MY ROOM 5
Mind reading. This is based on the irrational belief that we can read other people’s minds, non-verbal expressions and gestures, and reach certain conclusions.” — Sonali Gupta
SESSION FIVE — SOMATIC CLARITY
IGNORING EXTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Room - Session 5 - Principles.’
The fifth Red Rule:
“I rarely find clarity; it’s the unicorn in the room. It is the power to feel something is so profoundly simple that you can explain it to a five-year-old, with a crayon.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
Session five ends this program, reaching the rarest of the somatic cues. Clarity is now, and has always been, the rarest of creatures. If you have somatic clarity about more than a handful of things, then you are mistaking confidence for clarity. Clarity requires years of wrestling with a concept, through rigorous complexity, until you reach a pure form of profound simplicity.
If you have gotten this far, you have spent months doing the somatic exercises, making you more somatically awake, and increasing your capacity to pay attention. You should have seen significant changes in your life by now. Clarity is so rare, even a half-blind, incompetent sleepwalker should trip over it when they feel it. Because that is true, I don’t plan to spend any extra time on this somatic cue. You are an apex predator. If you feel a unicorn-like Clarity in the room, don’t worry about anything else other than catching it.
Every day, I want you to practice feeling what is about to happen by somatically revisiting each of these five somatic cues. In My Success, you learned to recognize subconscious categories and how to think around the next corner more effectively. In My Instincts, we have practiced recognizing somatic cues and feeling the ground beneath you more effectively. Your primitive hunter wants to hunt. Set him loose—who knows what he catches!
Reflection sequence:
The activation process brings itself to the foreground of your mind. The narrative unfolding in the Principle section activated empathic memories from your own lived experience. One of the most common mistakes clients make in this sequence is to ‘think’ about how the questions. Despite having spent six months being encouraged to ‘feel’ their way to the reflection point, they default back to the comfort zone of thinking. Your primitive hunter 'feels' things; it doesn't think about them. It feels for that familiar feeling of Clarity, then starts interrogating it for relevant information.
Now that you have conjured up those lived experiences from your own memory that feel similar to mine, I want you to slow down, find a quiet place to sit, then close your eyes, put your dominant hand on your chest, and check how you felt when reading the Principles section of this session, the instruction, the images, the tone. This isn’t touchy-feely meditation, mindfulness techniques. It is how tier-one operators check in with their spidy sense. If it makes you uncomfortable, tough it out!
Now that you can somatically feel clarity in a room, move to practicing. This program has five sessions. Whether you race through or take your time, come back and slow down. I created this program as a subject-matter expert in Somatic Reading, and I still do these Somatic Exercises daily. I need to stay awake and not sleepwalk, so I practice what I teach.
This is the final session of our first five core programs. My Mastery requires a selection process to access it so I won’t be offering any free first glance posts about its content.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY ROOM 4
Mind reading. This is based on the irrational belief that we can read other people’s minds, non-verbal expressions and gestures, and reach certain conclusions.” — Sonali Gupta
SESSION FOUR — SOMATIC COMFIDENCE
IGNORING EXTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Room - Session 4 - Principles.’
The fourth Red Rule:
“Confidence is like church bells; everyone notices them ringing, we just don’t need them to tell time anymore.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
For the past three sessions, you've been stripping away layers—distractions, comfort filters, analytical thinking—to access pure somatic attention. The apex predator lives in this state. It reads the room, notices danger, senses opportunity, all without the protective layers your conscious mind builds. Session Four focuses on Somatic Confidence: the most common distraction in any room.
This session teaches how to ignore something you have been conditioned to notice since your earliest days. Confidence! I work primarily with tier-one operators, spending my day entering one Zoom call after another to engage with highly successful people who can justify hiring someone like me. There is always confidence in each of those rooms. If you are doing this workbook, you spend most of your day in similar rooms where confidence is table stakes. It's a qualifier to get into the room, so it rarely offers any relevant information you didn't already feel was obvious. “Look at their confidence!” say the sleepwalkers, the apex predators say: “Big whoop!”
In the Principles and Practices videos, I mention my own somatic Certainty, Curiosity, Confidence, and Clarity. I’m not going to repeat them here. As you work through this program, you should be adding your own unique version of how you feel when you reach for each of these somatic cornerstones.
Reflection sequence:
The activation process brings itself to the foreground of your mind. The narrative unfolding in the Principle section activated empathic memories from your own lived experience. One of the most common mistakes clients make in this sequence is to ‘think’ about how the questions. Despite having spent six months being encouraged to ‘feel’ their way to the reflection point, they default back to the comfort zone of thinking. Your primitive hunter 'feels' things; it doesn't think about them. It feels for that familiar feeling of Confidence, then dismisses it as an irrelevant distraction.
Now that you have conjured up those lived experiences from your own memory that feel similar to mine, I want you to slow down, find a quiet place to sit, then close your eyes, put your dominant hand on your chest, and check how you felt when reading the Principles section of this session, the instruction, the images, the tone. This isn’t touchy-feely meditation, mindfulness techniques. It is how tier-one operators check in with their spidy sense. If it makes you uncomfortable, tough it out!
Now that you can somatically feel confidence in a room, move to practicing. This program has five sessions. Whether you race through or take your time, come back and slow down. I created this program as a subject-matter expert in Somatic Reading, and I still do these Somatic Exercises daily. I need to stay awake and not sleepwalk, so I practice what I teach.
