"I need you to help me do the work that only I can do."
Reflection #1 on co-authoring my first book
Hello everyone,
Happy Sunday, and I hope you are well. This Enzyme is a pre-announcement and a major life update from me.
The book is done! It will be published somewhere in September or so.
With inputs from different people and excellent editing, it reads really good.
Thanks to my co-author Steven's brilliant networking, we also managed to get endorsements from well-respected thought leaders such as Adam Grant, Daniel Pink and the Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast.
I've learned a lot from this process, and I'll share more of my reflection in the coming months. This enzyme is the first. I hope the insight here is helpful for you.
Being Unclear and Fumbling Around
Reflection #1 from co-authoring my first book.
Context: I was speaking with my co-author Steven to reflect on our own experience of collaborating on this book. It turned out that we never actually met in person. I thought we did shake hand once in 2015, but I was wrong! By the luck of the blind, we managed somehow.
The first six months had me fumbling around, exploring different themes through my usual blog-style writing.
Our styles didn't quite fit. He said that also around six months into the book, he began to feel rather anxious.
Steven discovered during a therapy session that in a way, he was waiting for me to rescue him.
One day, his therapist told him something that changed everything: "Steven, only you could write this book".
That was the turning point. From then on, Steven took charge, gave himself to the book, and I felt the difference. In partner dancing, it is like the visceral difference when one person takes the lead and the other person yields, and then the roles switch.
For a few weeks, I was getting used to him taking charge more powerfully. It did mean that more of what I wrote got firmly rejected, which brought up the issue of control. How much of this book is mine?
This is where the insight of Charles Davies on how working together really works changed my life.
Charles wrote in this post
"There are only two kinds of work: starting or helping. When you start something, you ask for help.
When you help someone, you offer help.
If the helper isn’t helping, they should stop.
Knowing if you’re a starter or a helper — that’s what matters."
The book could only happen that way. The visionary takes full responsibility for its completion and asks for help while needed. The helper does as best as he could for what he was asked for, and then surrender to the vision that the visionary is more in touch with.
With regards to the book, I gave what I could, and then whatever Steven decided to cut, I'm okay. I may push here and there, but I know that ultimately my job is to give myself to it and surrender. That insight alone had saved me so much suffering. Sure, writing and researching was still a pain, but it was conscious birthing pain, not interpersonal drama.
"I need you to help me do the work that only I can do."
Hearing an experienced author like Steven shared from his end about waiting for someone to rescue stirred up something in me. It is striking how we often wait for something or someone so that our life is complete. That dream job, The One True Love, the hero that will save us all.
Yet more and more I see such innate desire for rescue not as a personal shortcoming of the weak will, and that we have to man up, fix ourselves, and do our thing ala Jordan Peterson's internet-famous advice "clean up your own mess".
In any case, my co-author is twenty years older than me and probably has enough life experiences to know that.
Rather, it is more like an innocent misunderstanding that begs for compassion and clarity.
What we are really waiting for is not someone per se, but rather a reminder that we are the ones we have been waiting for.
As I shared last week on my birthday, the poem by Mary Oliver was such a reminder. It hit me hard.
"Determined to do / the only thing that you could do Determined to save / the only life that you could save".
Here lies the paradox: we don't need anyone to complete us (because we already are complete. We are the ones we have been waiting for) and we need each other (as a constant reminder of who we are).
Be it in the form of a poem, a person screaming at you, or an act of profound love, those reminders are our direct helpline, the messenger of the divine so to speak. We need to practice listening to them.
In a twisted and somewhat humorous way, it took me fumbling around for six months to finally become a reminder loud enough for Steven to realize that this wasn't working. That he got to step in for the birthing of this book.
So I did my real job, unknowingly...
To put this insight in a succinct way,
I need you to help me do the work that only I can do.
This, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the essence of coaching, guiding, or consulting.
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So what? How does it help with our life?
Let's bring this insight of "I need you to help me do the work that only I can do" into some practical applications.
True Work Is Humbling
The essence of the most important work in our life is summed up in that line in the Mary Oliver poem "Determined to do / the only thing that you could do".
If you don't know what only thing is, then figuring that out is the work.
It's worth emphasizing that only you could. If you receive the vision of whatever that comes to you, be it small like making a dish for dinner, writing a FB status, creating a massive company, or living a fully alive life, it has got to be you.
If it is too big to be accomplished alone, then you've got to delegate AND still take full responsibility for the whole thing.
For those who are afraid of being too full of themselves, rest assured that this is not ego-boosting at all.
Rather, the creative work is a tremendously humbling task.
It's humbling for two reasons.
First, you will need to surrender to the whim of something beyond our usual controlling self, what Elizabeth Gilbert talks at length about that in her TED talk as the "daemon", that alive, creative force behind everything.
What would you become as you receive a visit from the daemon? A phrase by Tom Nixon well captures this: a "vulnerable visionary".
It is indeed very vulnerable to our sense of self to hold a yet-to-be-clear vision and do whatever it takes to steward a previously non-existent thing into something.
Think of it as being haunted. Just like you didn't choose to be haunted by the daemon, you didn't choose to be impregnated with a vision.
Worse yet, once you are haunted, the only way to be fully exorcised is to give yourself to it.
When the "daemon" visits, you have two choices.
Saying No to that ask and your own aliveness will slowly die inside.
Saying Yes and you will have to give up so many things. From practical matters like your priorities, time, energy to more existential matters such as ideas of who you think you should be and what you think this creation should look like.
Either way, you are doomed.
Second, if the daemon is big enough, you will probably need help and have to ask for help. For example, my co-author Steven had the vision for the book and asked for my help. On my end, I have asked a few friends to be around me on the weekend to offer their calming presence so I could write. Its completion would not be possible without friends who check in with me along the way with care.
The creative deal is already made: you probably won't do it alone, and at the same time only you are ultimately responsible for its coming into life.
Because it's your need. It is in your gut, and no one else but you know what it is. Yet you also do need help from others as guides, pointers, and reminders for you to see.
Love invites Truthfulness
Another potential application of this insight "I need you to help me do the thing only I could do" is in the domain of love and relationships.
Let me use myself as an example.
Once upon a time, I was smitten with feeling for someone.
Yet when it comes to time to confess, I chickened out. I was rambling and babbling, beating around the bushes.
She looked at me with a surprisingly kind directness and said "You are holding back".
I was lost for words. OMG. WHAT NOW.
I said what was needed to be said "I want you to be in my life for a long long time".
I have to do the only thing that I could do to save the only life that I could save. To tell the truth!
In this instance, it's clear that I need her to help me articulate what I already know to be true. Without her being there for that moment, I would have not touched such a truth.
(When I told this story to some people afterward, I learned that it might still seem too indirect. I regret it a bit, but in some ways, I also found that to be the most compassionate truth at that moment. There is always more truth to be disclosed 😀).
A temporary conclusion: for any intimate relationship to thrive, being loving and being truthful must go together. Many people may intuitively know this or read that somewhere already.
What is less clear though is that they naturally invite each other.
Being truthful invites greater love, and being more loving makes room for greater truth to come out.
Even more astounding is that we don't have to try to make that truth or love happen, because they will happen.
If there is love, there is already truth. If there is truth, there is already love.
All we need is keep attention on such a dance of mutual invitation.
That’s it for this week. A few reflection question for you: What is the work that only you could do? What reminders are you hearing? What other reminders do you need?
Much love,
Khuyen