I Gave Everything. And Then I Was Ghosted
I feel deflated. Like what is the point. I do so much and in the end feel worthless – feel familiar?
One of my former clients, a huge success, has decided to cut me out of his life – through fear of his fiancée finding out that we ever worked together.
How did I find out? I didn’t. All that happens is that I don’t get a text back when I asked how he was getting on a few months after our coaching finished.
Similar to stories I hear from new clients, with women ghosting them, even when they have given up so much of their life to help them – they are dismissed in an instant.
Coaching as a Spiritual Practice
A part of me thought that coaching was spiritual by nature – that there is a spiritual path to helping someone grow. They grow. I grow from helping them and understanding more about how my coaching is implemented in their life.
Another part of me sees human nature for what it is – political almost. Something changes, and all of a sudden, we change our allegiances. Now someone no longer serves our current agenda, we remove them, delete them – or in the olden days, I imagine, have them killed.
We tell ourselves stories. We distort information in a way that allows us to cope and see ourselves as good human beings – yet we ignore the transactional element, pretending that life is joyful and we are all so open. If this were the case, I doubt we’d see so many affairs, divorces and crime.
Understanding Human Nature at Its Worst
To understand human nature, we must understand it at its worst.
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a firsthand account of an innocent Russian man being wrongly imprisoned, and his experiences seeing humans at their worst.
Couple this with Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning – a narrative of living through the Holocaust – and we can begin to piece together how humans really act and our core search for preservation, status and reproductive opportunities.
Dr. Jordan Peterson often talks about the hidden motives that drive men, and suggests placing yourself in those horrible situations – asking whether you would have acted differently to those shooting innocent Jews at Auschwitz. Understand these feelings and you get closer to understanding human nature.
The Role of Art and Expression
The spiritual part is the growth – being able to get closer to truth. Art – like this self-expression – is my way of coping and understanding the world.
I’ve come to recognise that not only is coaching a spiritual practice, but so is life itself: the good, the bad and the awful.
Am I Too Emotionally Invested?
So, does my client ghosting me still upset me? Yes. Even though rationally I can understand that he is managing his life to the best of his ability.
Maybe I give too much emotion to my work? Maybe I put my self-worth on the line? Maybe I should be tougher?
Maybe I should change? Or maybe I should just accept who I am?
Giving Without Expectation
The poor man is the one who changes his actions because when he gave a homeless man money, the man didn’t say thank you – so he decided to never give again.
The wise man is the one who decides to give anyway – even if it means being hurt again.
One of my favourite film moments is when Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List realises that he is still wearing a ring and could have sold it to save more humans from the Holocaust, even though he had given almost everything else he had to give, with the risk of being killed or imprisoned.
It’s a powerful moment – one that stays with you for life. One that reminds me that I am human, I do have feelings, and it is okay to keep being me.
Written by Gary Gunn
Gary Gunn is an internationally accredited coach with 17 years of experience coaching single men.
He has spent years creating proven, real world systems that help men meet, attract and date the women they desire. He is also the best selling author of a book on confidence and dating.
Gary has taught in over 30 major cities worldwide and has coached more than 1,200 men globally through group courses, video coaching and one to one training.
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