In the next post, we'll explore Somatic Clarity.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY ROOM 3
Mind reading. This is based on the irrational belief that we can read other people’s minds, non-verbal expressions and gestures, and reach certain conclusions.” — Sonali Gupta
SESSION THREE — SOMATIC CURIOSITY
IGNORING EXTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Room- Session 3 - Principles.’
The third Red Rule:
“Curiosity didn’t kill the cat; it is what gave it nine lives.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
Session three shifts focus on the first somatic attention grabber. Curiosity is my go-to somatic interrogator. I have learned more from this silent killer than from all the words I’ve ever heard.
I have been invited to sit in a room full of bankers, and just read the room. The bank president believed my ‘read’ would give him an edge in the negotiations. I want to set realistic expectations at this point. I have 25,000+ hours of experience, a natural aptitude for this kind of work, and I grew up in a world more improbable than would be expected of a consultant who reads a room full of bankers. But the principles I use to such profitable effect are universal, and, with practice, can produce some extremely valuable insights for those who can pay somatic attention.
This session explores the power of somatic curiosity when reading a room. Remember, the bulk of people in most rooms are distracted by the irrelevant, focusing primarily on what people say and almost not at all on non-verbal cues, which make up 70% of all human communication. If you can feel the right question, you will usually find the most relevant somatic insight. You are a hunter in the room; listening isn’t enough —you need to be to feel that somatically relevant prey that has a somatic curiosity arrow pointed at its heart.
Reflection sequence:
The activation process brings itself to the foreground of your mind. The narrative unfolding in the Principle section activated empathic memories from your own lived experience. One of the most common mistakes clients make in this sequence is to ‘think’ about how the questions. Despite having spent six months being encouraged to ‘feel’ their way to the reflection point, they default back to the comfort zone of thinking. Your primitive hunter 'feels' things; it doesn't think about them. It feels for that familiar feeling of Curiosity, then starts interrogating it for relevant information.
Now that you have conjured up those lived experiences from your own memory that feel similar to mine, I want you to slow down, find a quiet place to sit, then close your eyes, put your dominant hand on your chest, and check how you felt when reading the Principles section of this session, the instruction, the images, the tone. This isn’t touchy-feely meditation, mindfulness techniques. It is how tier-one operators check in with their spidy sense. If it makes you uncomfortable, tough it out!
Now that you can somatically feel curiosity in a room, move to practicing. This program has five sessions. Whether you race through or take your time, come back and slow down. I created this program as a subject-matter expert in Somatic Reading, and I still do these Somatic Exercises daily. I need to stay awake and not sleepwalk, so I practice what I teach.
In the next post, we'll explore Somatic Confidence.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY ROOM 2
Mind reading. This is based on the irrational belief that we can read other people’s minds, non-verbal expressions and gestures, and reach certain conclusions.” — Sonali Gupta
SESSION TWO — SOMATIC CERTAINTY
IGNORING EXTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Room - Session 2 - Principles.’
The second Red Rule:
“It takes an earthquake to change certainty. Don’t worry, you will notice when the room shifts, if that ever happens!”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
Session two shifts focus: from processing somatic information to transmitting your somatic signal. The image says 'session 3' because each somatic element spans two sessions in the live program.
An experienced somatic operator picks up subtle signals from other people's body language and from the physical space with extraordinary precision. They do this by ignoring 80% of what they can notice. An Apex predator has to triage the information flow to capture the one or two relevant pieces of information to be able to be standing at the right place at the right time.
I am constantly bemused to watch a room of people mindlessly be captivated by a speck of certainty. In a world that has become increasingly risk-averse, someone who bets their life on their level of certainty becomes an attention magnet for sleepwalkers. The irony is that certainty is seldom the relevant thing to notice in the moment. It isn’t going to change, and if it does, it will shake everyone’s world. You focus on what is in flux, not what is bedrock.
Reflection sequence:
The activation process brings itself to the foreground of your mind. The narrative unfolding in the Principle section activated empathic memories from your own lived experience. One of the most common mistakes clients make in this sequence is to ‘think’ about how the questions. Despite having spent six months being encouraged to ‘feel’ their way to the reflection point, they default back to the comfort zone of thinking. Your primitive hunter 'feels' things; it doesn't think about them. It feels for that familiar feeling of Certainty, then dismisses it as an irrelevant distraction.
Now that you have conjured up those lived experiences from your own memory that feel similar to mine, I want you to slow down, find a quiet place to sit, then close your eyes, put your dominant hand on your chest, and check how you felt when reading the Principles section of this session, the instruction, the images, the tone. This isn’t touchy-feely mediation, mindfulness techniques. It is how tier-one operators check in with their spidy sense. If it makes you uncomfortable, tough it out!
Now that you can somatically feel for certainty in a room, move to practicing. This program has five sessions. Whether you race through or take your time, come back and slow down. I created this program as a subject-matter expert in Somatic Reading, and I still do these Somatic Exercises daily. I need to stay awake and not sleepwalk, so I practice what I teach.
In the next post, we'll explore Somatic Curiosity.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY ROOM 1
Mind reading. This is based on the irrational belief that we can read other people’s minds, non-verbal expressions and gestures, and reach certain conclusions.” — Sonali Gupta
SESSION ONE — SOMATIC ROOM
IGNORING EXTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Room - Session 1 - Principles.’
The First Red Rule:
“We all throw a somatic shadow; most people are scared of their shadow, so don’t look at it.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
Session one takes the woken primitive and sets him on the hunt. Each step in the program adds a filter to how you pay attention. Build on them systematically over the next five sessions.
