“Life Coaching, Men’s Work, Me:” The Shadows of Self Promotion
“He who has a strong why can endure any how.”
-Nietzsche
Self promotion had always been a big challenge for me.
For good reasons and bad.
Much of it has been driven by a fear of being "burned at the stake" (past life witches, anyone else!?), people-pleasing, wanting everyone to like me, being a "nice-guy", concern with offending people, fear of being wrong, proven wrong, or fear of being a fraud, etc. etc. etc.
My doubts and hesitations festered in an era of what felt to me like social media-induced self-worship -- self-promotion, and monetized narcissism in absentia of true competence behind the posture of confidence that anyone and everyone can easily conjure with filters, finances, and a good marketing team.
I was terrified of being (or even being thought of as being) merely a beautifully crafted FACADE with nothing substantial behind it; an obfuscation designed to SELL, "capture" your attention, create a "user".
Fuck that.
And so, I conceded the territory and told myself nice stories about how I was actually "above" posting or promoting or marketing on socials, while secretly feeling resentful and bitter at my own ability to do so.
Ooof. Yeah.
The "Cult of Comparison" that is one of the shadows of social media had its way with me as it has with so many of us, and so I found promotion/selling incredibly difficult, largely because the product I was selling, was ME.
Is my work even good? There are so many things about myself I don't have figured out ... Who the heck am I to presume to teach or lead this work? I'm not as "good" as my teachers ... maybe I'm actually the narcissist? Maybe I should just sit down, shut up, and leave it to the professionals, or "mom and dad", or God ...
Anyone else resonate with this?
I wanted my work to speak for itself - to draw its own audience naturally. But then I'd experience frustration when people wouldn't come to my events or sign up for working with me when NO ONE EVEN KNEW MY WORK OR EVENTS EXISTED ...
It's sad on one hand, and freakin' hilarious on the other, because I repeated the same pattern over and over for YEARS to convince myself that my work was no good -- I would create something, struggle to promote it ahead of time because I was afraid it wasn't "good enough", then panic at the end and promote last minute, only get a handful of people because people had already made other plans, etc., then use the size of the group as evidence that people don't want my work.
BRILLIANT WORK, Shadow Mikaal!!!
SO ... My word for this year is VISIBILITY.
It has truly been in partnership and collaboration where I have finally been able to really break through these walls and into a form of VISIBILITY that feels really good.
Turns out collaboration/team work is the place I am designed to thrive most as a "Projector" in the Human Design System ...
This miracle of confident self-promotion has happened for TWO REASONS:
1. To continue to doubt the efficacy of this WORK would be to call some of the best people I know in this world LIARS TO THEIR FACE.
2. I have finally reached a place with MY work, where the work is no longer MINE - meaning, the WORK itself has become more important to me than the MAN.
Ouchie yet again.
Yeah. Recognizing that I have been robbing people of the work that literally TRANSFORMED MY LIFE because I was afraid the work was not transformative.
The truth is, my own egoic shadow/fears were more important to me that risking my image as a stand for the Work.
Now, I have seen enough that if this man that I am - this "Mikaal Bates" character I have guarded and curated and protected so dearly as to render his work almost non existent - needs to burn, break, shift, rise, fall, get up, stay down, or fight with everything I have ... I can do that; IN SERVICE TO SOMETHING GREATER.
This work is beyond me. That's the whole point. Writing this in real time, I just got that that's why I felt like a fraud for so long.... Because this work IS bigger than me, and well beyond me in my capacity as a thinking, rational human.
What is coming through me now in my work is the result of me finally being able to GET OUT OF MY OWN WAY and trust that what I have learned, built, created is ENOUGH to the point that I am willing to be USED as an instrument of loving service all my Brothers and Sisters and Others, and the Goodness that lives in each of us.
Do I have a plan? Yes.
Do I always have notecards in my back-right pocket with my run-of-show scribbled nearly illegibly at each workshop I lead? Yes.
Do I have it all figured out? Hells to the no.
But this is where I am, who I am, and what I do - in service to US; ALL of us.
My mission here on this planet is two-fold:
1) To ignite, accelerate, and celebrate the evolution of men and healthy masculinity across this planet in our lifetime.
2) To heal the Divide between Men + Women by living, sharing and teaching the lost arts of ‘Sacred Union’.
To that end, I offer this work to those who resonate with it’s quality, presentation, and ethos.
I won’t be for everyone, but it may be for you.
From 1-on-1 coaching in-person or online, to the living frame of group ritual to initiate men into the psychological state of healthy, mature Masculinity … from helping Couples deepen in love and sex, to the Co-ed group fields I curate better known as “Sacred Union”
If you're interested, reach out. Intro calls are FREE.
Hazaah.
