Joel Monk: [00:00:00] Welcome back to The Coaches Rising Podcast. Today I am joined by Nick Askew. Nick is an artist, a filmmaker, and an explorer of consciousness. We're going to be talking today about his work, a process he has created called Inner View, which, as you'll hear, is fascinating and I think has profound implications for the work we do as coaches.
Joel Monk: And as he does this work with individuals, it invites them into a profound shift in their consciousness. So we're going to talk about how [00:01:00] he does that and what kinds of transformations and shifts happens to people who go through this process. And we'll talk about how the interview method has given rise to the acclaimed Soul Biographies film series, which I found to be really beautiful and fascinating.
Joel Monk: So Nick has collaborated with a range of organizations, including Georgetown University, Harvard Business School, Apple, and the MacArthur Foundation. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. If you want to know more about Coaches Rising, you can head to coachesrising. com and see all the cool things we've created there.
Joel Monk: And you can see our acclaimed programs. So without further ado, let's dive in. Here's the podcast with Nick Askew.
Joel Monk: So it's really a delight to have you join me and how are you in this moment?
Nic Askew: Yeah. Wonderful. And thank you for the invite. It's going to be interesting. It's always interesting. It's always interesting [00:02:00] because one never knows what's to come. That's the way of, that's the way I've learned to be in the world.
Nic Askew: I think I've probably always been in the world.
Joel Monk: Yeah, I think I feel a real invitation. For what can come through in our conversation, as you say that, and actually let's just begin by, I just want to ask you if you could just give people listening a sense of what you're doing in the world with your work with the the soul biographies and the way that you engage people with a camera, what's inside of that.
Nic Askew: Yeah. I think what I'm up to is pretty antithetical to the world, to the way things are, or we assume things are, heretical perhaps even. We spoke previously about the difference between transformation and realization. There is a vast difference between transformation and [00:03:00] realization as we understand it.
Nic Askew: I'm thinking back to a. A moment where I'm sitting in a room and someone's in front of the camera and my job is essentially to show them this thing that I've named in a view, but it doesn't really need a name. It's just this, how can you be in this utter attention with someone and see them, see the deep interior of someone.
Nic Askew: And I think I understand this pretty implicitly now, cause I've been up to it for. Twenty years, nothing but this, sitting utterly still, with countless people, many thousands of people. And often filming it, and often projecting it into the room where I'm in. So whether that be ten people or a thousand people.
Nic Askew: So what you're experiencing on the screen, in the room, is this. Moment of stillness, this experience of stillness where two people can see each other deeply. And I remember someone in the chair, and I [00:04:00] remember distinctly that she was absolutely a coach. And she was absolutely looking for what I was doing.
Nic Askew: What's happening? Because when people would come and sit in this chair, something would happen. Everything would fall away, and they'd realize something. And the words were spoken in a stream of consciousness. And it was unusual. It has a different sense to it. And I remember distinctly that she looked at me, and I remember the look, and she said, Oh, I've got it, as if she was looking for this answer, which is what we're inculturated with, look, work it out.
Nic Askew: She said, Oh, you've just got a B. And I remember her saying, Oh no, you don't got a B. That's just something else to do. You don't even need to do that. And there was this massive relief. And [00:05:00] then she said, these are I think they're immortal words. Oh, you, so you've just. You're already good at holding space and go no, you don't need to hold space.
Nic Askew: Space doesn't need to be held. Space is what there is. Space is what we're in. In fact, not only that, you're part of it and I'm part of it. It doesn't need holding. Nothing needs to be done. In fact, what I said was there's nothing to do and there's no one to do it. And then everything changes. In that moment, everything changed.
Nic Askew: And there was a setting down of everything, and there it was. And I think she probably pretty much illustrated how most of us are most of the time. You believe that you possess a life. You're living a life, and you want it, you look at the world around you, and you want it to [00:06:00] be slightly different than it is, and you look to transform, you look to reach high, you look to get better, you look to grow it's a perpetual, this perpetual motion, there's never any peace, but it's you doing it all the time, and you're the one who lives the consequence of your actions.
Nic Askew: You're the one at the center of this life. Always doing something you, you seek to understand something so you can do something about it so you can change it. And it seems to be the way of it. It's like this search, this endless search for something you can't even really put your finger on. This transformational journey, this hero's journey to something.
Nic Askew: And what I realized was that there's something else, which is more than that. Not, it doesn't involve any motion at all. It involves nothing. If you were to be still, if there was stillness in a moment, [00:07:00] you would realize what it is that you are, that you belong to it, without condition. And so there would be this bristling sense of self acceptance almost, and the journey would be over.
Nic Askew: But you don't need to Better myself. You can transform in all sorts of other ways. You can become a better filmmaker, a better coach. You learn all these skills. But with reference to who you are you don't become you are. And if you're still you can realize it. In other words, you become aware of what always was there.
Nic Askew: And that you're okay. And that's really at the core of what I noticed very early on many decades ago. In fact, I always knew it. And picking the camera up just allowed me to show people this. Because from [00:08:00] that place, the most extraordinary things happen in the most extraordinary and very different way.
Nic Askew: You not only come to a sense of peace with I'd say who you are, but that's even not quite the definition of it. You have access to a different form of intelligence almost, like an intuitive intelligence, like where you are caused to act from changes. And I think that in particular at this time in the world is really quite important.
Nic Askew: I remember a quote, a quotation from Albert Einstein, which is well repeated. And the quote said something along the lines of, you can't hope to solve a problem from the same level of thinking that it emanated from, that it originated from. And I think what people do is they go of course, yeah, we've got to think better.