Your primitive now needs to slow down. You are awake and are paying attention to your surroundings.
One of the hardest lessons I learned was the danger of overlooking my impact when I scanned a room for danger. Too often, I was the critical catalyst in the situation. If I try to calculate what is happening without first feeling what I am transmitting, then the whole calculation will be wrong. The first somatic point of reference is me. X always marks the spot! Because you are the one constant X-factor in every room you enter. My Certainty and Confidence tend to distract sleepwalkers, while they often overlook my Curiosity and Clarity.
I have literally bet my life on what I feel certain about! When people feel that certainty, they overvalue its significance in what will happen now. I'm not betting my life anymore, but the somatic certainty from those experiences remains. It radiates into every room I enter. People sense it without understanding why. Your shadow isn't just what you notice—it's what others feel from you, creating distraction even when you're calm. But you get my point. You are a tier-one operator; you will distract people with irrelevance that they admire. Certainty and Confidence are merely two of the most common. Use that to your advantage! Find your X, then start there!
PROFILE — SOMATIC ROOM
Each session ends with the Somatic Exercise sheet. Add the highlighted elements to your focus. You will continue to use the My Now steps in this exercise. This means begin with Everything and now work down to the Somatic Room. The complete 31-page PDF lives on the landing page with the video tutorials.
In My Now, you profiled:
T.O.E., Annual Word, and somatic totem animal. (Jehovah Jireh – Simple – Wolf)
Two thematic signals. (Stress – Naked Now)
An extrinsic and intrinsic plan. (Stage One – 100 Strong)
I added my profile as an example. These seven somatic contact points create a unique somatic effect in every room (situation) I am in. The principle undergirding session one is that you, too, have a unique somatic shadow that you throw in front of you as you enter a room. This shadow is your somatic x-factor. The work you did in My Now should allow you to quantify that shadow by calculating the combined contact points of your My Now profile. With enough practice, you will develop a somatic cue (tap on the shoulder) from your primitive hunter to check for the shadow effect when you enter new situations. In one-on-one coaching sessions, I literally leave the room so the client feels the space absent my somatic presence.
Somatic Data, Signals, Planning, Stillness, and Restlessness are like putting on your gear before you start the hunt. While they belong in the Golden Now (hence the color shift), they are critical to pay attention to when reading rooms: fully awake and present, as your authentic, primitive self. There are rarely that many people like you in a typical room.
If you are confused about the reflection sequence below, it is because you ignored the video tutorials. Both the Principles and Practices tutorials we prompted you to watch.
In the next post, we'll explore Somatic Certainty.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY ROOM - Intro
Mind reading. This is based on the irrational belief that we can read other people’s minds, non-verbal expressions and gestures, and reach certain conclusions.” — Sonali Gupta.
MY ROOM — RED ROOM
https://youtu.be/JNFHEA_qOGg
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Room - An Introduction.’
My Room is the second of two programs in My Instincts, which expands your capacity to pay attention and overcome distractions. Five sessions calibrate five precision filters:
Somatic Room (finding X)
Somatic Certainty (ignoring rocks and balloons)
Somatic Curiosity (finding the somatic question mark)
Somatic Confidence (ignoring the bells)
Somatic Clarity (finding the somatic crayon)
My Room translates your expanded internal attention into external tactical advantage. Most leaders sleepwalk through high-stakes environments, missing signals that determine outcomes. You've learned to stay awake internally—now learn to read the room like an apex predator reads a waterhole.
Elite operators extract signal from noise faster than neural processing allows. Like a shortstop fielding a line drive, a cricket infielder catches a ball twelve feet from the batter despite optical lag. You already do this instinctively. The question is, can you do it intentionally?
You'll learn which filters reveal truth and which create distraction. Stand exactly where you need to be in any situation.
“Each session includes a Principle and Practices video tutorial. You cannot complete this program without those videos because there are "No shortcuts - No summaries - Just precision." If you skip a video, you will fail, so watch the three-minute videos when prompted.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
If you do this, you will significantly expand your capacity to ignore external distraction, using the Bespoke Compass process of Activation → Reflection → Integration. Paying attention isn’t mind-reading; it is simply noticing what is relevant and ignoring everything else.
In the next post, we'll explore Somatic Room.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY NOW 5
”The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.” ― Keanu Reeves.
SESSION FIVE — SOMATIC RESTLESSNESS
IGNORING INTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Now - Session 5 - Principles.’
The five Golden Rule:
“I have never understood those who train to wake up, then do nothing.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
Session five ends this program, reaching the ultimate point of being awake. Doing something while paying full attention. This isn’t a spectator sport, nor is it a spa retreat. It is time to step into the storm and feel the power of somatic restlessness.
If you completed the My Leadership Workbook, you might spot the five-step sequence of subconscious leadership in this next session.
What: touches the shadow of opportunity or obstacle from My Leadership.
Why: touches the biases you feel from My Leadership.
Which: holds firmly to the environment of your decisions from My Leadership.
Who: embodies the five personas of My Leadership, and My Life’s Identity, Energy, Legacy, and Aspiration.
Where: embodies the stress profiles from My Leadership.
Every day, I want you to practice feeling what is about to happen. Your primitive hunter wants to hunt. Set him loose—who knows what he catches!
PROFILE — SOMATIC RESTLESSNESS
Reflection sequence:
The activation process brings itself to the foreground of your mind. The narrative unfolding in the Principle section activated empathic memories from your own lived experience. It takes effort and focus to leave the calm of stillness to hunt for the restlessness we feel in this Naked Now.
