I mean that’s what you’re going to be doing. If you clash, if they feel pushy, if you don’t enjoy them, don’t hire them. They don’t have to be your best friend, but you should generally enjoy who they are and enjoy spending time with them.

5) A little intimidation is good – The best coaches are the ones that you feel a bit nervous around. If you’re nervous they’ll call you out or that you’re not advanced enough to work with them, that’s a good sign. You want to like your coach but you also want to have a healthy respect for their work.

6) Will they push you? – You can find people to agree with you. Those people are called friends. That’s not what a coach does. A coach should challenge your thinking and how you show up in the world. If they don’t push you, you won’t grow.

7) Seeing your blindspots is key – We tend to surround ourselves with people that think like us, and many people hire coaches who think like them. One value of a coach is their different perspective. There should be JUST enough overlap so you can communicate, but also just enough difference that they notice things you miss and provide a different perspective.

8) Ask your gut and ask your friends – My gut often knows who I need to hire even when I have doubts. My friends can help me break the spell of an alluring coach or give me new ways to think about the choice I’m making. Refer to these two data points often.

9) Are you a little scared to invest? – The last thing to consider with a coach is the investment. Some coaches convince you that investing a large sum of money is the ticket to success. It isn’t. But great coaches also charge a healthy fee for what they do.

There are some bargains out there to be found, but most great coaches know their worth. I usually hire coaches who ask me to stretch financially. But stretch isn’t break. The price should challenge you, maybe even a lot, but you shouldn’t have to give them a credit card on the call just to save you from yourself.

Choosing a coach is a personal process. And while I’ve never made a BIG mistake choosing a coach (except for maybe the first one I hired) if you’re thoughtful and willing to listen to your gut you’ll likely make a good choice. It is really about being grounded and taking a risk. Any good coach will be a risk, but because a great coach can have such a profound impact on your life, that risk is usually worth it.

Love,
Toku