Nic Askew: But what [00:09:00] they might have missed is the fact that they're still the ones thinking. There is this different. place, this different origin point from which you can be caused to think. And it's call it a universal intelligence, a thing that we're all part of. And I noticed that can happen very readily.
Nic Askew: So there you are, you're still. And still, I don't mean slowing down. Still, and therein lies the challenge of it. And I'll come on to that. But in a stillness, you're found by something, which is a, is an antithetical notion because usually it's you looking for something all the time. I've got to work this out.
Nic Askew: I'll hire a coach and maybe they can help me work this out. But actually what you were seeking was seeking you all the time. And so what if you were still, what have you set everything down? It's probably [00:10:00] a a case of just incorrect mathematics. In other words, you were looking to add all the time, you were looking to grow, you were looking to transform, you were looking to reach higher, to know more.
Nic Askew: When all along it was the mathematics was one of subtraction. So you set it down, and then you're made aware. That's what I noticed. And with respect to film, I just noticed that you can catch it on film. And the cause of all words is different. So where someone speaks from is entirely different.
Nic Askew: And I've done this with coaches many times, actually. In the early days, I used to make quite a lot of films because coaches have this inexorable difficulty in articulating What on earth it is they do? I mean you can put it into a particular arena and say I'm a leadership coach and I'm helping you be a better leader or something.
Nic Askew: But really underneath it, what a coach does is what, or could be doing, is [00:11:00] what I've described, is nothing. So it's nothing. You're not even creating a space. You're allowing the atmosphere that's there to be noticed so that someone can become aware of something. Extraordinarily deep. It's almost beyond simple.
Nic Askew: And what I noticed in the coaches articulating what it is that they do is they're trying to articulate, they're trying to tell people what it is that they do. By working out what it is that people need to hear, and everything's of the head, but the coach's work isn't really of the head, it's of something else altogether.
Nic Askew: And so the best way, in fact the only way to really articulate, to have yourself known, have this real sense of what it might be like, is to let it all go, and to speak in a stream of consciousness. And, very [00:12:00] early on I noticed that the words that were said in any film I ever made were almost irrelevant when sat next to the way someone was or when they spoke those words.
Nic Askew: So it was the origin point of the words that counted. If you're, you might call it present, although I don't think you can do presents. There is presence. In other words, it's this other origin point. It's this point of almost, I think surrenders even too much. It's just a letting it. So I came down to this very simple instruction in front of the camera.
Nic Askew: Very simple. And it's almost as if it could be a coaching piece. It's the same thing. And I do, I often do these I do them one on ones, but also in groups, I love the group thing, because you can project the image into large scale, so people can't not see this. [00:13:00] But you've got to understand that the instruction is really simple.
Nic Askew: So if someone were to come sit in the chair, if you imagine a room, I don't know, maybe a small room, with ten people. Could be an auditorium with a thousand people in, I suppose it's irrelevant. And someone comes and sits down, and of course the usual way in the world is what am I going to do with this time?
Nic Askew: How, what am I going to say? What might people think? All these things going through, it's all of the mind. And my invitation is always you can just sit there. And we'll try this for a, we'll start with a minute, maybe. And all I want you to do is close your eyes, because I love Getting that shot with the sunshine coming in the window, the light coming in the window, striking one side of the face.
Nic Askew: It's a great image, filmically. And it gives people pause as well in a room when they see that image in monochrome, because I always film in monochrome. When they see that image on the screen and they [00:14:00] realize they're in a room, they're seeing someone differently and you don't even know what to think.
Nic Askew: And then I would usually say something along the lines of if we just sit here, almost to the end of our allotted time, to the end of time itself, even, and you don't even open your eyes, let alone say a single word, I think that will be enough. In fact, I know that will be enough. It would probably be a massive relief to not have to do anything.
Nic Askew: So we'll start with nothing, by which I mean no act on your part, no act on my part. And we'll just let it, we'll let the experience find us, not us it. So really it's, it starts with nothing, then there we are. That's where it starts, and from nothing comes something. That's essentially the creative force of the entire [00:15:00] universe, or so I've noticed.
Nic Askew: I think that's it. I know quantum physics. That's at the heart of quantum physics, what they've observed, but, whether you understand it or not, it doesn't work any different, it just seems to, it's worth experimenting with but it's seldom that anyone goes there even the act of meditation can hold a requirement, I'm meditating because, To make myself still, so I will be peaceful.
Nic Askew: I don't really understand meditation. I have never meditated. As such. But, it seems simpler than that. If you were still, then what might come?
Nic Askew: We should give it a go. Yeah. Yeah, I do it. [00:16:00] I do this on Zoom. All the time, because In the end, it's just, it's mysterious. It's, everything's mysterious. We're fools if we think this isn't mysterious. I know we're always trying to look to understand so that we can make it work better. But this is what I'm talking about.
Nic Askew: It's entirely the other way around. It's as if life is trying to live itself through you as opposed to The opposite, which is what we normally do, which is we think we possess a life and we think we've got to live it as hard as best we can make the most of it. And we're forever moving. And so that the actual force, if you like the peace that is is living you is you and all your thoughts of you.
Nic Askew: But there's an opposite. And that's that. That works, it works over the internet, it works live in a [00:17:00] room, it just, it seems to work. And I don't entirely understand it, but it seems to be anyway, you can always experiment with it. And so if you if you were to walk up to the camera, so you imagine a room, and I usually have this invitation, and I say, look, if you want to come sit in that chair, Because you've got something important to say, or something to sort out, resolve, or I want to get better, or I want to understand more, or I want to make a decision, probably don't come up.
Nic Askew: Come up if if you're just drawn. It's almost no, there's no way I'm going there because it's total exposure. Because there is nowhere to hide in front of this camera, by the way. There just is nowhere to hide. There's nothing you can hold up. No story you can tell which won't be seen through, etc.
