Unlock Hidden Possibilities By Being More Present | Insights with Joel Monk

In this conversation, Joel Monk shares how he thrives for the moments that spark with creativity and insights. These are critical moments in his leadership, when coaching, and when working on his own personal development. When they happen, he wants his awareness on what’s emerging in the moment and what’s possible next. 

As an artist, a DJ, an Executive Coach, and Co-Founder of the coach training organization, Coaches Rising, those moments and the possibilities that emerge from them have been so important in Joel’s life. 

There are some moments when you know something magical about to happen, like when the lights go down in the concert hall, when the starters pistol goes off, when your partner leans in for a kiss for the first time and then there's those moments you're only aware of them if you're paying attention and fully present.

In this conversation, Joel shares with us...
➡️he shows up and creates those moments with his clients, his colleagues, and the important people in his life, so he can fully experience what emerges next.
➡️how those moments are more available to us if we bring our awareness to them.
➡️that it's unrealistic to expect that every moment is a magical moment - so we need to let go of expectations (and unironically, that's when the magic can help)

As a demonstration of Joel’s curiosity and his superpower of tending to the emergent, Joel gets me to share some key things from hosting the What Do You Know To Be True? podcast about how we discover our superpowers, unlock our potential, and make meaningful impact in our communities:
➡️the common themes of people using their superpowers
➡️the path that 9/10 times guests develop their superpowers 
➡️the building blocks of potential

Joel is deeply thoughtful and present in this conversation, and it’s easy to see his superpower of tending to the emergent in action. 

In this episode, Joel answers the following questions:
➡️How to be more aware of what's possible?
➡️How to be more emotionally present?
➡️Why do I struggle to be present?
➡️How to be more mindful?

My favorite quote from the episode: "When I get out of my way, my superpower flows more easily." 

While it is a common observation amongst many of the guests that they are the thing that gets in the way of their superpower, for Joel, it makes even more sense that being unfocused or listening the monkey chatter in his head take him away from his superpower of tending to the emergent. 
  
Resources mentioned in the episode: 
➡️Joel’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-monk-33952613/ 
➡️Coaches Rising: https://www.coachesrising.com/ 

Music in this episode by Ian Kastner.

"What Do You Know To Be True?" is a series of conversations where I speak with interesting people about their special talent or superhero power and the meaningful impact it has on others. The intention is to learn more about their experience with their superhero power, so that we can learn something about the special talent in each of us which allows us to connect more deeply with our purpose and achieve our potential. 

For more info about the podcast or to check out more episodes, go to: https://www.youtube.com/@WDYKTBT?sub_confirmation=1 

"What Do You Know To Be True?" is hosted by Roger Kastner, is a production of Three Blue Pens, and is recorded on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish and Suquamish people. To discover the ancestral lands of the indigenous people whose land you may be on, go to: https://native-land.ca/

Keywords
#leadership #personaldevelopment #coaching #discoveryoursuperpower #unlockyourpotential #unlockyourpossibilities #makemeaningfulimpact 

Transcript

TRANSCRIPT Unlock Hidden Possibilities by Being Fully Present - Insights from Joel Monk

 [Roger]

In this conversation, you are going to learn how Joel Monk creates those moments that spark with creativity and insights, and how he focuses his awareness on what's possible in those moments. As an artist, a DJ, an executive coach, and co-founder of the coach training organization Coaches Rising, those moments and the possibilities that emerge from them have been so important in Joel's life.

[Joel]

You know, I feel moved to think about it because her garden is resplendent. People will walk past a house and just stop and look at the flowers just for a moment. They're touched by the beauty of these flowers.

And my mother would bring that same quality to the plants, you know, just loving them and appreciating them. That's that quality, really. It's another tending to the emergences.

You know, I'm just loving what's in front of me, whether that's a piece of a blank canvas or a crowd and the music or a podcast guest. You know, I think it shines through there.

[Roger]

And Joel shares how he shows up and creates those moments with his clients, his colleagues, and the important people in his life so he can fully experience what emerges next. And Joel speaks to how those moments are more available to us if we bring our awareness to them.

[Joel]

In a way, Roger, I think what I'm getting to is like, this for me is tending to the emergence, what we're doing right now. It's like there's something arising in our conversation and in the way we're speaking that for me is deeply inspiring and has revelation and insight inside of it.