Now that you have conjured up those lived experiences from your own memory that feel similar to mine, I want you to slow down, find a quiet place to sit, then close your eyes, put your dominant hand on your chest, and check how you felt when reading the Principles section of this session, the instruction, the images, the tone. Fill in the five-step sequence of restlessness now.
Now that you have delved into the somatic restlessness and can feel what you're hunting, move into the practice section after the regular tension check. Losing sight of why you're doing these exercises means you don't wake up as effectively.
In the next post, we'll explore the introduction to My Room.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY NOW 4
”The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.” ― Keanu Reeves.
SESSION FOUR — SOMATIC STILLNESS
IGNORING INTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Now - Session 4 - Principles.’
The fourth Golden Rule:
“Meditation teaches you to clear your mind, Somatic Stillness teaches you to be ok in the clutter of life.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
For the past three sessions, you've been stripping away layers—distractions, comfort filters, analytical thinking—to access pure somatic attention. Contemplatives refer to this as the "Naked Now" (Richard Rohr), Buddhists describe it as "bare awareness," Stoics refer to it as "seeing things as they are," and neuroscientists identify it as "bottom-up processing"—the body's direct perception before interpretation. Your primitive hunter lives in this state. It reads the room, notices danger, senses opportunity, all without the protective layers your conscious mind builds. Session Four focuses on Somatic Stillness: the capacity to remain here without needing to act, fix, or move. "I can feel ok" means you've arrived.
This session teaches how to catch your somatic breath even in the fiercest storm. Most operators have been trained to calm down, take the intensity out of the situation, set aside their feelings, and focus on what they think about the problem. This session contradicts that advice. In the reflection section, you find your way to the eye of the storm and discover you can feel ok, even if it's the end of the world. Somatic Stillness is looking the abyss in the eye, breathing, then throwing it a Shaka!
PROFILE — SOMATIC STILLNESS
Reflection sequence:
The activation process brings itself to the foreground of your mind. Lean in and feel the storms. The sequence of I can, We can, and It can, covers almost any imaginable storm you face in life. Step into the reality of tier-one operators: shit happens. Can you feel ok when it gets really windy? I confess I love being in storms—I rush into the ones I see. If I can't see any near me, I've been known to create one.
Now that you have conjured up those storms, I want you to slow down, find a quiet place to sit, then close your eyes, put your dominant hand on your chest, and check how you felt when reading the Principles section of this session, the instruction, the images, the tone. Don’t remember a storm, find the one you are feeling right now, the one tugging at your clothes as you read this.
Now that you have delved into the somatic plans you carry, move into the practice section after the regular tension check. Losing sight of why you're doing these exercises means you don't wake up as effectively.
In the next post, we'll explore Somatic Restlessness.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY NOW 3
”The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.” ― Keanu Reeves.
SESSION THREE — SOMATIC PLANNING
IGNORING INTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Now - Session 3 - Principles.’
The third Golden Rule:
“We carry the hopes of the future; ignoring them creates distractions for our primitive self.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
Session three shifts focus deeper, beyond the signal: from processing somatic information and transmitting your somatic signal to what you plan to carry somatically.
I’ve known top athletes who possess extraordinary muscle memory for the first two steps of somatic intelligence; they understand how they function somatically at a surface level. But they are asleep to what they are carrying around, which distracts their primitive hunter, even though it is clearly being overlooked.
This session explores those plans and identifies the two most compelling—extrinsic and intrinsic—that shape how you walk through this world. Here are my own somatic plans as an example. My extrinsic plan is Stage One. This is about ensuring my business can support my family in my old age. My intrinsic plan is 100 Strong. This touches on the fact that our son was born when I was 43, and I plan on doing everything I can to ensure I'm around when I'm 100 and still able to engage with him and his family. I realize we all carry more than just one of each, like some strange somatic ark. However, it is challenging to pay attention to too many things at once. One of each is as much as I carry at a time.
PROFILE — SOMATIC PLANNING
Reflection sequence:
The activation process brings itself to the foreground of your mind. The narrative unfolding in the Principle section activated empathic memories from your own lived experience. It takes effort and focus to delve beneath immediate signals to the deeper plans we feel worthy of carrying into this Naked Now.
Now that you have conjured up those lived experiences from your own memory that feel similar to mine, I want you to slow down, find a quiet place to sit, then close your eyes, put your dominant hand on your chest, and check how you felt when reading the Principles section of this session, the instruction, the images, the tone. Feel for the two strongest extrinsic and intrinsic plans/desires.
Now that you have delved into the somatic plans you carry, move into the practice section after the regular tension check. Losing sight of why you're doing these exercises means you don't wake up as effectively.
In the next post, we'll explore Somatic Stillness.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY NOW 2
”The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.” ― Keanu Reeves.
SESSION TWO — SOMATIC SIGNAL
IGNORING INTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Now - Session 2 - Principles.’
The second Golden Rule:
“If I can’t read how my body feels, then I have no hope of reading anyone else’s non-verbal communication.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
Session two shifts focus: from processing somatic information to transmitting your somatic signal. The image says 'session 3' because each somatic element spans two sessions in the live program.
An experienced somatic operator picks up subtle signals from other people's body language with extraordinary precision. My Now is the training gym before you enter the external world to read rooms. Until you can ignore internal distractions, you cannot ignore external distractions in the rooms you walk into awake and attentive. Two ways to train someone to read a room somatically:
1) Expose them to prolonged high-risk environments while demanding they notice somatic cues if they want to survive.