Nic Askew: So it's a terrifying place in a way. Huh. But then you realize that it's not terrifying. So usually your [00:18:00] head will say no, no way am I going up there. But your legs will carry you there. And that's, essentially what happens most of the time. And so if you were there, we should, yeah, as I said, we should give it a go.
Nic Askew: Yeah, sure. We'll just so you're sitting there. The light, you got, yeah, you got the lighting all actually I tend to like one side of the face a bit, but it's, it's a good, it's a good, it's a good image you got there. And so we'll just imagine ourselves to be in a room and you sit there and I've got my camera, which I have zoom obviously uses cameras, but I got my camera.
Nic Askew: It's not particularly it's not particularly, it's not a big camera rig or anything like that. I don't travel with a crew. It's a very simple thing. But you just get to close your eyes. Okay.
Nic Askew: And there's never, I'll say a few words as we go. As we go through this, but
Nic Askew: mainly it's about the absence of everything I just learned. The more that I say, [00:19:00] the more that I get in the way.
Nic Askew: But we'll sit here I'll time it sit, we'll sit here for a minute or so. Not for too long. I'm gonna ask you in a moment just to open your eyes and we'll just, the two of us will sit here. But I'm not looking for anything. I never am. I realized that my role as what you might term a witness is nothing, and not actually the witness.
Nic Askew: The witness is the space in which we sit, the atmosphere, that's the witness. I think it's the same for all coaches, at a time anyway. I think there are times where coaches are well placed to do things, but from a start point, probably not. So if you realize that the witness was the atmosphere we're sitting in, then we're both off the hook for anything.
Nic Askew: We're just gonna start with nothing, no thing, no act on your [00:20:00] part, no act on my part, nothing to find, nothing to reach, nothing to move towards. And we'll just let it.
Nic Askew: Joel, I'll just ask you to open your eyes and then just the two of us will just sit here. And just close your eyes for a moment.
Nic Askew: That's it. That's a start.
Nic Askew: It wouldn't be a very dramatic podcast if if we just sat like this for the rest of the time, but maybe it would be [00:21:00] an extraordinary thing.
Nic Askew: Yeah. So tell me, how are you doing?
Joel Monk: I feel profoundly touched. Like an immense relief
Joel Monk: and joy.
Joel Monk: Now I can hear the birds outside singing. And it's just radiantly exquisite
Joel Monk: For no reason, just irreducibly
Joel Monk: magnificent.[00:22:00]
Joel Monk: I think I'm just astounded by the almost shocked just wow.
Joel Monk: And there's a sense of being at home, being whole.
Nic Askew: Yeah, I understand. I've
Nic Askew: I've got to admit that I've, over the years, I noticed this, it's so utterly simple, and it's so antithetical to entirely the way we seem to go about life, and have I doubted it? I've always known that it's, no, it's, it is that simple, and I know we're [00:23:00] looking, we're seeking all the time, and, But I've always seen it in people and know that there's nothing to do because it's just there.
Nic Askew: Connectedness, of all things, just exists. It doesn't need to be worked towards or deserved. And therefore, the quickest way for that would seem to be nothing. And then, of course, I sit in the world and I try to say it, and I think if you can say it, it's not that. So words don't really And so it's just entirely mysterious, but it just seems to work and almost in no time.
Nic Askew: So what you just articulated of what that felt like, I was just thinking that's a pretty good use of two minutes, which is what it was. It was nearly two minutes, so maybe not quite two minutes, but if you could have that experience, if you could realize that inside that shorter time, wouldn't that?
Nic Askew: What would that tell you? You just let it tell you what, [00:24:00] whatever it ends up meaning to you. I often have people in front of the camera who are suffering. I think most people suffer in some way, if you don't, your mind will make something up that's, not quite, you don't want to be in this moment, so you want to create another moment and.
Nic Askew: I know the response to things that you don't want is to try to understand it so that you can do something about it and move it. But there is this, as an alternative, is if you just sat and did nothing with it, and I mean nothing with it, no, act with it. You simply just spelt it, would it move? And I say I've seen, many people have seen people with massive trauma, massive blocks, things in the way, sit there, feel it, it changes, and nothing was done.
Nic Askew: [00:25:00] And that's usually the thing. Often I just won't even let people speak about it. No, there's no need to say it out loud. You don't need to say it out loud. It's more mysterious than that. I just sit there and you can almost see on screen. I see it live because I'm sitting with someone.
Nic Askew: You see it on screen. You see something land in people, almost. Like sometimes they're ideas. Sometimes there's a state of being. It's a state of being. It's a, oh, a state of realization. There I am. This is it. Like I suppose. What I've always wanted to say to people, and it's only one thing really, is it's you belong.
Nic Askew: There was never any condition. Let me show you that. Not let's conjure it up. There's nothing to do. There's no act. There's no act towards it. It just is. [00:26:00] It's just maybe you hadn't noticed or maybe hadn't noticed in a while. I got this. I got this I write things, you might have seen them on the site, I write words that I suppose in the end encode some of this of what I've noticed, like when I've had an experience, like you and I just sat there, sometimes I just wonder about that, like there was a moment where it was a, oh there you are, I've seen you, I, and you're in Amsterdam and I'm in Minneapolis in the States, despite the accent, I am a Londoner, but but I've seen you I can't, I literally cannot unsee you now.
Nic Askew: I can't explain that, but it's always been the same in this way of seeing someone deeply. There's all these component parts I can point to. So the [00:27:00] education of it is really simple because it's just about subtraction. It's just no, don't need to do that. No, don't need to do that. In the space between us, it looks like it's clear, but it's full of things that are metaphysical.