[Roger]

Hi, I'm Roger Kastner, and I'm the host of the What Do You Know To Be True podcast. The invitation in these conversations is to become inspired from our guests, to discover our own superpowers, to unlock our own potential and possibilities, and make even more meaningful impact in the communities we serve. If you're ready, let's dive in.

Hey, Joel, thank you for joining me today. I'm really excited for the conversation we're about to have.

[Joel]

Yeah, me too, Roger. Very happy to be with you and explore this topic.

[Roger]

I'm excited to learn more about your superpower of tending to the emergent. I first became aware of you when I signed up for a Coaches Rising course earlier this year. You are the co-founder of Coaches Rising, which for those who don't know, is a global community of over 6,000 coaches.

You are an executive coach and the host of the Coaches Rising podcast, which I've come to love the conversations you have with world-famous and boundary-expanding coaches. It's helped me think about my coaching practice, and it gives me things to talk about with my coachy friends. So it's definitely a plus in my podcast listening repertoire.

But before we get too far, what else is important for us to know about you?

[Joel]

I deeply care about the coaching community and the role that coaches can play in our times and tending to people as we move through these challenging times. I've just been on a lifelong journey of deep introspection, meditation, spiritual practice. I have a strong love of being at the edge of the frontier of what it means to be in human transformational practices.

Maybe we'll get into the wider world and how superpower I feel like I have connects to that. But I feel like it's the time for us to each of us consider this important question about what our superpowers are and to own that, to claim that more fully.

[Roger]

I don't think it's by coincidence that there's this huge boom in people who are interested in coaching, who are interested in helping other people and ultimately, I think, helping themselves get to know more about what is inside of us. How do we want to walk the earth? How do we want to show up and be present with one another?

What I have found about Coaches Rising is you're going beyond the, I guess, the basics of coaching and helping people, helping coaches show up in a different way. At least that's what I'm taking from it. Would love to hear more about Coaches Rising and curious to what you think about the mission, maybe when you started it versus what it is now.

I would ask that of for yourself as well. How are things emerging and how are you showing up? That was a big, long-winded question but I'll work on my coaching skills and ask shorter questions next time.

[Joel]

Well, no, sometimes it's good to load in quite a lot of questions and see where people take it. I think I'd start by saying the seed of Coaches Rising came through me one day. My co-founder, Laurence Van Alen, I want to give a big shout out to as well.

We sat and we just felt this deep sense of wanting to help evolve the field of coaching and that coaches were important in our time. We wrote a very short manifesto about that. Actually, recently, I dug that out of the drawer, so to speak, the digital drawer.

It still holds true today. That sponsoring seed actually has flourished into the online programs that we run. I think you're right.

I'd say we don't necessarily offer the beginning foundational training for coaches. There are some great schools for that. We're a continuing education school, although we do get people who want to come in and just they've not done much training.

We will be creating things for those for beginner coaches. I think it's having us look very deeply at what it means to be human and what is it that AI will be able to do much better than humans? What are these capacities and ways of being that are deeply unique?

For me, this speaks to where coaching is evolving to. I think we're being invited to expand our bandwidth of where we coach from. The last period of time of scientific materialism has privileged rationality, which has brought many, many gifts.

I don't want to denigrate that, but I think in some ways, we now need capacities beyond that, a capacity to attune to our clients, to attune to what's here in the moment, and to refine that mode of perceiving our clients. I get the chance to collaborate with some incredibly gifted coaches, and they have refined their ability to hold space for their clients in a way that their clients feel fully safe and seen in a way that allows them to unfold into their wholeness. Away from a paradigm, which I think has been quite prevalent, which is the self-improvement paradigm, which can create a sense of it's so ubiquitous, but it can create a sense of I need to improve myself.

I need to get to this place where it's somewhere in the future. When I get there, I'll be okay. Everything will be all right.

I'll have made it, but we never quite reach that place. Actually, this self-improvement paradigm can compound a sense of deficiency that we're not okay right now. This move for coaches to expand their bandwidth into their embodiment, into this sense of meeting our experience as it is, and then from that place, when we find we let things be just as they are, we bring curiosity, then our experience begins to unfold, and insights and revelations come that are qualitatively very different than if we're just trying to effort to improve.

I think that's where the field is going, and I think that's collectively where we find the kinds of insights and collaborations that humanity needs as well to thrive in our times as well.

[Roger]

I love how your superpower, tending to the emergent, is coming out in what you're saying. I think it's also, it jumps off the page. When I read your bio, when I listened to your podcast and listened to your talk, I'd love to hear how you describe how you think of your superpower and how you would define tending to the emergent.

