Win Harper | Life and Leadership Coach

One of the things that make me such a good coach is that I have a lot of experiences, and I know the right questions to ask.  During the past 8 years as a life and leadership coach, I have asked thousands of people, “What did you learn from your experience?” 

Now at 65, I am reflecting back over my life, and realize no one asked me those questions when I was younger, and I certainly did not ask myself.  So, I have decided to do that now.  I spent some time this past week thinking about the 1968-71 period of my life.  I asked myself, what did I learn during those 3 years? I quickly wrote down several things; I sent birthday cards to everyone who worked for me, and anniversary cards to the spouses of those who were married; I formed professional friendships and we discussed leadership and tactics; and I taught classes.  For some reason, I didn’t do those things in my later assignments.  While that behavior contributed to my success, I didn’t appreciate that because I didn’t look at what I did.  No one, not even myself, asked me, “What did you learn from your experience?”

When I did think about what I learned during that period, even after 38 years, I felt more powerful, more self-assured, and more self-confident.  I think this is called “reframing” in NLP.  I am not sure, but I do know that I am going to spend some time this winter looking back at my life and learn now what I didn’t then.

You are never too old to have a belated personal growth experience. 

Whew!  We are in Mayport, Florida staying at the Naval Base here.  Our room looks out over the ocean.  At night we leave the door open and can hear the waves; a peaceful interlude on our journey.

Since I last wrote, we have stayed in Westfield, MA; Taunton, MA; West Point, NY; Washington, DC; Richmond, VA;  Chapel Hill, NC; and now here.  That is about 1800 miles of one night stands.  Most of that has been associated with Elizabeth’s work, and some with visiting family and friends.  We stopped here on our way to Sarasota, FL where Elizabeth is working at the Elysian Fields Bookstore on Tuesday.  Then we drive to Cooper City to work at The Mind Body Connection for two or three days.  After that we work our way back North stopping at Charleston, SC; Charlotte, NC, The Shenandoah National Park, Philadelphia, PA; Nutley, NJ; Hawley, PA; The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY; and finally returning to our future home in Canandaigua, NY on November 4th.  You can check our websites for the places we are working with the days and times.

At the Love, Light, and Laughter Expo in Taunton, MA, I taught an hour class, and met some wonderful people.  They were young, ambitious, and full of dreams and hopes.  I talked to one young woman for about 30 minutes.  She apologized for dominating my time.  I smiled and told her that if I wanted to stop the conversation I could.  Actually, I wanted to talk more.  Another young lady thanked me for spending time with her and offering to read a draft of a book she is writing. 

When I was their ages I never asked for help.  During my 26 year Marine Corps career there were many senior officers who offered to mentor me, but I refused.  I believed I could do it all myself; I was wrong.  We all need to afford others the opportunity to help us.  They want to, and we need it.

We also stopped here because I like to volunteer at the Beaches Habitat for Humanity office in Jacksonville Beach, FL.  I first came here in 2000 with a global village team, and stayed in Jacksonville that whole winter to work for Habitat.  Every year since then, I have come back for 1 week to a month. 

Habitat fits well with my philosophy of life and my Life Purpose.  Prospective home owners go through an application process that helps identify them as ready to buy a house.  They also have to put in 200 hours of sweat equity into their own homes.  These are pre-conditions for my coaching; the individual must be ready and willing to be coached. 

The first self-development work I listened to was Denis Waitley’s Psychology of Winning.  He says that we all need to plant shade trees under which we know that we will not sit.  Through my coaching, mentoring, habitat work, and connecting with people, I feel like I am planting a lot of shade trees.  And that is fulfilling.