Nic Askew: In other words, you can't touch them and you can't. You can't, sometimes you can't even notice, you don't even notice them. It looks like there's clear space, but there's not. There's all the needs that we have and all the opinions that we hold and all sorts of stuff. It's a wonder we ever see anyone.
Nic Askew: And of course we don't. What we normally experience of someone is our conclusion of them. Because it's all to do with the mind, it's all to do with ideas. So I've seen the idea of you. With this antithetical way, if you imagine the experience of someone is best finding you, not you them. Almost like the experience of music.
Nic Askew: If you imagine you're walking down the street and someone [00:28:00] winds a car window down and this track of music floats out the window. And you never heard it before, but it just stops you in your tracks. It's like the most extraordinary thing you ever heard. And in modern days you want to shazam it.
Nic Askew: You just want to know what it is. But you don't have to do anything with it. The music just is there. You don't have to work anything out about it. That's the same with the experience of people. You would see people deeply if you did that, if you just let it, and they, there's a strong chance that they would know that they've been seen.
Nic Askew: Deeply, and importantly, that it's okay. You're still there. So I'm gonna I know I get, I just wanted to read this one thing and then Yeah, please do. Yeah. I've read this out a few times recently just 'cause I wrote it a long time ago. And I think it points [00:29:00] to the experience of this, of, and almost the experienced that the job of a coach.
Nic Askew: Underneath it all, I know there are lots of things that people, that you address in the business of coaching, but if you don't address the core dysfunction, like the thing underneath it all, the thing underneath the underneath, and then the underneath of that, which is this assumption that we're separate, we're not included, we're not a part of this.
Nic Askew: If you don't address that, nothing will ever really be addressed. You're all just still moving. So you, you haven't hit something, this kind of extraordinary sense of being a part of all of this. You just haven't. And these words, which I call the entrance hall because that's where it happened, it's actually, it actually happened.
Nic Askew: And I wrote about it, actually that afternoon, I think. Happened in the morning, about 8am. [00:30:00] Not that's relevant. Anyway, so this is how the words go. So you might recognize it from an experience you've had coaching someone. The entrance hall. I'm in an entrance hall and I look towards the furthest doorway.
Nic Askew: I see her. She looks up and immediately casts her eyes downwards. She assumes that I can see her. I can. But what she believes I can see, she's ashamed of. She doesn't wish for it to be seen. By anyone. She spent a lifetime holding up a facade. A burdensome untruth. Forever against the weight of gravity. But what I see is not that.
Nic Askew: And if she could see what I see, I imagine that her life would be so very different. I wish that for her. I wish she'd look up.[00:31:00]
Nic Askew: And I imagine many a coach has sat with someone and just wanted to shout out, can't you see? Really, can't you see how extraordinary you are? This is, can't you see that all the things that you're saying aren't true? That you have this capacity for, I say so much more, I'm not sure that, yeah, so much more.
Nic Askew: And, of course, the nature of sight through the mind is, means that they can't. And maybe your job is to still the place so that they realize.
And
Nic Askew: I think nothing is a good starting point for that.
Joel Monk: Yeah, it's it's really beautiful just to share the sense [00:32:00] of. I've got a lot going on right now in my life and the sense of like refreshment and renewal that's here from dropping into this space, where there's a kind of sense of boundless energy and an exuberance, the kind of delight sensuality.
Joel Monk: And I can resonate so much with the difference between that. And then this kind of perpetually tense, trying to get something in order to fill a hole or to, in order to be okay, which, I've been so familiar with. And I see a lot with people too. And I'm really inspired by what you talk about.
Joel Monk: I've got a million questions, but one, one thing I'm with is this invitation you make to people, [00:33:00] which you beautifully made with me. And then it seems like there's a way that you are also seeing, that you just talked about now, this capacity to see, and I know you train people in that.
Joel Monk: In this experience how do you help people open to this way of seeing where other people can feel seen for the first time?
Nic Askew: Yeah. Yeah. So it's I always thought that coaching would be an easy low hanging fruit place for me in the early days of this. Because I thought coaches would be the one who would notice what I was doing.
Nic Askew: And then I realized it was a fraction of the coaches that would. What I was talking about was this extraordinarily massive threat to the way things were. Because if it's nothing, then what's your job? And in, in a coaching industry [00:34:00] that often seeks to justify itself. Knowing full well that really what it's doing is nothing.
Nic Askew: In the end that was a big existential challenge. And there were, it was usually 50 percent of everything I did was populated by coaches. But, really courageous coaches. People who are willing to just let go of everything. And the invitation, certainly in the early days, I was talking quite a few years back.
Nic Askew: The invitation in the early days was Comfort nothing as best you can because that's the way of it, the way that I've described There's nothing so Someone turns up and they're used to paying attention and often have coaches Sitting there. I'd stick them in my chair by the camera to show them what goes on and often the experience is Wow, I thought I was really paying attention And I realize I'm not talking, [00:35:00] but there's a lot going on.
Nic Askew: And what I'm really pointing to is nothing. No, there's no job here. It's the absence of everything. The absence of all acts, including your thoughts of, I hope this client can You know get to here, all ambition, everything, just set it down because the most extraordinary thing happens and so there are, I think the best way of doing that is showing people the experience like we just did, imagine those two minutes, but it just happens again and again.
Nic Askew: And again, there's people are drawn up to the camera and you get to see it in a large scale on a large screen and you're in the room. And so now you're wondering and in that atmosphere, things start to occur to you. So it's drawn out of people. And I've got lots of observational, let's call them lessons, that are really key to this.
