A recorded interview (YouTube) between Steven Barnes and Paul Cowles in which Paul, a 56-year-old who has worked across Africa (notably Zambia and Tanzania), describes why he joined the Warrior's Journey program and what he has gained. He joined to move from "good enough" toward excellence, valued tools like the morning ritual and the "5mm," and found the program especially useful while COVID-19 interrupted normal life. Paul reports increased gratitude, emotional resilience, and would "absolutely" recommend the program.
Questions this video answers
56 years old.
Zambia and Tanzania.
April 30, 2020.
Yes — he says "Absolutely."
Chapters
And we're starting to record. Here we are with Paul. Paul, would you introduce yourself, please?
Yeah. Hi, I'm Paul Coles and I'm a 56 year old fellow that's. That's been working in Africa for most of my life.
Where in Africa?
In Zambia and. Well, more recently in Zambia and in Tanzania.
Really.
Been all over from north South Africa to West Africa.
I've only been to Tanzania. I had a wonderful, wonderful time there.
It's a great place.
Yes, it is. Got charged by an elephant. That's a story for another time.
When you haven't been in Africa until you have been.
There you go. Yeah. Ngorongoro Crater. On the lip of Ngorongoro Crater. Anyway, so tell us a little bit about your experiences. What motivated you to try the Warrior's Journey course?
Well, I guess, you know, I've always felt myself to be reasonably successful. I've got a great wife, I've got. I've got kids that I'm happy with. I've got a job that I'm reasonably happy with. But I think I've always sort of played around the edges of the martial arts. Always very interested in self defense and in my own sort of development. But I've always felt like I needed to be a little better as well at a lot of things.
In what way?
Sort of like the difference between good enough and excellent, I guess is what I'm trying to get at.
Mastery.
Yeah. And I've always been pretty happy with good enough. To be perfectly frank. It's gotten me by in Africa and in a lot of the things that I do. But maybe it's having kids, maybe it's having a relationship that goes on for 20 some years with my wife makes you realize that maybe good enough is not really good enough. And maybe there's a pathway to being stronger, to being better at what you do. And so that's really as I began to learn more about what you were doing with the Warrior Project and. And learning about maybe taking a little deeper look inside myself as well.
So what has been your experience with the program?
You know, it's been fascinating. It's unfortunate that sort of struck at the same time as the COVID 19 has. So I feel like I got started down the path during the first two, three weeks and got some really good tools and I've been continuing with those. When you look at things like the morning ritual, things like the 5mm, those are really, really. They seem very simple on the surface, but as you begin to do them, the depth of what's sort of lying under them becomes more apparent, more fulfilling as well. And to some extent, maybe it's an advantage that I've gotten sort of stuck at week two or week three because I've just. What I've decided is to just really concentrate on the morning ritual and making it more meaningful to me and more in depth.
I can tell you something honestly, Paul, if you focus on the smallest piece and got that smallest piece perfect, you get everything from the entire course that everything recapitulates that there is no right way to do this. There is your way to do this. And I would say that it's not unfortunate that this happened right now, except that it's just unfortunate in general for humanity. But it was perfect timing for you because if you can go inside yourself and find the eye of the storm, then even though there was all this stress on the outside, you're still there for your family, you're still there for your loving wife. You're still, you're the calm center that they can look to for strength. When you're ready to go on. If it took you 10 months to go through the 10 week program or 10 years, who cares? It took me 17 years to earn my first black belt because I was dealing with so much fear and pain. But the fact is that because I actually took the time to restructure myself psychologically, I got benefit from it. That the athletes who could just zip right through in six months, they never got what I got because they didn't need what I needed. So right now, forgive yourself, do it at your pace, in your way, love yourself, love your family. What else is there, buddy? Yeah.
And that's what the ritual has become. Because when I first started doing it, it felt very stilted. It was sort of reciting some things to myself. But now I'm starting to look forward to it and go, hey, this is fun. You know, I'm going to talk about my long term goals, I'm going to talk about, well, what are those, you know, what am I going to do today for each one of those things? And then what am I grateful for? And Steve and I'd never had, you know, I mean we have Thanksgiving, we have giving thanks for what we have and stuff like that. But to really think about all those people in my life and all those things in my life that I'm truly grateful for is a source of joy now, you know, and a source of, source of happiness. And it's not like I was depressed or I was having a really tough time before this and I know some of the folks in this program really, really are having desperate problems. But it's still, there was still room for me to get better and to do things better and to feel better. The other day, I think I mentioned this. I was, I was just in the produce aisle with my wife and I just got this overwhelming feeling of joy. Even though there's all this chaos and danger around us right now. And just looking at her and looking at where I was and just being grateful for this.
There's food. There's food. You could be starving. Your family is safe and healthy. It's like there's so many blessings in the world. If we can focus on those things, then we can help the rest of the world pull through this. And we need people who can smile in the middle of a supermarket when they're shopping. We need you. Paul. Would you recommend the program to people you know?
Absolutely. And I think, and I, you know, I don't do these sorts of things, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm not big into reading all of the self help sorts of things or jumping onto different bandwagons about stuff. I think I came to this because of the real sincerity that I see in what you do and the way you communicate with everyone. Not just people that are going to join your program, but everyone. The way you communicate with people. The fact that what you pointed out to me personally, I think what I got from you was this necessity to love yourself. And getting that in line is so.
Critical to absolutely is, as you probably know, some of my story. Enough to know that there were a couple of times when I betrayed myself. I did not. I did not manifest my highest self and behaved in some ways that were not in alignment with my own spirit. And it cost me more than any money anyone could possibly have paid me. It took a year to heal that wound once I'd done it. So if you start by loving yourself, then you're prepared to fight for your dreams, fight for your family, fight for your own heart. It's paradoxically, love is the antidote for fear. I'm so glad that you're on board and thank you very much for sharing your time with us.
Maybe I didn't make that clear enough, but I absolutely love recommend this to anyone interested in doing anything better in their lives.
