Being the vessel, not the source

This week handed me a lot.

Let me take you through it in the order it arrived - because the sequence matters.

First: the news that stopped and shocked me
Early in the week, a message arrived that I wasn't prepared for.

A friend - my age - had passed away in her sleep. Just like that. No warning. No illness that anyone knew of. There one day, gone the next.

I didn't know what to do with that information for a while. So I just sat with it.

She was a colleague before she was a friend. Someone I'd worked alongside, faced many challenges with, laughed with, broke bread with, compared parenting notes with.

And now she's gone - at an age where most of us are still mid-sentence in the story we're writing.

Life is short. Cliché indeed. We say it often enough that it stops meaning anything. And then a week like this one arrives and it means everything again.

Then: the young person and the incentive
Later in the week, I found myself in a conversation with a young person about motivation - specifically, about whether they'd do something if there was no personal incentive attached.

Their honest answer was: probably not.

We talked about it. About the difference between doing things for yourself and doing things for the people you love - for a future that benefits someone beyond you. About how some of the most sustaining motivations aren't personal at all. They're relational. Sacrificial, even.

I thought about my friend. What she had done for others. Whether she'd been waiting for the right incentive or whether she'd just shown up. While I think I know that answer, I thought about how little time any of us actually have to find out.

Then: Tony's book
A few days later, a copy of my mentor Tony Kaye's first book arrived - Colours of Influence. A significant milestone. I congratulated him.

He messaged back with a quip I loved: "You marathoned first then me.. I booked first then you..😎"

We both laughed. Because we both understood.

Tony and I have been on parallel journeys in some ways - coaching, building, growing. Different timelines. Different order. Different chapters coming first for each of us. And neither of us losing sleep over who got where when.

Because we've both learned - in our own ways - that the sequence isn't the point. The purpose is.

He's run his marathon. I've run mine. My book will reach its readers. His has reached his. Things will happen in the season they're meant to happen in. Not because we forced the timing. Because we kept showing up.

And then: the testimonial
Today, something arrived that I want to share - not to promote what I do, but because the growth described in it belongs entirely to the person who did it. 

A client I had the privilege of working with recently sent me a testimonial. Here is some of what they wrote:

"Niyaaz quickly identified the tensions I was wrestling with and helped explore the questions I wasn't asking myself. I never felt like I had to leave those parts of myself at the door when we talked - my culture, my faith, the things that matter most to me. He used them as a foundation for exploring what was going on."

And this - the part that really resonated: 

"He did not promise an exact fix but created space for reflection and helped shine a light on things I hadn't fully seen or understood about myself, which has led me to arrive at my own conclusions, one step at a time."

I did not fix this person - there was no fixing needed. Instead, I held a light. What they saw in that light, and what they chose to do with it - that was entirely theirs. 

Before working together, they described struggling with self-doubt, questioning whether they belonged in the spaces they occupied, throwing themselves into busyness to avoid stopping. Now, they describe being clearer on what matters, more willing to trust their own judgement, more able to take the next step without needing to see the entire path.

That transformation did not come from me. It came through me. And there is a difference - a significant one - which needs to be named clearly.

The vessel and the source
There is a principle I return to often - one rooted in my faith tradition but I think recognisable across many.

It is that the believer is a means, not an origin. That God is the Cause of all causes - and our role is to show up with sincerity, do the work and release the outcome. The task is not to generate the light. It is to remain clear enough that it can pass through.

This is the difference between being the vessel and being the source.

Me as the source would claim the credit. Me as the source needs the recognition. Me as the source measures success by what it produced. But these are not attributes of The Source.

Instead, the vessel shows up. Does what it was given to do. And releases the outcome to something greater than itself.

I am not the source of what happened in that coaching relationship. I was, alhamdulillah | all praises to The Almighty, the vessel through which some of it moved. The growth belongs to my client. The credit belongs to God.

That framing changes everything about why I do this work - and how I measure whether it's working.

What the week, taken whole, is saying
A friend gone in her sleep. A young person wondering whether the incentive is worth it. A mentor's book arriving. A testimonial that humbled me completely. 

The week is saying the same thing from four different directions:

• The time you have is limited and unscheduled.

• The order things happen in is not under your control.

• The growth you facilitate in others is not yours to own.

• And the only question that actually matters - in coaching, in friendship, in the work you build, in the life you live - is whether you showed up as a clear enough vessel for something good to move through you.

Not whether you were the source. Whether you stayed out of the way long enough to be useful.

Final thought
So here are the questions I'm sitting with this week - and I'd invite you to sit with them too:

• Where in your life are you trying to be the source when your role is actually the vessel?

• What would change if you released the outcome - fully, genuinely - to something greater than yourself?

• And in the time you have, which is shorter than any of us would like: are you showing up clearly enough for something good to move through you?

Because the growth was never yours to take credit for.

But the showing up - that part is entirely on you.

Go on. Take the Next Step.