Nic Askew: [00:36:00] Things that I noticed along the way, things I experimented with. For example, knowing that I wasn't the witness, there was no job here. And I learned that through sitting with people making films of really dramatically desolate situations. I remember one situation where someone's in front of the camera and the most tragic thing that you could ever imagine happened.
Nic Askew: Loss of a child. In a terrible circumstance. I remember just sitting there thinking what on earth am I meant to do and suddenly realized I was just reacting I was just something's happened. Here I am and I realized I'm not the one to do it Nothing's required and I don't know how I noticed that but as soon as I noticed it, I never did it again It's no, I'm not that I'm not the witness the I do not have a job here unless I'm called upon Kind of thing in suddenly Intuitively, I'm [00:37:00] suddenly I should say something so you wouldn't know it from this podcast But I seldom when I'm with the camera I seldom speak because It's not my job to speak Unless it suddenly is.
Nic Askew: So what I realize is, I'm not the witness. The conscious field is the witness. That's a massive relief. It'd be a massive relief to a coach to realize that they're off the hook for much of their work. Your job is not to get in the way of the atmosphere. Because it's life itself which will inform someone.
Nic Askew: And your complicity in it is your absence. But that's a big intellectual tussle for people. But you can show it and then someone tries it and suddenly realizes, oh wow, this someone changed. Like that how they were they realized something important and I wasn't doing anything.
Nic Askew: So things like that. Noticing the space between [00:38:00] and. For example, in the early days, I used to sit with people and then, and I used to be pulling myself out of my chair, and it was a kind of a weird thing, and I suddenly realized I was trying to look over something so I could see someone, and I realized that in the space between us, it looked like I could see someone.
Nic Askew: I could see the subject. Of course. There they are. Here I am. But I realized that there was. That space was filled with many things. All the things that I'd led myself to believe to be true. And all the needs that I had at that moment. Oh, it'd be good to make a good film. I want to show them in their best light.
Nic Askew: Wouldn't it be good? I felt myself directing and stuff. And it came the other way as well. The person would be thinking I better put on my best face here. I want to be seen in this particular light. And then I realized Oh, I was trying to see over that. So what if we just set all that down and [00:39:00] then it became very quickly obvious as how that might happen.
Nic Askew: And so I did that. And then people didn't have any requirements for the time, even if we'd gone in, in the context of making a film on Anything from the resolution of conflict to leadership to whatever, start from this point of nothing from which everything will change. So there are all these pieces that are noticed, which are easy.
Nic Askew: Sometimes I don't even need to say them out loud because the experience of it will draw observation out of someone. And someone will just say, wow, I noticed there was a moment where I did nothing. And I know that I did nothing. And something changed, and now I can point to it. So it's a really it's quite a delightful way to educate people.
Nic Askew: It's almost like not an education, it's just a, it's a realization of what you always [00:40:00] knew to be true. And I think one of the key elements is you need to have the experience of the time and space collapsing between two people.
Nic Askew: Because if It does that, then you know what it is, and you know that it is, and then you can draw your conclusions, you can, oh, so what was happening when I felt that bristling, inexorable connection between us, when nothing was, oh, okay, I was simpler than I thought, and so all these tools that you learnt, it Because coaches love to have tools.
Nic Askew: Everyone loves to have tools. We all have things that we do in order to cause something. You suddenly realise you don't really need them as much as you thought you did. There were times and places for them. But the thing that we missed was [00:41:00] nothing. Because the thing that we might have missed, and sometimes collide with, was the fact that life itself causes it.
Joel Monk: Yeah, that, that's what I'm tuning into. It's a sense of the relief of, I need to keep doing something and controlling. And, and then therefore I'm taken into that kind of habituated patterning that I've been in my whole life. And, there's a tension inside of that, and then there's a shifting into this nothing, but it's not nothing actually it's.
Joel Monk: Full. And there's a sense of the nothing from nothing, something comes. So there's a sense of emergence or I think you said this earlier, like coming from the inside out. And so I can imagine you or a coach working in this way, might say nothing the whole [00:42:00] time. But on the other hand, something might come, something to be spoken that would, that just, that's just there and there's a purity to that.
Joel Monk: Yeah.
Nic Askew: Yeah. I can't say how important noticing the origin point of things is, like, where did it come from? Two people in a conversation, it's usually just a. An experience of mind to mind, my idea, your idea, you ask a question, I answer it. You might pretend you're being creative, that kind of things, but it's all of the mind.
Nic Askew: And the origin point is you and what you know. That, and when that changes it's a stream of consciousness. The origin point is different, and that is phenomenal. That is EAP. It's uncontrollable, in a way, and I [00:43:00] think we're always seeking to control everything. But if you were to just let it, if you were to just start with nothing and just let it, let the experience find you, fill you, fill your bones so the cause of all movement is different.
Nic Askew: And so in a way, I suppose it's it's an act of faith, or a non act of faith, should I say. Not faith in any God or anything like that, but just faith in that you belong and that life is going to move itself through you. I thought, I think there's so much probably empirical evidence as to extraordinary things in service of humanity have found people, great inventions, great movements.
Nic Askew: Weren't thought up, they came to people in moments of [00:44:00] stillness. And something that's important with relevance to this origin point, and it is particularly for now, this time in the world, I believe, is the fact that when you are struck by, Something insightful, let's call it intuitive. The place, it comes from a universal mind, almost.
Nic Askew: Not your capacity to think things through. It comes to you, the place, the origin point it comes to is a universal place. It's the place in which we belong. And therefore by its nature, it seems to want to serve all, serve humanity and all things. And it's almost it illustrates, it demonstrates that, that leap of [00:45:00] consciousness from where we're, that was, humanity seems to have been, humanity, that sounds a bit grand, doesn't it?