[Joel]

For me, I've always been most passionate and alive around these experiences of attuning to, and I can give very concrete examples in a moment, but attending to my experience, attuning to my experience, particularly the emergence of something that feels alive, that feels as if it's imbued with something meaningful and has a kind of transmission in it. There's something transcendent about it, and that's what I'm speaking to. I watched the Bob Dylan movie last night with my wife, and there was a moment where he was playing one of his songs to the crowd, and it just touched everybody's hearts.

That's what I love to serve the emergence of in my life. Let me be practical. I remember playing with my Star Wars figures as a child, and I would be tending to this.

Many of my friends would violently smashing them together, running around. Sometimes I did that, but more often, I would find myself rearranging the figures into some kind of constellation that felt just right. Then when it was ready, I was like, that's it.

Later on, I went to art school, and I remember being in my art studios and just getting into these flow states, enraptured by the emergence of the combination of colors and patterns and form and that relationship to it. It was just a deeply meaningful experience. I was a DJ in nightclubs.

I was quite lucky that I was able to play to quite large crowds of people, and the same feeling would arise as I was tending to the moment, to this sense of relationship with the crowd and the sense of something coming through, this sense of emergent aliveness. You can use different words to it, but then, hey, I came across coaching, and I found that that was the same kind of space that I would like to hold for my clients. Over the course of my life, it's as if jigsaw pieces to the puzzle of my superpower emerged.

I think that's why your invitation is so powerful, is that we can look back, and we can start to see there's a thread that runs through our life, and that the experiences that were most touching to us, most alive, brought the most joy. There's often a theme to those experiences which reveal to us this superpower. I like that word.

[Roger]

I think most other people feel and can resonate with that idea of that moment, that spark, that something is possible now that wasn't possible minutes ago. We can see that with music. We can see that with art.

We can see that just in our daily experiences. How do you know you're in a moment where there's something that can be attuned to, something that can be tended to, that we're in that emergent moment? How do you know you're in that moment?

[Joel]

In my earlier years, I just didn't really know that's what I was doing. I just did it. I just went to the art studio, and I made art.

Sometimes it was really frustrating. Actually, I didn't feel that feeling at all. The more I brought myself to the act of making art, the more I opened to that experience.

It was like as if I'd do something, and then it would open up that space. It'd be like, ah, it's here. Ah, this is it.

Now, in team meetings for Coaches Rising, we have it as a collective heuristic or value in what we create. We say, hey, are we feeling this one? Is this thing we're talking about and wanting to create, does it feel like it's imbued with this sense of magic and this sense of inspiration and passion?

If it is, then that's value. If it's not, then how come? The other thing I wanted to say about that is it's as much about creating the experiences for yourself that have that arise.

I think sometimes we just don't do that. Hey, I'm not biased to say that everybody should do what I've done. I used to feel more like that.

We should do this. There's something about creating experiences that evoke our superpower too.

[Roger]

Once I was in a conversation where we were talking about that feeling, that buzz, where it's almost like someone has just plugged their guitar into the amp, turned the volume up on the amp, and you just hear that buzz before a note is even struck. That's the moment that you know something amazing is about to happen. What conditions do you find need to be true for those moments to happen more often?

[Joel]

This is a really important question for me. I have made it important in my life to have space. I know times where my calendar takes over, my to-do list seems to take center stage, and there's a certain mode of being, getting things done, solving problems.

Of course, it's useful to get things done and solve problems, but if that becomes the dominant mode, it can take me away from the space that's important to connect to this. Daniel Priestley is somebody who I love to read his books. He's a marketeer, but I think he speaks beautifully to entrepreneurship.

He speaks about vitality being one of the key assets as we move forward in our time that will differentiate entrepreneurs and people who create. Are you creating from that sense of vitality and passion? I think that's one of the first places I would go is, are you busy all the time?

Am I busy doing stuff? It detracts from that. I think the other answer to that question is, this is why coaching I think is so important.

This is the work I do with my clients, that earlier on in our lives, that superpower is there, but it can be compartmentalized. Maybe that's one of the things in childhood, it can often be there unashamedly, but then we become socialized and we inherit ideas of what it means to be successful from our caregivers, from parents, society. At the same time, we develop patterns that keep us, they have an intelligence to them, they keep us in a sense of connection and belonging, but they pattern over the openness, the aliveness, the presence within which our superpower can be more fully expressed.