2) Expose them to the subtle somatic cues they carry within their own body in a safe setting. This program came into existence because a journalist asked Jermaine Andre and me whether it was possible to prepare white-collar criminals to read a room somatically, making prison safer for them. The answer was 'no', I can't do that, but Jermaine can teach them how to protect themselves from physical violence. But the question sparked curiosity about whether it was possible to train people who weren't in crisis to acquire the same skills.
PROFILE — SOMATIC SIGNAL
Reflection sequence:
The activation process brings itself to the foreground of your mind. The narrative unfolding in the Principle section activated empathic memories from your own lived experience. One of the most common mistakes clients make in this sequence is to ‘think’ about how the questions. Despite having spent six months being encouraged to ‘feel’ their way to the reflection point, they default back to the comfort zone of thinking. Your primitive 'feels' things; it can unravel what the body is feeling. To be embodied, one needs to be able to pay attention to somatic signals.
Now that you have conjured up those lived experiences from your own memory that feel similar to mine, I want you to slow down, find a quiet place to sit, then close your eyes, put your dominant hand on your chest, and check how you felt when reading the Principles section of this session, the instruction, the images, the tone. In client sessions, I run a quick-and-dirty calibration check. After a week of scanning for somatic signals, if you notice no stress or sexual desire, you're probably self-medicating unintentionally with disembodiment techniques to dull the baser signals. This prompt encourages you to move beyond any unintentional disembodiment you may be experiencing.
Now that you have delved into the somatic signal coming from your body right now, move into the practice section after the regular tension check. Losing sight of why you're doing these exercises means you don't wake up as effectively.
In the next post, we'll explore Somatic Planning.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY NOW 1
”The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.” ― Keanu Reeves.
SESSION ONE — SOMATIC DATA
IGNORING INTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Now - Session 1 - Principles.’
The First Golden Rule:
“Now begins with everything, unleashing the superstitious primitive from the confines of a comfortable modernity.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
Your gut needs to take a club to the distractions keeping you asleep. To accomplish that, start with everything to reach your Naked Now. I want you to imagine this guy in the picture looking up at the night sky, huddled around a fire, hoping to keep his people alive for another day. A strong right arm and a trusty club just isn’t going to get it done, every day, every season, every year. You need something more than yourself when faced with a now that has no comfortable layers of security between you and it. So we begin with your primitive ‘theory of everything.’ It truly doesn’t matter if this is that we are a two-dimensional simulation created by an artificial intelligence, that is within yet another simulation, or if you believe it is one of the pantheon of deities humanity has worshiped since the beginning. In the session, I call my theory of everything my mythology. Your primitive lacks a systematically laid-out theoretical framework for deep thought. It feels like this thing is the reason it can fall back on. It isn’t about convincing arguments for why it is right. Below, we will walk through how to start by gazing into infinity, move through the seasons, reach today, and finally arrive at Now.
PROFILE — SOMATIC DATA
Each session ends with the Somatic Exercise sheet. The highlighted section is your focus. The complete 31-page PDF is available on the landing page, along with the video tutorials.
Theory of Everything: (T.O.E) Write a word or short phrase that captures your primitive theory of everything. This becomes the first step in every subsequent somatic exercise practice.
Word of the Year: This is an ancient practice, one which my wife and I have practiced together for twenty years. Pick a word for this year, one that captures an overarching feeling. I am writing this in 2025, so our word is Simple.
Date: I’ve lived in America for 14 years, yet I still stumble when writing the date in the American sequence. 10/23/25. However, you write the date, use that format.
Somatic Data: Finally, choose a source to stimulate your primitive. Any source works, but I recommend ancient wisdom that's both practical and paradoxical.. One of the challenges of modern society is that we have thought through all the paradoxes in life and offered coherent explanations in their place. Our primitive self doesn’t trust clever answers. I use the book of Proverbs, which is part of the Judaic/Christian sacred texts. There is a specific version that is in vernacular English. The Message (MSG) - Version Information - BibleGateway.com. This site offers a free copy of that version. Proverbs has 31 chapters, creating the perfect model for this somatic exercise. Another one of our coaches uses 'Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader' by Marcus Aurelius.
Once you have completed these four steps, I want you to follow the reflection sequence below to discover if you are a Wolfhound or a Wolf. As much as it pains me to repeat the standard disclaimer, let's get it out of the way right now. I have to restate this with every single client. Wolfhounds hunt wolves! Both are apex predators and are devastatingly effective in their own context. These are metaphorical constructs that activate your somatic system. Yes, I am aware that if you press this metaphor too hard, it falls apart. So don't press on it! The distinction that matters: Wolfhounds pay attention to data that confirms what they already feel. Wolves pay attention to what feels contradictory. Your primitive operates with one of these two patterns. The Somatic Data practice reveals which one is yours. After Session One, both types of training proceed in the same manner.
In the next post, we'll explore Somatic Signals.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY NOW - Intro
”The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.” ― Keanu Reeves.
MY NOW — GOLDEN NOW
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Now - An Introduction.’
My Now is the first of two programs in My Instincts, designed to expand your capacity to pay attention and overcome distractions. Five sessions calibrate five precision elements:
Somatic Data (what you notice)
Somatic Signals (what you transmit)
Somatic Planning (what you carry)
Somatic Stillness (when you pause)
Somatic Restlessness (when you act)
My Now wakes the primitive hunter within. Before language, before analysis, your ancestors survived by reading what their conscious mind couldn't yet explain—danger in the shadows, opportunity in the stillness, the moment to move. You still have this. The question is, can you access it intentionally?
