Take a risk.
Let go of rigidity and open yourself to new experiences.
Leap and the net will appear.
These are the kinds of things that began looping in my mind when I received a phone call one recent morning from a complete stranger who asked me to be a guest on his radio show. Not the following month or the following week or even the following day, but in one hour.
First thought in my head:
No.
Ultimately what I told him:
No.
But Glenn Brooks, a coach and self-described “renewal expert,” was persistent. He’s very much about Unscripted Power and Vibrant Living. I wasn’t sure what either of those entailed, but they sounded promising. He wanted me to come on his show and talk about writing and coaching, maybe ask him some interview-style questions. He had been having some ideas he wanted to process on-air. Plus, he asked me to write about the experience.
The unscripted experience.
I decided to do it. It’s not like I’ve never done radio before. In my sports writing career I was a guest on several shows. I also had a blast taking calls from listeners when appearing as a guest on Martha Stewart radio.
Risking. Opening. Leaping. Here we go.
Glenn’s first guest on the show was Sarah Crabtree, a Thought Field Therapy advanced practitioner. I wasn’t familiar with TFT, so I mostly listened to her exchange with Glenn. It sounded fascinating, especially when Sarah talked about helping a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder. I listened and learned.
Next up, Glenn wanted me to ‘interview’ him. A journalist since the 1980s, I’m adept at that and enjoy it immensely. But on the fly with zero research? That would be challenging. Still, I was happy to take it on.
I managed to enjoy bits of it. I liked the intense listening it involved. I reveled in his and Sarah’s reaction to this question I posed: Who gets you? Once he said he had some people in mind, I followed up with: What do they get about you?
A person’s answer to those questions will get to the heart of what they see as their essence, what they value most about themselves. It’s kind of magical. I felt that magic in the moment over my phone line.
What came out in the process was that Glenn considers himself an alchemist, that he prides himself on being inquisitive, that he likes to go beyond assumptions and illusions. He shared his belief that goals are useless. I found that to be such an extreme position for a coach that I had to ask: Why the absolute? I never quite understood the answer.
However, I told him I sensed that at his core he’s about stripping away barriers for people, whether they’re scripts or goals. I struggled to really grasp his philosophy or message, but I felt like that accurately scratched the surface.
I’m not sure as an interviewer I ever got into a flow with Glenn. There wasn’t much opportunity. I think the downside to ‘unscripted’ is that it can go off the rails for chunks of time. Glenn’s notion of processing some ideas on-air was easier in conception than execution. I struggled to interject or react when his fertile mind had him spitting out thoughts in rapid succession.
There was a third guest, JD Gershbein, whose Twitter bio says he’s a personal brand architect “Inspiring peak performance on LinkedIn.” I was intrigued and curious to hear what he’d share, but time ran out before he was brought into the conversation.
All in all, it was an illuminating few hours on the radio.
Risking. Opening. Leaping.
The net appeared.
As it will next time … and the time after that.
