Pivot To Center with Piet

We share a personal pivot toward executive coaching sparked by a powerful story of success without center and outline a practical path to realignment. We introduce the C4 foundation—character, confidence, creativity, and community—and invite leaders to walk back to center.

• why achievement without alignment breeds drift
• the Arthur Brooks moment as a mirror for purpose
• the move from pastor to executive coach
• the C4 foundation: character as anchor
• confidence as internal compass
• creativity as unique voice, not copy-paste
• community as the better flock
• coaching as strategic partnership and 30,000-foot view
• how future interviews will focus on staying centered
• invitation to connect for intensives or ongoing coaching

We’re going to put my email address in the notes. If you’d like to have further conversation about what that might look like, whether half day intensive or maybe for a couple of months walking a path together, I’d love to talk to you about that: pietvanwaarde@gmail.com

Chapters

• 0:00 A Personal Update Begins
• 0:25 The Arthur Brooks Turning Point
• 2:46 Why Leaders Drift Off Center
• 4:13 Announcing The Executive Coaching Pivot
• 5:19 The C4 Foundation Overview
• 5:51 Pillar One: Character As Anchor
• 6:55 Pillar Two: Confidence As Compass
• 7:54 Pillar Three: Creativity And Unique Voice
• 9:00 Pillar Four: Community And Real Support
• 10:16 Coaching As Strategic Partnership
• 11:34 Shifting Future Conversations Toward Centered Living

