Robert Holden - Authentic Success: Essential Lessons and Practices from the Worlds Leading Coaching Program on Success Intelligence

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authentic

success

Essential Lessons and Practices from
the Worlds Leading Coaching Program
on Success Intelligence

Robert Holden, Ph.D.

HAY HOUSE, INC.
Carlsbad, California New York City
London Sydney Johannesburg
Vancouver Hong Kong New Delhi

Copyright 2005 by Robert Holden
Revised Copyright 2011 (original title: Success Intelligence)

Originally published in Great Britain in 2005 by Hodder & Stoughton, a division of Hodder Headline

Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.:
www.hayhouse.com Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast: www.raincoast.com

Design: Jenny Richards

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

More: words and music by Stephen Sondheim 1990 Touchstone Pictures Music and Rilting Music Inc., USA (12.5%) Warner/Chappell Artemis Music, London W6 8BS (92.5%) Warner/Chappell North America, London W6 8BS Reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Conrol Number: 2009942977

ISBN: 978-1-4019-2824-7

14 13 12 11 7 6 5 4
1st edition, May 2008
4th edition, April 2011

Printed in the United States of America

Note: Every case history in this book appears with the
consent of those involved. Names have been altered where requested.

To my father

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired, as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts from books and from what the teacher says, collecting information from the traditional sciences as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world. You get ranked ahead or behind others in regard to your competence in retaining information. You stroll with this intelligence in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one already completed and preserved inside you. A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of the chest. This other intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. Its fluid, and it doesnt move from outside to inside through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you moving out.

Rumi

Contents

From the unreal lead me to the real.

Ancient Hindu prayer

Life is full of moments. One moment after another. Some moments pass by with you barely noticing. Other moments stay with you forever. They change the way you think, you see, you live.

I had a life-changing moment when I was 16 years old. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I was half-walking and half-running down a very busy street in Winchesterthe city I grew up in. I was late and was on my way to meet friends outside a record shop. At 4 oclock. As I hurried along, I noticed a man lying facedown on the pavement. He could have been dead or dying. Everyone saw him. He was in plain view. We all pretended not to see him.

I was going to pass him by. I was late. I was only 16. But something made me stop. I moved cautiously toward him. He was wearing an old, disheveled coat. His glasses lay next to his head. Tortoiseshell frames. The lenses were smashed. His hair was long and wild. He stank of alcohol. I guessed he was homeless. I pulled at his arm and turned him over. His face was a mass of cuts and bruises. He was barely conscious. He smiled at me.

Hello, Dad, I said.

My dad suffered from alcoholism. Which he denied, of course. He had hidden his drinking for years. We didnt see it. One psychiatrist showed us some brain scans. Your father has been an alcoholic for most of his adult life, he said. With hindsight, I remember Dad liked to drink. I also remember he was often very tired. Sometimes he would suddenly look very old. But we were happy, or so I thought. Mom; Dad; my brother, David; and Ithe Holdensall loved each other. Everyone knew that. But none of us knew that Dad was in so much pain. Silent pain.

My dads alcoholism became obvious just before my 16th birthday. We started to find empty vodka bottles everywhereunder the car seat, in his sock drawer, and behind the garage. His drinking accelerated and his denial increased. Mom tried to get through to Dad. We all did, but we were on the outside and could not get in. Confrontations, ultimatums, and more denials followed. Eventually Dad moved out. For the last nine years of his life he lived homeless. He slept on park benches, under bridges, in cemeteries, and in low-budget accommodation.

The pain I felt was beyond words. I woke up every day for ten years with a sharp, stabbing ache in my belly. I was having a midlife crisis inside a teenagers body. Most weekends my brother David and I would meet up with Dad. He would phone us on a Thursday or Friday to arrange a time and place. Sometimes he looked disheveled and beaten up. Other times he was clean-shaven and sharply dressed. Amazingly, even as Dads alcoholism worsened, he still held senior management positions for investment banks and stock-market companies. The drinking never stopped, though.

My dads fast demise shocked everyone. Alex Holden was a successful man in most peoples eyes. He had enjoyed a rich and varied career with multinational companies such as Hertz and TWA. He had held executive posts in Canada, Africa, Europe, and Britain. He had a family who loved him. He lived in a beautiful village in Hampshire, England. Certainly there had been difficult times, too. He made money and he lost money. He got promoted and he got fired, several times. Some ventures grew and some folded. But he was always well respected and held in high esteem.