I think over the years, as I've done more healing work, integration work, coaching, therapy, it's created a sense of some of those patterns of integrated and healed, and so the energy has been liberated. I find myself more and more in those moments of being in my superpower. It's as if the veils which limited it or compartmentalized it have been metabolized and now it can be freed more fully.

I think that's a valid way to look at it. It's like there's the developmental path of over a lifetime embodying your superpower more and more, which is integrative work, and then the immediate possibility in any moment to tap into your superpower. It's radical.

It's like, do I choose to tap into that right now, not to make ourselves wrong when we don't? We don't want to create the tyranny of superpower, something we should be. Then it becomes part of the self-improvement paradigm.

That's the thing about the self-improvement paradigm. We hear all these cool ideas, and then they become part of the baggage within which we can, I should be like this, I should be like that, but no, it's something possible in each moment.

[Roger]

I'm curious about what or who inspired you to have the superpower of tending to the emergent?

[Joel]

It's a great question. In some ways, it's a mystery. It's hard to track exactly what inspired me.

Then, of course, my mother came to, well, not of course, but then my mother came to my mind. Of course, I say, of course, because we are so touched and formed by our parents. My mother, she had this way of loving me, which felt so unconditional and attuned.

She was not in that place all the time, as just as I'm a parent. You know, we all have our edges, but when she was in that place, I remember feeling, interesting, I'm going to use this phrase because it points to one of her hobbies, but I kind of bloomed. It was a sense I could just open and it was fully safe.

I think there was an element of she was holding space for me, through that way of loving, through that way of tending to me. It's interesting because her hobby, one of her great loves in life is growing flowers and her garden. I feel moved to think about it because her garden is resplendent.

It's, people will walk past a house or their house and just stop and look at the flowers. It's like, it breaks through the habituation of their day and just for a moment there, they're touched by the beauty of these flowers. My mother would bring that same quality to the plants, just loving them and appreciating them.

I think that's that quality really. It's another tending to the emergences. I'm just loving what's in front of me, whether that's a piece of a blank canvas or a crowd and the music or a podcast guest.

I think it shines through there. So, that's really beautiful. I'm very grateful to my mother for that.

[Roger]

Gardening and cooking comes up a lot as metaphors in these conversations around superpowers.

[Joel]

I find that fascinating because what I realized when I was thinking about our question, our topic today, it's really about relationship. To think that my superpower is this kind of thing that lives in me and it's static. For me, it doesn't live like that.

It's actually evoked in relationship to things in life. I think that's part of the shift we're going through collectively somewhat too. I hear this phrase, the relationship between things being recognized as at least as primary than the things themselves.

We're moving into a process-oriented or interconnected sense of life emerging. I'd be curious to ask you this, Roger, if you notice, because what you're doing is an experiment. You're actually tending to all these different people as they answer this question around their superpower.

My theory, and this is my question to you, my theory is that a lot of people's superpowers, if you go deep enough into it, there's a very unique way it's expressed through that individual person. In some ways, it's serving the emergence of life because life itself is evolving through us as individuals. There's this kind of way that life itself comes through us as individuals and expresses itself as these unique superpowers.

I'm curious if you see common themes to people as they talk about their superpowers.

[Roger]

Yes. In every conversation, empathy, curiosity, and connection comes through as people talk about their superpowers. I will occasionally joke about superheroes get to wear capes, not because they're doing that thing for themselves.

They are, but it's in service of other people that it becomes a superpower and they become heroes. It requires that connection. The curiosity is there because the superpower, I believe, is always unfolding, that they are learning more about their superpower and their relationship through their superpower with the world.

The name of the podcast is a little tongue-in-cheek, this idea of what do you know to be true, where truth is always evolving. The impermanence of life and hopefully things are moving in a progressive way. One of the patterns that has emerged in these conversations is the superpower actually started off typically as an unmet need from early in development.

There was something there that was missing. It could have been something that was either from a bad experience, a trauma, or it was just something that wasn't present. Then individuals find a talent or a thing that they do that tends to that unmet need, which then they want to do more and more of that thing because it's part of their healing.

It's cliche, but the 10,000 hours, the more you do that thing and you get better at it, the more it's healing, it becomes a superpower the moment you do it in service of other people. I would say about nine out of 10 times, that's the arc. Every once in a while, I talk to someone like yourself where it wasn't, at least what I'm hearing is there wasn't something missing.

There was something that was, whether it's from your mom and your mom attending to the emergent, and you saw that role modeled and it's like, yes, this is for me. I'm going to do more of it. Then it shows up throughout life.