This isn't a silent meditation retreat removed from pressure—it's the primitive hunter operating under fire, moving with technicolor clarity while competitors miss critical signals.
I have a promise I make to each client: “I promise never to be modest or nice. My definition of these words is: Modest is when I lie to you about me, and we both know I am lying. Nice, is when I lie to you, about you, and I know I am lying!”
“The assumption we are working on is that you've already achieved enough success to justify this investment. Each session includes a Principle and Practices video tutorial. You cannot complete this program without those videos because there are "No shortcuts - No summaries - Just precision." If you skip a video, you will fail, so watch the three-minute videos when prompted.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
By the time you finish this five-session program, you will have built a Somatic Exercise program. If you use it, you will significantly expand your capacity to ignore internal distraction, using the Bespoke Compass process of Activation → Reflection → Integration.
In the next post, we'll explore Somatic Data.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY LIFE 5
We build towering monuments to our success while blithely ignoring the places that give that success meaning.
SESSION FIVE — MAPPING MY ASPIRATION
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Life - Session 5 - Principles.’
Alongside the Principes video, I have included the ‘Activation Narrative’ that is part of this session in the self-guided workbooks. The stories I tell aren’t comfortable, nor are they trauma porn. They are designed to elicit a specific response from the reader, tied to the topic our clients are working on in this session.
The Fifth Blue Rule:
“A life without dreams is a meaningless nightmare. I’ve worked with too many successful people who dread falling asleep.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
I have been sober for 10,985 days. I began my spiritual journey in an ultra-conservative Christian church that forbade almost everything. I have served as a missionary, minister, and leader of a Christian nonprofit. Most people would imagine my aspiration would be about some spiritual utopia where everyone believes in my God and obeys the rules. Perhaps the antithesis of John Lennon’s Imagine.
The reality? My Aspiration hasn’t changed since I dreamt about it as a small boy. That dream was ridiculous to me back then, and despite all that I have accomplished, it remains challenging to reach on any given day. I recall a time when all five of us kids slept in one room, with mattresses on the floor and the curtains open, so we could get up and use the bathroom at night. I’d lie awake late into the night and stare out the window and dream of one thing. Freedom. This utopian place where people couldn’t control me, where no one could apply constraints on me. It is hard to describe what being an extremely ADHD boy meant in the 70’s and early 80’s in Ireland. Sit down, shut up, or else! Followed almost immediately by ‘or else.’ I had repeatedly borrowed a copy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s complete stories of Sherlock Holmes from the library van that came to our neighborhood.
Sherlock Holmes was Santa, the Tooth Faery, and Jesus all wrapped up in a drug-addled eccentric Bohemian who refused to be constrained by his society. If you come into my home office, you will see four sculptures, one for each of my personas. Each sculpture is a picture of my prioritized places as well as an avatar for that persona: a Knight, Atlas, a Man, and Sherlock Holmes. Bohemian is the name I chose for my persona in the prioritized place of Aspiration. I’ll share a picture of my map below. In it, you will see each Place, Picture, and Persona laid out. To navigate my interior world requires only this map and the compass of curiosity.
I want to take a moment to sit down with you, just as I would with one of my clients, and discuss your aspirations. If you have reached this point in the My Success self-guided workbooks, then you are motivated, disciplined, and capable. This is the prioritized place that is most difficult for people like you and me to feel. It feels selfish, silly, and indefensible to admit it out loud. Think for a moment about what you know about my life. Would Bohemian and Freedom really be what you imagined I prioritize for Utopia? The one constant I’ve found in the My Life program is that I can never guess someone’s Aspirational place. It is always such an outlier. We all need a place to dream, a fantastical place to invest in, even if we can only imagine it and never experience it in reality.
In the next post, we'll explore the introduction to the paradox of Extrinsic/Intrinsic conflict in My Culture.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY LIFE 4
We build towering monuments to our success while blithely ignoring the places that give that success meaning.
SESSION FOUR — MAPPING MY LEGACY
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Life - Session 4 - Principles.’
Alongside the Principes video, I have included the ‘Activation Narrative’ that is part of this session in the self-guided workbooks. The stories I tell aren’t comfortable, nor are they trauma porn. They are designed to elicit a specific response from the reader, tied to the topic our clients are working on in this session.
The Fourth Blue Rule:
“The capacity for compassion and empathy is what differentiates us from the other animals. Everyone needs a helping hand. From prisoners to corporate princes, we all have a shared humanity.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
The prison school is in the heart of Landsberg am Lach’s historic prison. This was the prison where Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Twenty years ago, I’d take a train from my home in Munich every two weeks on a Tuesday morning to the prison to lead a Bible Study for English-speaking inmates. I have had many rewarding, transformational, and even frightening experiences in my life, but the role of prison chaplain is one I still look back on and know is part of my legacy.
In that tiny classroom, I met Lucky, an African man in his early twenties. (I am well aware Africa is a continent, but Lucky deserves as much anonymity as I can give him.) So, an African man in his early twenties. Lucky had the scariest eyes I have ever seen. Now take a minute to remember the activation narratives from previous sessions and recall just how competitive a title like ‘scariest eyes' must be for someone with my lived experiences. Lucky had been forced to join a rebel force as a child soldier. If you don’t know what it means to become a child soldier in the late nineties, save yourself the nightmares, and trust me, it’s something you don’t want to know about. He survives the following years and then, finally, escapes to Europe, where he ends up in prison for a minor offense. Once he served his sentence, he would be deported back to his home country. He sat quietly and listened to the discussions, rarely adding his own thoughts. The best I could do for him was to make room for his silence and respect his need to process internally. I have no idea where Lucky is now, or what happened to him after his release.