Nic Askew: We seem to have been quite me focused and then there's, we moved to this we, these kind of groups. But in, in we, in these groups, there's still people excluded outside of that. And then there's this kind of leap where suddenly you realize you're part of everything and you always were.
Nic Askew: And when you have that experience, you are caused to act very differently. You're caused to act on behalf of everything because you realize you are everything. You were always part of that, but you've had an experience and I think that's probably the work of many people at the moment. Not enough people, maybe, but to cause the experience of that, the noticing of that, the realizing of that.[00:46:00]
Nic Askew: I think that's the work.
Joel Monk: I even see in, you mentioned quantum physics, but in, in a lot of scientific neuroscience and the extended self theory, where they're recognizing that we're, yeah, on a very normal level, deeply. connected, interconnected with our environments and the people around us.
Joel Monk: And yeah, that doesn't include this kind of universal intelligence that you're talking about in that paradigm. But I think it's, I totally agree with you. I think it's the invitation that's being made. And I'm curious how you've seen This experience impact people over time, so it sounds like people come and have this experience and it's stunning to watch on your website, the videos there of people speaking and you can really feel it, you can really [00:47:00] sense these are, they're not speaking from the place of every day.
Joel Monk: Conversation do you track people over time or do you hear back from people or,
Joel Monk: yeah, I can imagine it's quite a profound moment
Nic Askew: Yeah I don't, I haven't made a habit of tracking people, but they do say, and so I'll try and give you a sense of what I imagined this to be. One of the predicaments of this.
Nic Askew: Of what I've attempted to describe is the fact it can't be described. Not really, not well, not sufficiently. It is utterly mysterious, but it just seems to be that way. People are usually affected at some kind of, almost like operating system level. It's deep. And you can't quite put your finger on it.
Nic Askew: I have a page of masses of testimonials of where people have [00:48:00] tried to write about it or they've spoken to camera about it Like a lot and when I look at it, I go really that happened and it's yeah, it did happen I remember one guy saying He said nothing happened, but everything seems different And it seems like something that can't wear off And then he wrote back, five or six years later and said, it still reverberates through my every day.
Nic Askew: That happens often. I hear back. So there was a point in time where something was realized and it set a course of change. And so the way one sees experiences, everything can change and I'm not saying it's true for everyone, of course not, but I've had it happen in moments, just an afternoon, a few people turn up and someone inside the first minute just realizes there's Something and then admits that something [00:49:00] happened and I've been coming to terms with that It's can it be that simple and I suddenly realized well, of course it can be that simple Because this just exists, and what you're doing is you're just catching sight of the thing that you were looking for, but it was already there.
Nic Askew: So it's a lot simpler than I at first thought. People have written about, the consequence over time. I've got some of that up on the side. These, it was a formative experience as such. I don't know whether this was me chickening out. Of this work, it might have been, I'm sure a coach would put me right. But I remember in the early days people used, I used to get this look from people and I didn't like it.
Nic Askew: It was like, oh, you've got the answers. I was like, no, I don't. So I made this film. It was actually a comedy called The Perilous Journey of Becoming a Someone. And it was made of self development book titles, which I [00:50:00] photographed in the waterstones on Trafalgar Square. And I thought I was going to get thrown out the shop, but I didn't.
Nic Askew: And I made it into a film, and it basically, I suppose the storyline was quite profound, but I made it a comedy. And it was no one can show you a way, the way, but everything. Could cause you to realize something about that way. So no one can show you the map, if you like, of this. But everything could cause, even a book, even a single sentence, even a village idiot, a wise man, anything.
Nic Askew: And what that meant to me was my part in anyone's life. It's just fleeting. It's just a moment in which I've pointed to something that I can see and, maybe that's of use to someone. And I didn't ever want someone to come back [00:51:00] and do anything more. And so I was quite offish about all of that.
Nic Askew: I wouldn't let people repeat. And then I realized I was being an idiot. That's not, that was to do with me probably. And so I took a bit more interest in people over time, and I realized it's all, it is a journey in some respects, but it's a journey to here. Really, it's not a journey across time and space, really, it's not that, it's, at any moment you can realize what always was.
Nic Askew: So it's not as you would have thought, it's not when I do all these things, then I get to the place, it's not that. It's not across time and space, it's just different. And what effect it has, I don't know. In some respect, it's not really my business. I know that. I was once asked a radio show years ago, someone made the comment and they said, Oh, it must be great to make films that change the world.[00:52:00]
Nic Askew: I go, you've got to be joking. Really? If I set out to do that, one, I wouldn't know what the world needs to, whether it needs changing, or What it needs changing into, all I can do is make what I see as best I can, and then I I offer it, someone can see it and their reaction to it is their reaction to it.
Nic Askew: It's not really my business. Otherwise, I'm in the business of assuming this is what people need changing in to and changing them into that. And that would, that doesn't seem correct.
Joel Monk: Do you think, cause this is a really beautiful point and cause I can feel how, yeah, if you have an agenda to change, then you start to impose that, and then you're back in that game of.
Joel Monk: Yeah, something's got to happen. You're not in the nothing. But do you think there's a way in which, [00:53:00] for example as you inhabit this place and you come from the inside out, there's a way in which There is like this unique expression of who you are, this intelligence is being expressed through you uniquely.
Joel Monk: And there's, cause if I look at your work it's beautifully unique. It's it's you and there's no activism inside of it, but at the same time there is a profound invitation and
Nic Askew: Yes, there's a uniqueness. I think.
Nic Askew: There's this universal thing that we're all a part of. I've always seen that. I've never not seen it, actually, and I don't know why. And I don't really need to understand, whether I understand any of this or not. I won't, it doesn't seem to make it work any differently. So I'm off the hook for all of that.