I've talked to a couple of people who've had that experience that something was so true to their core that they just want to amplify it through their experiences in life. I would say most times that superpower actually starts from that moment of unmet need.

[Joel]

I'd love to speak to that. I just want to share, first of all, my whole body lit up when you talked about that you're noticing that empathy and connection and the sense of serving others is core to a lot of people's superpowers. I think that's remarkable.

This is why I think superpowers are so important in our times because there's a pandemic of loneliness and a hyper individuality. And particularly in the West, we've privileged the individual and individuality. It can lead to this sense of I'm just me in this isolated world.

I stop where my skin stops. I think this is that view that I articulated a little while ago where we're being invited into a sense of relatedness and service and empathy and connection. And that's a collective superpower that humanity has.

And so, you know, just amazing to hear you speak into that. And I'm saying this out loud now, so I've not thought this before. So I just remember feeling lonely at times as well.

Feeling confused. Feeling like I needed to prove myself. You know, that in order to be valuable, I needed to be something, to do something, you know.

And then maybe I looked around, I was lucky to be surrounded by some quite amazing people, very intelligent people. And so for a long time, I felt like I need to be intelligent and articulate. And in a way, I felt like I didn't deserve to take up space, to take center stage.

So I think, and I'm really thinking this out loud, actually, it's really beautiful, Roger. This is the beauty of the power of questions and coaching. So I really think those moments when I was initiating my superpower were ways that I could be privately just expressed, you know.

Like, there was no demand. I didn't need to be something in order to be valuable. It was just me playing.

And there was, in a way, an innate sense of value. The value I felt came from the inside out. But I didn't know that at the time.

You know, I was just being value by expressing this sense of love of what wants to happen, what wants to emerge. So I noticed now that over time, my expression of that superpower became more relational. And so, you know, it was Star Wars figures alone, and then it was art in my studio, but then I started DJing, and then I started coaching.

And now I love being in like spaces with larger groups of people. And so that's the connection I make to a question really is like, I think it's been a way for me to find that sense of expressed innate value. It's uniquely me, but it's also arising in love of being in life intoxicated by this incredible, remarkable experience of being alive.

Sometimes I just, I have a young daughter, and she's the way that I just get blown away. I'm like, wow, this is just a miracle. It's important for me to remember that in these times when you look at the news, and it's like, oh my god, but it's a miracle.

[Roger]

I think there's a little bit of synchronicity around this, around, like, we are innately valuable, we are innately connected, and we just need to be able to see that. And it takes work, it takes the internal focus, but to your point, it takes the external focus as well of seeing one another, of seeing the miracle of life in and of itself, of these connections. And that's where I think going back to empathy, curiosity, and connection really plays in, and why it shows up in superpowers, because how could it not?

[Joel]

I mean, it's a really powerful reflection, Roger, in that where we hold this superpower conversation from, you know, because if we're not careful, it gets, again, it gets, you know, the self-improvement paradigm, I don't feel my innate sense of value. So now I need to compensate for that by becoming a superhero, by developing superpowers. And there's always going to be a tension inside of that.

There's a way in which there's a kind of poetry about how we don't want to do that. And it's, it's not just about recognizing our innate value, solo, you know, like in my, it's, it's like, it's a, it's a, it's a relational thing. You know, we, we evolved in relationship, and we evolve in our superpower in relationship.

And it's about that being mirrored back to us. And in a way, Roger, I think what I'm getting to is like, this, for me, is tending to the emergence, what we're doing right now. It's, it's like there's something arising in our conversation, in our, in the way we're speaking that, for me, is, it's deeply inspiring, and has revelation and insight inside of it.

[Roger]

I think there is something to this idea of the collective superpower. I, and these conversations are an experiment, it is a trying to understand what is, you know, what is the relationship with a superpower? And why, why is a superpower even something that exists for us?

And I think it does go back to this concept of trying to, you know, achieve our potential, trying to live into our possibilities. And as I've gone, you know, I've, you know, I've been having these conversations for two years, and in my own curiosity, thinking about, okay, what are the building blocks to living into our potential, or living into our possible selves? And the first set of conversations, it was really clear purpose, you know, relationship between superpower and purpose, purpose gives our superpower a North Star.

When I was talking to someone about purpose, they were talking about the role of joy, and joy being a fuel for us living into our superpower. So yeah, joy is a building block, not only an output, or an outcome of being in our superpower, but also motivating, like we know we're going to get joy. It's that dopamine, the anticipation of getting the joy that gets us to do the superpower.

