Trouble as a Mirror For Becoming

What if your hardest moments were the doorway to steadier leadership and warmer relationships? Mark Walker explores how to hold real sadness beside real gratitude, using the impending loss of a dear friend as a lens for presence, appreciation, and growth. Rather than glorifying toughness, we look at simple practices, thirty seconds of noticing light, a few lines of third-person journaling, that compound like interest and quietly shift your baseline from reactive to responsive.

We dig into friction as a teacher and discomfort as a kind of truth serum. When a colleague pokes a soft spot or a family member reopens an old story, the goal isn’t to win the argument; it’s to run a clean after-action report. What words hooked me? Was it tone, timing, or a slow buildup I ignored? From there, Mark lays out why good coaching is not consulting: it’s the art of asking catalytic questions that surface what matters, expand options, and restore agency. You’ll learn how to design better prompts for others, and for yourself, so you can access the creative parts of your brain and choose wiser actions under stress.

We also translate this into daily conversations. Swap “How was your day?” for specific, open prompts that invite real answers: What made you laugh? Where did you feel stuck? What are you excited about next week? Presence first, then precision. Over time, these small choices change the texture of your home, your team, and your inner life. By treating troublemakers as mirrors, celebrating tiny wins, and appreciating the good on purpose, you build balance that holds when life wobbles. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to help more people find Fierce Encouragement.

If you’re tired of doing this work alone, I offer a free conversation to help you get clear on your next steps. Apply Here when you’re ready.

Transcript

Why Self-Talk And Balance Matter

Coaching Misconceptions And Who It Helps

Holding Grief And Gratitude Together

Appreciation As Daily Practice

Learning From Friction And Flaws

Discomfort As Truth Serum

Debrief Your Triggers

Shift From Victim To Owner

Journaling To Engage Higher Brain

What Good Coaching Really Is

The Customer Seat And Real Change

Pause, Presence, And Agency

Ask Yourself Better Questions

From Vague To Specific With Kids

Use Troublemakers As Mirrors

Are You Still The Same?