Beside Lucky was a pedophile with the saddest eyes I have ever seen. That is all of the information I am willing to offer, for if Lucky deserves as much anonymity as I can afford him, then the man beside him deserves even more. The world is willing to make a little room for Lucky, not much, but a little, but the guy beside him was beyond the pale. He was a pariah in a room full of criminals. His story is more horrific than being a boy soldier, so I won’t repeat it here. It is strange how my willingness to make room for this man repels people who calmly listen to me talk about making room for terrorists and drug dealers. It wasn’t about converting them to my particular brand of mythology. My time at the prison was about realizing that we were the same. Broken people being broken together. This is the meaningful thing I expect to leave behind when I die. The thing my friends and family will speak about during my funeral. I am a humanitarian and have devoted my life to helping humanity climb a little further out of the evolutionary soup we call the human condition. When that part activates, my Adam persona shows up. Oddly, I have never had a crisis in this priority. Perhaps because so few people want to sit there?
In the next post, we'll explore the introduction to the paradox of Extrinsic/Intrinsic conflict in My Culture.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY LIFE 3
We build towering monuments to our success while blithely ignoring the places that give that success meaning.
SESSION THREE — MAPPING MY ENERGY
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Life - Session 3 - Principles.’
Alongside the Principes video, I have included the ‘Activation Narrative,’ which is part of this session, in the self-guided workbooks. The stories I tell aren’t comfortable, nor are they trauma porn. They are designed to elicit a specific response from the reader, tied to the topic our clients are working on in this session.
The Third Blue Rule:
“There are few things as sad as a life without passion. I’ve discovered over the years that you can motivate almost anyone, but you can’t easily incentivize inertia.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
This session references crisis at its extreme edge—including child endangerment. This program is for mapping before the storm, not navigating in the middle of it.
It was time to run down the stairs again. I hated this part of my life, yet it never occurred to me to do anything else. My older sister also hated me doing it, and repeatedly begged me not to, and when we became adults and were far away from that place, she admitted she was always terrified I’d get killed at some point. I was nine or ten, and one of the dangerous adults in our world was on the verge of exploding, so all of us kids ran upstairs to hide. At that point, we didn’t know about our half-brother, so I was the second oldest. Like many families with a similar history, we had developed solid roles for each of us kids to play in the family. My self-imposed role was to make sure everyone was upstairs, then go back downstairs and distract the monster. (That was the name I had for the enraged adult.) Needless to say, that wasn’t the best strategy to employ, and it rarely ended well for me. However, I am wired to feel responsible, and this was my way of fulfilling that role at that time in my life. Until I was 16, I found similar ways to stand in the gap, to take the world upon my shoulders, no matter how ludicrous a sight a small, wiry street urchin looked as a cosplay Atlas. My plan for 16 was to join the army, to get as far away from that place as the military would take me, and never look back. In my mind, and in all the books I’d read, the army was the place that expected you to take a knee and bear the weight of the world on your shoulder. Throughout a challenging teenage phase, I had a passion for all things military. I talked my parents into signing the permission forms to allow them to enlist at 16. Just before the physical, I had a major asthma attack, and the recruitment officer convinced my parents that the army wasn't a place for asthmatics.
That killed for a time the place I’d poured all of my passion (energy) into for five years. I got a job in a chicken factory the day after I left school at 16, and spiraled into a chasm of despair, boredom, and self-medication. I fought the inertia with a wild life of alcohol, girls, and fighting until I reached 24.
If it hadn’t been for a spiritual awakening at 24, I think that crisis of inertia would have probably killed me by 30. Fortunately, that awakening offered me a different route, much like the military for service. To run down the stairs and do something meaningful with my life. I got sober, turned my life around, and ignited a passion to pursue God that was so intense that, despite having no formal education, I became an ordained minister, where I was expected to take a knee. When I activate that place of energy (passion), I show up as Atlas. I have never understood the people who don’t want to carry the world on their shoulders. I am deeply sad for those I see in an energetic crisis.
In the next post, we'll explore the introduction to the paradox of Extrinsic/Intrinsic conflict in My Culture.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY LIFE 2
We build towering monuments to our success while blithely ignoring the places that give that success meaning.
SESSION TWO — MAPPING MY IDENTITY
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Life - Session 2 - Principles.’
Alongside the Principes video, I have included the ‘Activation Narrative,’ which is part of this session, in the self-guided workbooks. The stories I tell aren’t comfortable, nor are they trauma porn. They are designed to elicit a specific response from the reader, tied to the topic our clients are working on in this session.
The Second Blue Rule:
“Over the years, I have found that when someone goes ‘nuclear’ it is because their identity has been threatened.
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
This story begins with a picture of my wife and me. Bethany looks tired but determined, and I look like an extra from Schindler's List. We are on a mountain called The Wank (German pronunciation: [ˈvaŋk]), a mountain in southern Germany, situated in the Loisach valley close to the Austrian border in the southwestern Ester Mountains range near Garmisch-Partenkirchen. In 2016, my wife and I were hiking on Wank with another family. We were in Germany to attend a wedding. John was at home with Bethany’s parents, and so we had added a few days to see as many of our old friends and favorite places as possible.