Next, I think hope plays a big role. And I'm using the Charles Snyder definition of hope, of the belief in our goals, in our path, in our agency. We need to have that sense of, okay, we can make change happen, we can deploy our superpower.

Then adaptability comes in around resilience, and growth mindset, and learning agility. And, you know, we could go down the path of the self-improvement paradigm, or just the ability to learn something new to show up differently in a place that demands us to show up differently. After that, I think well-being kicks in with the sense of, you know, mental, emotional, physical, social, and spiritual fitness.

Not health, but fitness. These are all things we have to continue to work at to maintain a certain level of health or fitness. After that, I think it's courage, because we could have our North Star.

We could know where we get our fuel. We could believe in our ability to affect change. We can, you know, be adaptable and resilient.

We could be healthy. Sometimes we just need to kick our ass out of bed and get in the arena. And that's where courage, I think, shows up for so many of these superpowers.

And lastly, this last piece, and I think I only came to it maybe about six months ago when I heard a critique of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, that the Hierarchy of Needs, the critique was, it's focused only on self, only on what I can do. And we know we don't do anything by ourselves. It's always in community.

It's always on a team. It's either, it's both the team that help, or the teams that help us get to where we are today, and the teams that we're on today, that we get to flourish, that we get to demonstrate these superpowers. And it'll be the teams and communities we're in tomorrow that help us also continue to grow.

And I'm really fascinated by this idea of not only what teams can do for us, but I think really the way, the path, is what can we do for teams? How do we show up as a good team mate? How do we show up as a good member of a community?

I think that not only helps other people live into their superpowers, but I think that's where our superpower begins to flourish. So I love the words that you use, the collective superpower, because ultimately that's something, that's emergent for me. And it's also always been there, because a superpower by itself, you know, without relationship, it's not really a superpower, it's just a power.

[Joel]

Yeah, it's a beautiful set of qualities that you name. And so I can see how they all fit together, you know, to co-arise. And I think, I mean, there's, of course, you just named a lot of different qualities.

I think one thing to say is that, a couple of things. One is purpose. For me, is one of those things which I feel differently about than I used to, which is that I used to care really about, I used to feel anguish, you know, because people give this sense of, that we come into life with a purpose, you know, and there's a kind of transcendent calling for us.

I actually still believe in that a lot, but I think it can create a kind of sense of tyranny of purpose. So, you know, it can compound a sense of anguish, like I've got to find that purpose, you know, what is it? And we kind of get hung up on really trying to define what that one purpose is.

And I think I found great freedom in knowing how purposes were very close, you know, the things that I'm passionate about that I enjoy are real doorways into it. And, you know, I don't get caught up on it being the one thing, you know, it could be other things, it could change, it morphs, it unfolds. And so I think it's beautiful to have both a transcendent sense of calling, but also just this very immediate sense of doing what's enjoyable, noticing joy, talking about joy, you know, where does joy arise and passion arise and following those impulses?

They're all around us. So, and I think joy is just such a, I heard someone say this, but joy is a moral imperative in our times. I can't remember the person that said it, but I love that quote, because I think it's true.

And it's a joy that doesn't exclude all the challenges and the grief and the hurt that exists in the world these days. It's not exclusive of that, but that's been something that my own spiritual practice has oriented me to more recently as something that's fundamentally important.

[Roger]

What I do know to be true about joy is it does make our experience, it does make our experience human. It does make our, you know, life worth living. And, you know, if without joy, without tending to joy, without focusing and making sure we get joy, I think that's where both physical and mental disease starts creeping in.

And I've had conversations with people on this podcast about joy, about how to go get joy. And, you know, one of the conversations with Dr. Adam Dorsey, the author and podcast host of Super Psyched, when I asked him about how to find joy, he gave three things, very simple. One was around laughter, like find the thing that makes you laugh and laugh harder.

Laugh, you know, it's the only time where I think fake it till you make it actually makes sense. The second was around appreciation. And it's a little bit more than gratitude.

It's a little bit more than savoring. I mean, to be able to appreciate something, you have to notice it, you have to observe it, but then really feel gratitude, really feel that sense of savoring. And then the third thing was create more than you consume.

And he was talking specifically about social media. On the consume side, I don't think he was talking about create more, you know, write more posts, but it was more find that thing, find your art, and spend more time with your art. And Amy McNee, an artist out of the UK, will talk about in her TED Talk, beautiful TED Talk on TEDx Manchester, where she talks about we need your art more than ever.

