A State of Sneh-dom
Sneh embracing a gentler life
Yesterday, my friend Sneh and I had the loveliest lunch date. She read my posts, picked up on an undercurrent of loneliness during my solo travel, and came to visit me in Vietnam.
…via video.
Sneh is on the short list of friends most likely to get on a plane and meet me in a foreign country. We met when we both temporarily lived on the beach in Koh Phangan, Thailand, and we’ve already explored England and Ireland together.
However, Sneh is unlikely to be getting on any planes in the near future. Not just because she’s in Sweden, unable to leave until her residence permit comes through. But also because she’s in a deeply devotional chapter of life.
After building a successful career in the corporate world, including stints at Google and fancy-pants marketing firms, Sneh retired in her mid-thirties. She’d had enough of the hustle and bustle and yearned for a gentler way of living. So she made a plan and made it happen. She and her partner, Gyula, made a list of countries they’d consider living in then began visiting them. Sweden won (despite my vote for Ireland, rude) and now they live there.
Not one to sit idle, Sneh enrolled in a prestigious coaching training program. She’s now halfway through her training and, in typical Sneh fashion, she’s already accumulated heaps of hands-on practice hours.
She also currently has openings for new coachees and I highly encourage anyone who’s ever thought about doing sessions with a coach to reach out to her. Her program has an amazing setup where students like Sneh offer sessions at steeply discounted rates during their training, and then the coachee gets the benefit of not just receiving Sneh’s coaching, but also input from the master coaches who are leading the training program.
When I put my fingers on the keyboard this morning, it wasn’t with the intention to pitch Sneh’s coaching services (though I am all in on doing that any chance I get. I’ve started businesses before. There is nothing, NOTHING, more likely to touch the heart of a friend who’s building something than to receive your support. Please, I beg of you — support your friends who are building things. It can make the difference between their venture taking off or tanking. A small, “hey my friend is doing this thing,” post may seem unlikely to make a difference, but I promise you it does).
What I really intended to write about was one of the things Sneh said on our call, but since I’ve already gone in a whole different direction, I’m going to run with it.
A few paragraphs ago, I wrote that Sneh is unlikely to get on a plane and globe-trot anytime soon, not just because she’s waiting for a residence permit, but because she’s in a deeply devotional chapter of her life.
A few years ago, if I heard that phrase, I would have thought that Sneh was doing something religious. “Oh, so she’s going to church every day now that she lives in Sweden?” I might have thought.
But, in my adventures with shamanism, I’ve begun to use the word in a much different context.
Sneh is in a deeply devotional chapter of her life because she is deeply devoted to mastering the craft she’s learning.
Sneh isn’t going through her coaching training, doing the bare minimum so that she can earn her certificate and starting charging people hundreds of dollars per hour while living a glamorous digital nomad life.
She’s, frankly, not particularly motivated by the money. She’ll end up earning plenty of it because that’s who she is, but it’s not driving her.
Sneh is devoting herself to her training because she wants to become a good coach. She wants to understand if this skill she’s developing can help her contribute to the world in a meaningful way.
Like me, Sneh’s into strengths-based service. She wants to do good in the world, but she doesn’t want to run herself ragged while she does so. In our worldview, trying to contribute from a place of “this is draining me” may be worse than not making any effort to contribute at all. The world needs people who are full of vitality, joy and delight more than it needs one more person contributing from a place of guilt or obligation.
If you listen to Liz Gilbert as often as I do, you’ll have heard her share the quote, “You can always tell people who live for others by the anguished expressions on the faces of the others.” She always credits it to a great British wit, not knowing the actual source.
Sneh isn’t becoming a coach to alleviate guilt about not doing more for humans. She’s not training to line her pocketbook. She’s training because life taught her that she’s exceptionally good at coaching and she wants to develop that aptitude.
That, right there, is devotion.
Sneh doesn’t want to come meet me in Vietnam. She doesn’t want to fly to my mom’s house for Thanksgiving. She doesn’t want to meet me in Berlin in May for an Elton John concert.
She wants to devote herself to her training. She wants to gift herself the spaciousness she needs to get really, really good at this thing she’s chosen to pursue.
And I freaking love that. I don’t think many of us give ourselves the gift of space. We tend to squeeze the things we want to do into little pockets of time, running hither and thither trying to fit everything in.
Not Sneh. She knows better. And I’m grateful to have her example in my life.
Sending you love and my wishes for a spacious day and life,
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