Nic Askew: So I don't need to read books, I don't need to understand. And but there is also an originality. And [00:54:00] I think, yeah, absolutely. I think if you're in, if you get to a place where you realize that you belong, that you're a part of this, then you don't need to fight for that. You don't need to always be looking out.
Nic Askew: You don't need to be tense, always tense, always wondering what if, what, how can I belong? You might not phrase it like that. And then when you realize that, then It's almost like your imitation is to be utterly original and do stuff, experience stuff, create stuff. Yeah, there's a huge originality and if you look at the Soul Biographies library, there's, there's, everyone looks different, but somehow there's something recognizable in everyone.
Nic Askew: And It's almost, I know there's a, I don't do anything [00:55:00] spiritual or I don't read books or take part in things. I don't really use those words at all, but I know there's this sense of people often say, oh, you are a non-dual list or something, and I think I know what they mean.
Nic Askew: Like I, I see this common thread, this thing that we belong to. But there's also an individuality as well that, that is like extraordinary and the possibility so it's both. I think that, I don't know if that was an answer to your question, but I suppose what we've been talking about is this possibility of becoming aware.
Nic Askew: So you become aware of things, of, ostensibly of your place in this, your undeserved place, not [00:56:00] undeserved, you don't need to deserve it, you're just part of this. You become aware of that. But you become aware of all sorts of other things as well. This sense of intuitive intelligence reaches you.
Nic Askew: It was always just sitting there waiting for you to recognize it. I think you know these things that you know, but they're distant and they're quiet and you immediately turn away from them and suddenly you've got a stronger sense of it and go, oh yeah, that I must, yes, I'm aware of that.
Nic Askew: And then you are left with a. A choice, a creative choice. Do I do something about it or do I not? And it's a thorough pain in the backside, in a way, to become aware. It's why people don't really want to. They want to be in control. Because with awareness comes only one of two choices. Do I do something about it or do I not?
Nic Askew: And, that's why I think humanity might move quite slowly. Because there's a lot of fear in it. In becoming aware, because You you're not in control of it, [00:57:00] of what you become aware of. Stillness is, in one way, is a terrible thing. If you were still, it's why people move so quickly through the world.
Nic Askew: If you were still, what might you absolutely know? Things would fall away. And they would, they just would. From the obvious, you might just realize the business that you're running is not the business for you. And there was something else that had been calling you all along, but you were so fearful of it because you didn't know where it would go, or how it would go.
Nic Askew: And just keep busy. But it almost, it would tell you many other things as well. So awareness. Awareness is a dangerous and an extraordinary thing. And I think,
Nic Askew: It just seems like with that, I've done, I've, we've done a lot of, me mainly, done a lot of talking about it, but when it comes down to it, you start with nothing and let it. [00:58:00] Then you become aware, and then you can do something about it. Like you can live your life from that. So it's really, it is the operating system, it's, would you're brave enough to let life live itself through you.
Nic Askew: To be made aware, to be rendered aware. And to do something about it. I play chicken with that all the time. It's can I, can I really get down to the bones of this and say, look, this is mysterious, but we could just sit, something might happen. Someone once said I've got a photograph of her on the site.
Nic Askew: She flew from Hawaii and she said something profound was happening. But I wasn't doing anything and Nick wasn't doing anything. It was happening to me. That probably illustrates it pretty well. Would you be brave enough to let that happen? And I think this stillness that, in the way that [00:59:00] I've attempted to describe is the key point.
Nic Askew: Nothing else counts. slowing down, doing things in order to get still doesn't count unless there is this moment in which you're rendered aware. And so we probably should have just done what we did for those two minutes for a lot of it and said a lot less. Yeah and that's I think my records, an hour and 47 minutes were not a single word spoken, and a very large audience.
Nic Askew: Can you imagine? And the sense of fear, followed by the sense of peace, and, but between the two of us, the person I was with, and this often happens, we both knew there was no need to say anything. It's not as if [01:00:00] nothing was happening, it's as if everything was happening. It just wasn't said out loud, it wasn't readily observable, but it was happening to us, through us.
Joel Monk: It's beautiful, yeah. I think I feel like this is a good place to begin to bring our conversation to a close and I feel like the whole conversation has been just a powerful invitation into. This permission, to do nothing. And it's funny, a dear coaching friend of mine said, yeah, one, one day the coaching field will be ready that, coaching someone will mean you, you don't say anything, you just sit together and nothing's being said.
Joel Monk: And that's what I hear. And everything's happening and all the transformation, I know you, we're not using that word transformation, we're talking about realization, but you're not saying anything and everything's happening. Everything's changing. [01:01:00]
Nic Askew: In one respect, that was always one of my greatest fears was it a fear?
Nic Askew: I, there was a moment in time, a long time ago where I just thought, Oh no, this is going back to nothing. I'm ready to nothing. Where? I just noticed that the talking about it was not it. And the stillness was it. And therefore, this is going back to the inevitability of no words spoken.
Nic Askew: Just that. And that in a way terrified me. Less so now. Wow, what if my job is to wander around the world and say nothing, just to sit with people. Come sit. Just that. Not even to ask what's happened. Because it's not my business. Just to know that it's, it's a contribution. And I think it might be going there.[01:02:00]
Nic Askew: It's oh, okay. So I'm really not in control of anything here. But I probably never was. And if that's the contribution, then I suppose I probably ought to just do that or not do that. Just, but it is, I don't know, is it's unintelligible in a way because it's such an oxymoron to everything.
Nic Askew: It's such, so antithetical to the way things are. Surely you've got to do something for something to change. But we're talking about something different. And this is where we started out. You were talking about realization and your keenness and your organization's appetite for that as opposed to the usual transformation.