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:13

Hey there, my name is Pete Van Ward, and I'm your host for Sidewalk Conversations, but we are going to do something a little different today. I'm gonna be giving you a personal update. And I want to begin by telling the story of a guy named Arthur Brooks. Maybe you recognize that name. He's been very involved with the whole uh search for happiness. And for many years in his life, he was the president for a very prestigious, famous think tank in Washington, D.C. He was successful. He had all the accoutrements of what it means to be the guy. But he was also tired. And he was also kind of thinking about like, is this all there is to life? And as fate would have it, he found himself on a red eye back to DC, and on the plane, he's sitting there, and he hears a conversation going on behind him. And it's a very surprising, actually shocking conversation. He hears a gentleman talking to his wife, and he utters these words. He says, I don't know if I want to live anymore. Now, of course, that would get anybody's attention, so he peeks between the seats and he recognizes this guy. We all would, he said. Global hero, global icon. And his wife is trying to console him and reassure him, you know, your your life is still worth and living. And she's cycling through all his many accomplishments. And even after she shares all this with him, his reply is Yeah, but people don't really need me anymore. Now, as Arthur Brooks is listening to this conversation, it becomes a kind of mirror for him. In fact, he's been quite public about this. And he realizes in that moment that he can no longer do what he's been doing. He too needs to make a radical shift to center in order to rediscover the life that he's always wanted. And so he left his prestigious job, became a Harvard professor, took a significant salary cut, and decided that he was going to try and find his soul. Now, the reason I tell you this story is because it reflects the reason that I'm making my own pivot professionally. Like many of you have known me as a pastor. I've spent most of my adult life as a pastor. I've also spent a number of years as a leader of leaders and as a coach to cancer patients. And in this process, I have learned some things about life and realized that in the midst of my own kind of recalculating moments, that there are people just like Arthur Brooks all around me who are facing the kind of challenges in life where they realize that even if they've achieved everything the world says makes for success, that sometimes it's easy in the midst of all the hurriedness of trying to be a quote unquote good leader to drift off center. Like making sure everybody else is happy and not knowing whether or not your own soul is healthy, where you're living for everybody else's agenda and you've lost sight of your own purpose, where you are thinking about like what is all the critics going to say as opposed to what's most important, and that is what are you going to say? And so I've decided that I want to start serving people in that position as an executive coach. So I've followed a series of training. I'm in the process of being credentialed, and I've been developing my curriculum. Now, to be clear, it's not about trying to give people more to do. It's actually about helping them to become what they've always wanted to be. And so my coaching curriculum is based around what I'm calling the C4 foundation, either like building it or rediscovering it. Because I think for all of us who find ourselves, no matter what our world is, whether we're in the boardroom, whether we're in the church room, or whether we're in the hospital room, we need a good, strong foundation in order to sustain what it is we're trying to do. So the foundation I would suggest is built on four pillars. It's first of all built on character, confidence, creativity, and community. And I just want to tease those out a little bit for you. Let me start with character. I call character our secure anchor, it is what holds us steady in the midst of all the noise. It gives us a value center that we can build our lives on. One of the reasons why people tend to drift off center is because their anchor isn't secure. It's not substantial enough. And maybe it's because they haven't thought a lot about their values or their convictions or the things that are most important. But sometimes it's because we forget them. And so, what a coach can help you do is to say, hey, so remind me of what's important to you. What are the things that you're going to hold on to no matter what the world says, no matter what it costs you to try and be successful? I'm not compromising. These are not for sale. So we start with that. Close second is confidence. Because even if you know what your values are, sometimes you don't feel secure enough in those values to build your life on them. Like there's so many expectations and so much internal insecurity. Like, what will people think? Or is this really right for me? Or will that work here? And so I talk about confidence as your internal compass. It's like discovering afresh your true north and building that on the values that you say are important. So you can see how character and confidence work closely together. The third pillar is creativity, what I like to call the black sheep edge. I'm sure you see it too, but we we live in a world of copy-paste leadership, like just do what everybody else is doing, doing what the crowd says you should do. There's a standard way to build a business or to build a life. And you often feel inauthentic. And of course, there are certain general principles that work at that. But I think what the world needs is not more copy-paste leaders. They need people who know their unique voice and make their own unique contribution. And part of what I think a coach can help you do is to give you encouragement to find your voice and be willing to see problems from a different perspective, or maybe to see things that other people miss and have the capacity to talk about it and give your unique uh perspective on it. So it's about character, it's about confidence, about creativity. But then finally, it's also about community, what I call the better flock. You know, you don't need more networking opportunities. You don't need another party to go to. You need a group of people who are on the same path that you are. You see, I think that a coach can help facilitate relationships that help you find that network that can truly be to you what you need them to be, to be the people that can hold you accountable to your own center because they're on that same path with you. You see, I I think a coach is a strategic partner, somebody who can help you kind of take a step back and look at life from a 30,000-foot view. Maybe help you see a path that you can't because you're so close to the trees. They can help you navigate the path before you end up in a ditch. Or like the guy in the plane who had drifted so far off his center that he wondered if life was even worth living. So that's what I want to be about. I want to help people arrest the drift, secure the center, and live fully aligned. Now, some of you may be saying, okay, well, that's great. Glad you kind of found your way, Pete. It's about time. Well, what does this have to do with me? Well, two things. Uh first, uh, you're gonna notice a slight shift in these broadcasts. Uh, the interviews that I'm going to do will be oriented more around this idea of how do people stay centered? Because we all have those seasons of life where we are at risk of drifting off our center. And that's natural. But we don't want to be in that position where we drift so far off that this slight deviation, you know, months and years later, becomes a huge gap between what we want to be or who we say we want to be and what we actually are. We don't want that. And so we want to have conversations with people who have, you know, noticed that or found their way back to center, and maybe even more importantly, how to stay centered. So you're going to notice a slight shift in our conversations, that this is going to be the theme that we're going to really give some fresh focus to. But then there's a second reason I'm telling you this. Because maybe as I'm sharing this story, you find yourself thinking, uh, crap, I am in that place where I have drifted. And I maybe didn't have the vocabulary for it. Maybe I just feel a little uneasy. Maybe I feel this like internal recalibrating moment, but not know what to do with it. And then I would say, well, maybe it's not by accident that you're listening to this. That maybe part of the reason why this has captured your attention is because you could use an executive coach. And if that's the case, maybe this is a time that we can spend some time walking together, walking the path back to center. And so no matter where you are listening to this or how you're seeing this, we're going to put my email address in the notes. And if you'd like to have further conversation about what that might look like, whether half day intensive or maybe for a couple of months walking a path together, I'd love to talk to you about that. Because you're too valuable. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. You're too valuable as a leader and as a person to squander the life that you've been given, to waste the gifts that have been entrusted to you. I know it's in your own soul, like to be a good steward, but I want to help you do that. I've walked through my own seasons of having to recalibrate. And I think I've had enough experience to know what that path looks like and enough breath left in me to help you walk it too. So don't shake it off. Don't pretend it isn't important. See yourself as valuable enough to get what you need. And if that's a coach, I'd love to walk the path with you. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time for our next sidewalk conversation.