Soon after my experience in London, Ankush headed off to Phoenix again. This time it wasn’t for a one-off session, but for a series of five sessions with Steve Hardison, known as a Cookie Cutter series.
The purpose of these sessions was to create his document.
I didn’t really know what a document was, but I knew very quickly after Ankush got back that something significant had happened while he was with Steve.
He was different.
There was a clarity, a strength and a certainty in him that I hadn’t seen before. I wouldn’t have said those qualities were missing before he went to Phoenix, but something had definitely shifted while he was there.
I wondered if it was a kind of mountaintop experience and quietly watched to see if it would last.
We continued our coaching sessions throughout the summer of 2022.
The shifts I had seen in Ankush weren’t just holding- they were gathering momentum.
While I was struck by what I was seeing, I still wasn’t drawn to having one of these documents for myself. He didn’t talk much about his time with Steve and I didn’t ask many questions. I knew he was working to implement what he had created in Phoenix and that he would share when he was ready.
I was curious, but only curious.
My experience of Steve in London had softened me towards him, but I wasn’t ready to sign up for whatever Ankush was doing.
At some point during that period, Ankush shared his document with me.
I remember feeling a mixture of admiration and judgement.
There was something compelling about the certainty of his declarations. Something impressive about the fact that he could recite them and the energy with which he did it. There was also something that felt like too much. It seemed arrogant. Overstated. Unrealistic. It felt like the kind of language I would never use about myself and certainly wouldn’t want other people hearing me say.
I still didn’t get it.
A few months later I found myself on one of Ankush’s week-long Powerful Men’s Immersions in the English countryside, just south of London. I had attended two immersions before and both had been hugely impactful. This one was turning out to be the best yet.
We were three days in with three to go.
If it had ended at that point, I could have gone home happy.
At 9am on the morning of day four, Ankush walked into the meeting room and announced to the twelve men attending that we were going to spend the rest of the immersion creating our documents.
My heart sank.
I wasn’t ready for this.
I had been deeply impacted by the changes I had seen in Ankush since Phoenix. But I knew his document and, despite how well it seemed to be working for him, I couldn’t see it being something I would ever want for myself, never mind something I would repeat every day and share openly with others.
I had a choice.
I could treat it as an experiment and go all in to see if this document thing actually worked. Or I could bluff my way through the next few days, take whatever gains I’d already got from the first half of the immersion and quietly put the whole thing in a drawer when I got home.
In that moment, I decided to go all in.
Not because I believed in it.
Not because I understood it.
But because I trusted Ankush enough to treat the process as a real experiment and see what happened.