Nic Askew: But the realization is really the point at which transformation in its true sense can happen. You have to realize that. You have to realize [01:03:00] the it. The creative force of the universe, really. I don't like the word universe much. Sounds a bit strange, but life itself. And so it's, if you were to start with nothing which, the setting down of everything just brings you to a still point.
Nic Askew: And then the cause of all movement changes. The cause of what moves through you changes.
Nic Askew: Yeah, so maybe the coaching industry will go there as well. And I think it's probably going there pretty I think it's Oh, man. Yeah. I remember in that, Years ago I did a presentation to the ICF. I mentioned to you. And I remember saying That coaches in the main probably if held to the flame would [01:04:00] admit to the moments in which what they deem transformation in other words when someone actually changed in those moments, nothing was being done and all the action and the tools and the and whatever might have been relevant to bring someone to a point of nothing being done.
Nic Askew: But it was probably with the nothing being done on both parties that probably was where the work happened.
Joel Monk: I agree. I think there's a growing movement in the coaching industry now that's recognized that a lot of what coaching has been based on is this self improvement paradigm, which I think is my way of saying what you were saying earlier, which is like this, this need to get somewhere, attain something that's not here. And it's it's, it holds a tension inside of it, like the new year's resolution where it's like, it seems successful, but then it doesn't really work. And there's this [01:05:00] intelligence of life, which we're not in control of, like you said, it's it's unbidden or it's, it like comes in these moments, but who made that happen?
Joel Monk: And part of the journey of a coach is to. is to actually be comfortable with being no one or doing nothing in a sense, that's the unlearning process. And so I think it's, I think what you're speaking to is maybe we'll start to burst through in many different disciplines. Because it's used something universal, it's beyond all the different forms in which it can manifest into the world.
Joel Monk: And that gives me hope because, when I think of you going around the world, I just want to say, if I think about you going around the world and meeting people and saying nothing, that would, that just feels something feels so right in that. If you think about all the noise right now.
Joel Monk: All the noise there is and how fast people are going, there's this just kind of people are amped up, it's just the act of sitting with [01:06:00] someone and in the way you've been describing would be revolutionary. So I hope that if you feel called to do that, you end up doing it.
Nic Askew: That's what in the end, that's what I do.
Nic Askew: But there's some scaffolding around it too. To issue the invitation, but I should probably just collapse the scaffolding. So it comes in, nothing. I know I've got some people who just say, look, nothing's your word. It's an incendiary word, but I don't actually mean nothing.
Nic Askew: Start with nothing. And from nothing comes something. It just comes from a different place. It comes from this universal place. It's different, entirely different. So just that yeah, and then the job is to issue the invitations, whether it's, people can get a glimmer of the experience through film, which is why I think it's a wonderful thing.
Nic Askew: My films have got slower and slower as less and less words as time has gone on. But I think some of them capture these [01:07:00] moments, from that place, and so you can feel them. So that's a really easy way to get to it through to, spending a whole bunch of days immersed in it where there is no, there's no way back cause you, where you can't unsee what you've seen.
Nic Askew: There's that. And then various shades in between. And partnerships with people as well, like I'm always keen on that, how can this be slotted in to what someone else is doing, the context of someone else is doing. And I often do that. I bring my camera and projection system, and then people who are taking part in something transformational, but realizing that it's not the usual self development, it's about something else.
Nic Askew: Sitting with people in that way and the projecting lens to the way everything is learned or unlearned, as you said, from that point that's a cool thing as well. [01:08:00] People often have environments in which there's a readiness for such a thing. Anyway, nothing.
Joel Monk: Nice. Where can, just for people listening, where can they find your work and what you're up
Nic Askew: They can find it. I've got a site called Soul Biographies, S O U L, obviously biographies. com, and there is a vast library of what I call human portraits, soul biographies, people in it. all respect. And of course, the way they've been non directed is they could be about anything. So they are usually subject focused in the end, but it didn't come from any direction.
Nic Askew: You can use those. You can watch those. You can consume those. You can use them in your coaching. People often do. They're used all over the place, especially in coaching arenas. Actually, you can go there. So soulbiographies. com. There's a link to something called Substack, which is where my list is held.
Nic Askew: You can, all the new work and observation goes up there, [01:09:00] and then I have a site called my name, Nick Askew, N I C A S K E W dot com, and I have some of the more functional stuff on there the things that you can do, whether it's working together to make film experience or booking a A one to one experience, like we did for the couple of minutes, but for an extended period of time, to be hit with on Earth.
Nic Askew: We just spent, I spent ages trying to describe it. It's probably better just to go do it, or not do it. Just to feel it, that kind of thing. So anyway, so that's my other site. But you're very welcome to go to the library, and there are some very relevant. Coachesque type films you're welcome to use.
Nic Askew: Many coaches in there as well, actually, well known coaches and pioneers of the coaching industry [01:10:00] featuring in that library.
Joel Monk: Cool. Yeah. Thanks Nick. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. And a reminder that our new live training, Transforming Teams with Jim Dethmer is enrolling now.
Joel Monk: Doors are open until the 25th of March and Jim will take you into the live dojo and teach you the system he uses. with his own clients to create synergized, productive, and drama free teams. Just go to coachesrising. com forward slash transforming teams to learn more and book your spot. And remember, use the coupon code podcast to get 10 percent off.
Joel Monk: Here we are. We're at the end of the podcast. Just a heads up again. If you're not on our mailing list and you want to stay in the loop about other things we create, then Head to CoachesRising. com, put your signup box there. You'll also find some of our other offerings, our online trainings for coaches there.
Joel Monk: And [01:11:00] just want to end by wishing you well. And I'll see you again next time.