She defines art as something we do in order to connect with other people. And I love that definition of art because it's so expansive. It includes a lot of things that are beyond painting and poetry and dancing, right?

It's podcasts, it's writing, it's walking down the street and asking someone, hey, what sparks joy? It can be conversational. And so I think those three things that drive joy of laughter, appreciation, and creating more than we consume, requires intention, and is so worth it.

[Joel]

I think that's so wise. I really love those three. And I think that's such a powerful invitation to create more than we consume.

Because I think that, I mean, in a sense, I'm reiterating what you're saying. But I see that in the things that have opened me in my superpower is, yeah, it has been the art of playing with Star Wars figures, making art, DJing, you know, putting sets of songs together in relationship with a crowd. And it's the thing right now that bring, you know, that's why the space is so important.

It's the same thing as, you know, being in doing mode on my to do list is, well, it's not very artistic. I mean, you could do those things in an artistic way. And I think that's a very interesting inquiry.

But just to have the space to appreciate, you know, appreciation is a very relational word, isn't it? What is the thing I want to appreciate right now? What books draw me?

What podcasts? What, you know, there's always things that we're fascinated by. And we want to do, you know, I love the invitation.

What could we create, you know, that would, and why do we want to do that? So I'm going to take that one on myself. I think it's a beautiful invitation.

[Roger]

Well, I could argue it's already what you do. To tend to the emergent, you have to be in that space of creativity. You have to be in that space of curiosity.

You have to be aware it's emergent, and then you have to be open to possibilities. And you're in the creator's chair at that moment. That sentiment of create more than you consume is fundamental to your superpower.

[Joel]

When we turn towards making art, there's a sense of feeling that comes online, which brings that sense of well-being that you point towards. And, you know, hopefully we even enter kind of flow states, which, within which, you know, they're incredibly inherently meaningful experiences where we can often create great things. And so making space for that is very important.

[Roger]

So Joel, in this moment, what do you know to be true about your superpower of tending to the emergent?

[Joel]

It's like an intimate friend in a way, even though it's who I am. And I know that I want to give it space to create more than I consume. And in a paradoxical way, my value, it doesn't depend on it being expressed either.

Even though as I've done that healing work, as I've felt my innate value, the more it's come online, it's a choice too. You know, it's not a choice that everyone has to make.

[Roger]

What did you believe early on about your superpower that you've come to learn is not true?

[Joel]

It's this thing that I need to express. And if I don't, then I'm not valuable. I'm not worthy.

So it was coming from that kind of self, that sense of self-improvement paradigm where, you know, I'd kind of look to others and compare myself. That sense has just fallen away. Like, I feel a lot more relaxed around it.

And I think the other thing is, and it's the same side, it's a different side of the same coin. But to see more and more that when I get out the way, then my superpower flows more easily. So it's not really about me in a sense.

[Roger]

I love this, you know, commonality amongst people who have took the time to think about what is their superpower, why they have the superpower, how it shows up for them, this time to invest in ourselves to really understand ourselves. And the thing that we do, that just feeds us, that gives us so much fuel.

[Joel]

I just want to share a question, which it's the question that took me from not only seeing my superpower as something in me, but as something that's serving something in the world. So when I'm feeling that sense of superpower, that sense of joy, that sense of passion, that sense of purpose, what am I serving in the world? That's a really worthy thing to think about.

[Roger]

That's a fantastic question. And my immediate response does mean it's the right one. But my immediate response, it's akin to having solar panels on your roof.

And that all that surplus energy that you're not consuming, goes back to the grid, and it serves other people. And so what's coming up for me in this moment with that question is, when I'm in that place of joy, yes, it feels me. But I think joy is infectious.

And it's an invitation for other people to do their thing that leads to their joy, which connects us in our humanity. That feels like a pretty good off the cuff response. I think I'll stick with that one.

Final answer. So Joel Monk, what's next for you and your superpower of tending to the emergent?

[Joel]

For coaches, I think there's a tendency to understandably want to gain more and more knowledge. And that's probably true of all of us human beings. It's true of me.

But knowledge is important. But I think what we're being invited to in the coaching industry is to really look at our own maturity, our own way of being, to practice, to put practice before method. There's a certain shift in my own coaching, which opened up the space for deeper mastery.

