One of my favorite mid-life guy movies is “City Slicker” starring Billy Crystal and Jack Palance. In the movie, Billy Crystal’s character ‘Mitch’ and his middle-aged friends deal with personal issues like any group of red-blooded males would – they go on a cattle drive.
The leader of the cattle drive is a weather-beaten cowboy named Curly, played by Jack Palance. Curly is a stereotypical cowboy. He’s hard, tough, matter-of-fact, and very wise from his days riding alone on the plains.
While riding with the herd, Mitch turns to Curly and says, “Your life makes sense to you?”To which Curly replies: “You city folk. You worry a lot. How old are you? 38?” “39,” says Mitch.
“You all come up here about the same age. You spend fifty weeks getting knots in your rope and you think two weeks up here will untie them for you. None of you get it.” Then, Curly pauses and says, “You know what the secret to life is?”
“No, what?” says Mitch.
Curly holds up one finger and says, “One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that, and everything else don’t mean .”
“That’s great,” says Mitch, “but what’s the one thing?” Curly gives a country-style Obi-wan look and says, “That’s what you’ve got to figure out.”
Mitch spends much of the rest of the movie bothered that Curly didn’t tell him the “one thing”, until finally he gets what the rest of us understood right away – you’ve got to figure that out for yourself. For all the mid-life crisis males in this movie, the “one thing” was family.
Jesus attracted people (and still does!) because of His single-minded focus. “Seek first the Kingdom and rightousness (right alignment) and all these things you desire will be added to you” His life demontrated that pursuit with incredible results that manifested the Invisible Kingdom.
Discovering your One Thing is one of the reasons you may invite a life coach along on your journey. Curly “life coached” Mitch when he had trouble connecting with what mattered most to him. Through a co-creative relationship, Mitch discovered what was already present, yet dormant within.
The power of focus is vital to a successful coaching session. By focusing on one thing, an agenda, you can break a tyranny to the impossible into something manageable. It becomes possible to deconstruct a mountain of a problem one stone at a time.
Take time each day to connect with the One Thing that inspires your passion. It’s a great way to keep the “knots out of your rope”.
It’s time to get the knots out of your rope with Life Coaching.
