Last weekend I went mountain biking in Fruita, Colorado, with a couple good buddies. I’m the oldest and the least experienced, and was a little bit nervous.

There was one part of the ride that was incredibly rocky and narrow. Boulders on either side and a steep drop-off on the left. All downhill.

I got through it.

But on the next little bit, much less steep and away from the drop-off, I suddenly found myself going over my handlebars. I’m still not sure what happened. My face slammed into a big rock. My mouth filled with blood and my tongue instinctively felt around to see if I had all my teeth, if anything had chipped.

I was ok. Spitting up blood, dazed, but ok.

As I pulled my bike off the rocks and sat down to rest, I felt stupid, embarrassed, and self-conscious for slowing up my friends. But they were great.

It really could have happened to any of us, they said, and it really could have been much, much worse.

When we try hard things, sometimes we fall. We learn during those times who is there to help pick us up.

Including ourselves.

And hopefully, we get a little stronger every time.

I often write about insights. New thoughts that significantly shift something, in me or in one of my clients.

Where do they come from?

We all seem to have access to a deeper wisdom. A deep and often sudden knowing that seems to come from beyond what we have personal access to. Something that only seems to appear when we stop trying!

And most of us, myself included, wonder how we can have more of them.

There’s a quote attributed to a variety of different spiritual teachers that goes something like this—

“Enlightenment is an accident, but some activities make you accident prone.”

I feel like insight is the same way. You can’t force an insight. But I find I have more insights, or perhaps notice the ones I do have, when I’m quiet.

They emerge from the silence. In the pauses. In the letting go.

And yet our lives, our stories, seem to conspire to keep us in motion. To keep us “productive.” Answering meaningless emails, doing things that any number of people on our teams could do better and faster.

That’s why I find myself saying less and less in my coaching conversations. There’s something in my silence that is helpful for theirs.

What do you do to make yourself “insight prone?”

Most of the leaders I work with struggle with imposter syndrome.

It can lead to a life of suffering and perfectionism, and, outside looking in, incredible success.

I’ve struggled with it myself. But I think it’s pointing to something much different than inadequacy.

When I’ve taking on new roles, I’ve had moments when I momentarily forgot everything I was working on, everything I’d ever done. And then I was asked to speak.

It used to terrify me. But I noticed, over time, that words would come. And the words that came were often better than the “elevator pitch” that I saw many others use to avoid the discomfort.

The words came from nothing. And I noticed over time that it was this same nothing that success came from. That everything came from.

The same nothing that the mystics call “emptiness.” The same creative spark that produced and animates the entire universe.

My experience is that imposter syndrome is pointing at something to be cultivated, not avoided. It’s pointing at our inherent capacity to create.

Yes, there are times when we feel like nothing. But it is in those times that we have the most potential to be anything.

What do you see in your imposter syndrome?

While there are a lot of ways to talk about coaching in an executive context, I find that three are particularly helpful.

First is performance coaching. This type of coaching involves working on a skillset, like communication, without work on the person.

The other two focus on more fundamental personal changes.

Developmental coaching is what my coach Doug Silsbee focused on. The coach helps the client through predictable developmental stages, and their capacity to do certain things, like lead selflessly, automatically changes as they change and grow.

Transformational coaching is what some of my spiritual teachers do. It can help a person can make a sudden shift in how they see the world. This often leads to a paradox of feeling greater ease while having a greater impact. It can seem like magic when it happens.

The role of the coach, to me, is to sense the shift that is most available and helpful to the client at any given point.

If you want to become a better speaker, or to be better in front of your board, you might just need performance coaching.

But if you’re willing to do the work, if you see that better humans make better leaders, the personal journey is much more powerful.

And effective.