Invitation And Closing Encouragement

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hey there, friends. This is Mark Walker, and this is the podcast and the video cast called Fierce Encouragement. I hope this finds you well, and I'm coming at you today, a sunny day in February. But I'm glad you're here and I'm glad you're taking the time just to spend 10, 15 minutes learning how to fiercely encourage yourself, maybe how to open up. I created this podcast almost two years ago. And the main theme or the main idea I had at that beginning was how it's really hard, kind of in our head. I don't know about you, but I'm really good at beating myself up or finding fault with others. And kind of in between that, just not feeling at home or balanced in my energy in my head. And then obviously that kind of bled into my work and my relationships. I've been working at that for well over a decade through meditation, through journaling, through a bunch of programs. Um, but the last few years, I've been really engaged in coaching. Now, some people might shut down right away and say, coaching, not for me. Thank you. Bye-bye. Great. You're right. I don't think people need coaching. But I do know that people have problems with their self-esteem, maybe with their mindset about themselves, or maybe the mindset they have of the world out there. So if that's where you're at, well, this place is for you. This is a place where I just share tools, stories, ideas, a bunch of things that might help you to show up a little bit more present in your life with your family and kids, or maybe just having a little more balance at work, maybe just stepping away from the edge, knowing that not everything is dependent upon this one project or this one outcome. But thank you for being here and thank you for watching if you're on the YouTube watching. And thank you for those that are listening. I really appreciate you. Last week I shared a story about a good friend of mine going into hospice and going through his last round, I guess, of being with us in the physical form. Today I feel a little more balanced. I feel this kind of interestingly enough, I feel the sadness and a happiness. I'm not sure if you've felt ever felt that with uh the loss of a loved one or a friend. You're truly happy and remember the good times. And at the same time, you're very grateful to be there for them, even if it's just to help them have a sip of water or talk to them for a few minutes, or just do what you can. There's a gravity for me, at least, in having that happiness and that joy of having gotten a chance to be alive in this time, having my health, having a good mind, having great teachers, having a great family around me, coming back to that appreciation. My coach has said that a lot, and I've heard it from other authors and luminaries, but what we appreciate appreciates. Much like putting five, 10, 100 bucks in our index fund and watching that grow throughout the years, in the same way, what happens when we slow down and appreciate our lives? And I'm not saying we need to sit there for hours, but if we practice this for five minutes or 10 minutes a day, or maybe even uh 30 seconds here and there, appreciating the sunshine, appreciating good food, I think that really accrues or appreciates in our energy and in our mind. That doesn't mean it stays there 100% all the time, like it's always on, but it does help us show up with a different energy or a different presence when maybe we do get knocked off balance. I'll be direct as well here. My friend who's going through end of life, good guy, has shown me a ton about myself in a myriad of different ways, either reflecting it back to me or having deep, heartfelt conversations, or maybe even some of those troublesome moments when we didn't necessarily get along. I appreciate that troublesome time and those difficulties too. Even though they felt or tasted sour at the time, they did help me learn. One of the great teachers from Buddhism, Atisha, talks about this in some of his writings and other great adepts and masters. Our flaws or those troublesome things that show up when we're challenged or pushed against our reaction, those things that come up, the blame and the anger, or the sadness and the pulling back, or our instinctual responses when our kind of default mode comes online, our survival mechanism, if you will. In those moments, we learn a lot about ourselves. In those moments where we're challenged and we're pushed around, and maybe intellectually or even energetically in our body, we feel kind of unwrapped or unspooled. We can learn a lot about ourselves. In fact, one of my good friends sent me a book this past week, and I've been uh getting through the first third or so of it. But in it, he has people come to his property and they go out for some hikes and they do heavy lifting and they really challenge themselves physically. And he makes mention of it as it is a kind of a truth serum. Wear people out and push them past their comfort zone and get out of that comfort zone. And it's in those moments we can really find out who we are. So who are you when you're challenged? Maybe think back to this last week or even this past day. Where were you poked? Where were you challenged by somebody at work or even somebody in your family? And sometimes those people in our family know all our soft spots. They know where we're tender, or they might know some stories and events from our past. And we can feel really vulnerable and open and naked in those moments. But look at those moments as you would from the perspective of a learner or an investigator. Maybe do a debrief on them or an after-action report, or maybe treat it like a police officer, an investigator. What went wrong? Where did I lose it? Was it those words? Was it the tone of voice? Was it the long buildup of frustration? When we pause and slow down, maybe take a breath or two, again, do some journaling with it, go for a walk and think about it, but come to some conclusions, come to some points where we can own it and where we can take it less personally and maybe look at it as a learning opportunity. And sometimes that learning opportunity is simple. I could have stayed neutral. I didn't have to push back or accuse back or whatever it is. We all have places where we can use those challengers, those adversaries, those sour moments, or those troublesome characters in our life and take a moment to learn. We can step out of that victimhood and feeling oppressed and step into some type of ownership, or step into that energy of a coach or mentor who's encouraging you. This is a powerful, powerful exercise. So it might seem like I just ran through this, but this is the exact thing we can work on with ourselves. And as my coach says, break out your journal, talk to yourself or write to yourself in the third person. When we do that, we literally bring on a higher part of our brain. And we need to train that part of our brain. But