And that was when my own consciousness, my own maturity took center stage and the theories and methods went in the background. So this is a preamble to answer your question. What I'm wanting to do with my superpower is to invite coaches into a space where we are in a practice of tending collectively to what wants to emerge through us as a field in these times, in response to these times.

I've been in spaces like this, and I found it incredibly potent, powerful. I think the sense of communitas, the sense of transcendent collective experience that can arise in those types of experiences is meaningful and rewarding and opens us into a deeper expression of what it means to coach.

[Roger]

Joel, are you ready for the lightning round?

[Joel]

Yeah, I have no idea what it is. So I'm just, I'm up for it.

[Roger]

And this is always exciting because these questions I think are meant to be like quick hits, like fast responses. They never end up that way because it always leads to some deeper thought, but let's give it a shot and see what happens. So fill in the blank, tending to the emergent is?

[Joel]

Being in love with what you find in front of you.

[Roger]

See that, oh my goodness. I felt that response. I heard it and I felt it.

And I'm already violating our rule of lightning round. Okay. Who in your life tends to the emergent for you?

[Joel]

My wife, my relationship with life. You could use the word God, whatever is transcendent to me. That's incredibly important.

And the mentors and coaches that I have that I feel I'm blessed to have.

[Roger]

Is there a practice or routine that helps you grow, nurture, or renew your ability to tend to the emergent?

[Joel]

There's many, I would say meditation and prayer are the core ones. What is it to sit in unrest in this moment without trying to control it and to attune my heart to what's most alive inside of me and to open to the grace of life as it wants to live in me.

[Roger]

Is there a book or movie that you recently consumed or watched that you would recommend that has tended to the emergent as a theme?

[Joel]

This just randomly comes to me. I watched this documentary about Bob Marley and I've been trying to find it again. It's not the movie.

It's a documentary. There's this footage where he's on stage in Zimbabwe and there's actually, I think, some kind of disturbance in the crowd. I don't know if it's a riot or some kind of violence.

And so the crowd disperses and the band are scared and they run off stage and Bob is just there alone and he's in a kind of trance. He is transmitting something transcendent. He is consumed, his heart is consumed with his mission, what he wants to transmit into the world.

And it moved me to tears. I wept as I saw that. And that somehow comes to me when you ask me this question.

[Roger]

Joel, if an audience member wanted to follow you or ask you a question, where do you want to point them to?

[Joel]

I think the two places I would recommend one is on LinkedIn. You can find me there. And so yeah, just search for my name.

And then I'm very, I'd love to hear from people. If you feel touched by this conversation, I'm just really open to swapping messages. And then the second one is CoachesRising, CoachesRising.com.

You can find out more about what we're up to there.

[Roger]

Joel, thank you so much for this conversation. I am indebted to you for one, for creating a space for coaches like myself to come and learn more about our practice and how we can show up to not only create and hold space with our clients, but to ultimately be more present in that very human, very sacred space. And that happens in those conversations and coaching.

And many of our audience members are coaches already, and they know what that feels like. And like, it's just such a wonderful thing that you've done to create because you, the courses, the podcasts, the articles, they are so much focused on, you know, where we're at today and what's emerging, allowing us, wherever we are, to step into that space of emergence. So one, thank you for creating something that is super valuable for me and the coaches I know that utilize CoachesRising.

And thank you so much for this conversation, because it's wonderful to be able to talk about these things, these superpowers, your experiences with them. I love the questions that you ask me, and just being able to grow my understanding of my relationship with my superpower through understanding your relationship with your superpower. And you are a deep thinker.

You are someone who, you know, you're on that edge of emergence of coaching, something that I'm just starting my journey with. And yet, it's lovely to see you be that, not only the role model, but also the pioneer in that space of inviting us to show up more fully present and more self-aware in those spaces. So thank you for being here.

[Joel]

Oh, I'm touched by what you share, Roger. That's really beautiful. And yeah, I just really care about the things you named.

And just want to express my gratitude for the way you held this space and what you're up to in the world as well. So just a big thank you from me.

[Roger]

Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.

Thank you all for being in this conversation with us. And thank you, Joel, for sharing how we can attend to the possibilities that are emerging in almost any moment. The question I'm asking myself now after the conversation is, what areas of my life can I be more present to the emerging possibilities of that moment?

What Do You Know To Be True is a Three Blue Pens production, and I'm your host, Roger Kastner. We are recording on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish and Suquamish people. To discover the ancestral lands of the indigenous people whose land you may be on, go to native-lands.ca. 

Okay. Be well, my friends. And as always, love you. Mean it.