when we stop catastrophizing, when we get out of that quick reflexive response, we are literally using our higher brain stem, our creative part of our brain. And we can choose another way to react. Or we can even move towards appreciating the troublesome character and then taking the evidence back and working on ourselves the next time we're challenged or the next time our soft spots are exposed. The truth is, if we examine our own history, and I can do it too right now, all the things that were most frustrating to me were a compounding effect of me not showing up and doing this examination. As a coach now, as somebody who gets to talk to people and help them unwrap their problems and feel a sense of inspiration or growth through conversation, it seems like it's just a beautiful way to live. When you can see the transformation in people in just one 20-minute conversation. It is like something that carries me through the whole week and sometimes the whole month. Coaching isn't about consulting. Coaching isn't about giving advice and you having to blindly follow it. I should say good coaching is, because sometimes we do hire coaches or we have mentors who only give advice, who are directing you. But that's not what a good coaching connection is. Coaching is about good questions. We can use questions to gather information from somebody, maybe get data back on what's working, what hasn't worked. Maybe it's about a product. Working in IT as a product owner for a few years, I really took to heart, and I loved the part of my job of taking that seat of the customer. Sitting in the customer seat and seeing how it felt and getting their words back and learning from them was just one of the highlights of my week and sometimes of the quarter. But the problem was when you took some of that experience, that customer experience, and took it up to higher levels and said, hey, we're challenged here, or the customers frustrated there, they didn't really want to hear it. They just want numbers. They want something they can put on a spreadsheet and oftentimes take credit for how they changed something. But when you go back down to where the sausage is made, when you go back down to that base customer experience, nothing really changed. There was just numbers moving around. And we can do that to ourselves. We can spin out and plan and have goals and systems and oscillate. We can listen to our emotions, we can oversentimentalize things, whether it be loss and illness or loss of a job or a relationship. But the fact is, when we slow down and we pause, we engage a little bit more of the core of our being, and we start to use our creative part of our brain, our lives start to change gradually at first. But then you'll notice when time goes by, you are more balanced in tough situations. You can show up for friends or co-workers when things are going sideways. And it doesn't mean you will be perfect, but it does mean you have an opportunity to be an owner, to have that agency, that executive control of your own person. And most importantly, you're listening to the customer, to yourself. It's good to have that data, the money, the external things that make us happy and fulfill our lives, like houses and relationships and cars and cash. But those are byproducts many times over of a a life well lived. So get better at asking yourself questions. Not just eliciting information, but asking and seeing and spending time with yourself on those open questions. Things like, what do you really want from this? I'm reminded of a story of, and this resonates with me. My my boys are older now in their 20s, but another coach told this to me. Well, when I come home and I ask my kids how their day went after they get home from school, all I get is fine, good, okay. There was no depth to the conversation. So this mom was asking me, like, oh, how can I ask better questions? They're not even willing to um answer my basic question, like, how was your day? When this uh other coach who was helping her asked, Well, uh, first question, what are you doing when you ask these questions of your kid? And she's like, Well, most of the time I'm preparing dinner or I'm doing some chores in the kitchen. So her attention wasn't a hundred percent on her child. So she's asking from a place of just a quick question. The energy she was offering it was the energy she got reflected back. So, number one, make space for your kids, even just two or three minutes to genuinely look them in the eye and ask them a genuine question. And then the second part was this is like that expansive or big question, like, how was your day? Well, often younger people don't know what to say in those moments. How was my day? I'm not sure quite what you're asking. Fine is a good response. But instead of some general huge question, maybe getting a little more specific, what was something that made you upset today? Did you have a chance to laugh today? What was that? What are you most excited about going into this next week? When we get better at asking questions that are specific but open, we will be better parents, we'll be better co-workers and leaders in our work and our job, but we'll also be able to tap into that inner wisdom for ourselves when we learn to ask questions of ourselves on paper. Or maybe when we're challenged by troublesome characters or people that rub us the wrong way, instead of just going to negativity and blaming and shaming, maybe we could ask ourselves, what would a wise person do in this situation? I think these are all good ways to approach our life. It is a joy, it is a learned skill, but it's one that's accessible to all of us. When we learn to ask better questions, when we learn to use the troublemakers almost as people that are showing a reflection of ourselves, places we can get better, we grow in ways that we might not have ever anticipated. One of the most scary things to think about for me and for a lot of the people I'm having conversations with is are you in the same place you are today that you were two or five years ago? Are you? Are you the same level of learning? Have you expanded and grown and evolved? Use these tools to grow, to expand, to bring more light into your life. And I know you'll have fun with them. I really appreciate you taking the time, uh, listening to Fierce Encouragement. I love to have conversations. I love to practice my questions. If you're inspired, just to have a quick 20-minute conversation, check out the show notes. I'd love to talk to you. Otherwise, please take care of yourself. Keep encouraging yourself and those around you. This is one of the most important times where we can do this. It's easy to be negative. It takes courage and conviction and bravery to show up and fiercely encourage ourselves and others. And most importantly in all of it, is you're worth it. You're worth all of this inner work. Let me know how this lands. Have a great day and thanks for listening or watching. Bye bye.