We had been living in America for five years, had become parents, and I had been ill for the past four years. I’d dropped down to 125lbs, and had trouble eating anything but the blandest food. I’d already had one surgery that didn’t resolve the issue, our two-year-old had never seen me eat a proper meal, and things were looking like this was my new normal. Bethany’s ‘tired, but determined’ look in the picture didn’t come from a brisk hike in a low range of mountains. It came from the journey through infertility treatments, adoption, and my illness, which had been our last five years. Added to that, I was spiraling into a profound identity crisis after leaving behind the world of international mission and replacing it with a job as a pastor at a local church. Hatching, Matching, and Dispatching was the sarcastic way a friend of mine described the job of a local minister. That was a far cry from my life in Germany.
In Ireland, and in other parts of the world that are still culturally Christian, the role of foreign missionary is still wreathed in mystique. It is in many ways the special forces of Christian clergy. In my culture, it had an extra layer of historic resonance. It was the mystic missionaries of mainland Europe who had brought civilization to Ireland, and then, in the Dark Ages, brought it back to mainland Europe. As an Irish missionary in mainland Europe, I was standing on the shoulders of centuries of my ancestors. There are few vocations in Ireland we venerate more than the mystic missionary, walking the earth to share the faith with strangers. But now I had given all that up to live in America, have a job, and a secure middle-class life. That crisis of identity was tearing my marriage apart, destroying me from the inside out, so two months after we returned from this trip, I quit my job and began a nine-month sabbatical to redefine this prioritized place. That journey is part of the reason you are reading this, and I am still alive.
In the next post, we'll explore the introduction to the paradox of Extrinsic/Intrinsic conflict in My Culture.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY LIFE 1
We build towering monuments to our success while blithely ignoring the places that give that success meaning.
SESSION ONE — MY MAP
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Life - Session 1 - Principles.’
Alongside the Principes video, I have included the ‘Activation Narrative’ that is part of this session in the self-guided workbooks. The stories I tell aren’t comfortable, nor are they trauma porn. They are designed to elicit a specific response from the reader, tied to the topic our clients are working on in this session.
The First Blue Rule:
“In my experience, a crisis comes because something in your life is meaningful. If you want a crisis-free life, scrape all the meaning out of your life.
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
This session references crisis at its extreme edge—including suicidal ideation. If you're currently experiencing an active situation, this program may not be the right tool for you. Call the professionals. This program is for mapping before the storm, not navigating in the middle of it.
“I got a call at 3 am last night, and it took me a little while to get back to sleep.” This was Andy’s explanation for being a little sluggish while we were getting ready to angle grind the metal posts on the walkway around the guest wing of the property. I came to help Andy during my vacation, as the property was large and required extensive maintenance. Andy and his wife led an organization and a property that was a refuge for people in crisis. I was surprised and wondered who called at 3 am, so I asked Andy to discuss it with me. Andy thought for a moment, clearly weighing whether this was something I was ready for. Then he explained, “A man called last night to explain he was standing on a table with a rope around his neck and needed me to come over right away to help him. I told him that he could call me at 9 am tomorrow, said good night, and ended the call.” I was stunned! You could have knocked me over with a feather. Andy was one of my early mentors, and I still believe I am not worthy of carrying his bag, let alone critiquing his choices. At that point in my life, I had full-blown hero worship of Andy. But let’s be real, he told the guy to call him in the morning!?! Sheesh, I knew Andy was a serious person, but really!? Andy could tell he had confused me, so he looked at me and explained further, “R.J., I can’t be there for this man for the rest of his life. I can’t make him want to live. He has to find that from within himself.”
I wish I could say I took advantage of Andy’s advice that day. But I didn’t because I wanted to be the guy you called when you were in crisis—one of the more idiotic things I’ve done in my life. Obviously, I no longer wish to be the guy you call in crisis. But sadly, the old chestnut, “be careful what you wish for,” is still a valid warning, because I am the person people call in a crisis. I know I can’t rewrite the past, so I spent the years seeking a way to help before those late-night calls came in. I wanted a way to equip people to avoid the crisis while it still felt like a storm in a teacup. My Life is my solution to that problem.
In the next post, we'll explore the introduction to the paradox of Extrinsic/Intrinsic conflict in My Culture.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY LIFE - Intro
We build towering monuments to our success while blithely ignoring the places that give that success meaning.
MY LIFE — THE BLUE CRISIS
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Life - An Introduction.’
Alongside the Principes video, I have included the ‘Activation Narrative’ that is part of this session in the self-guided workbooks. The stories I tell aren’t comfortable, nor are they trauma porn. They are designed to elicit a specific response from the reader, tied to the topic our clients are working on in this session.
NAVIGATING INSTINCTIVE CRISIS
We build towering monuments to our success while blithely ignoring the places that give that success meaning.
INTRODUCTION — PRACTICED AWARENESS IN LIFE
You've built something consequential. Now the question is: can you protect it?
Most leaders plateau not from lack of talent or tenacity, but from unmanaged interior crises. The kind that builds slowly, invisibly—until one decision detonates everything you've constructed—the midlife implosion. The marriage ended because you stopped seeing it. The health collapse that nobody predicted but everyone saw coming.
This program maps the interior world where those crises originate—and teaches you to navigate them before they shipwreck your life. This isn't about building a meaningful life. It's about understanding why your life already has the meaning it does—and recognizing the moment that meaning starts to shift. Most leaders miss that moment. They realize too late that they've been living someone else's definition of success. By then, the correction is catastrophic.
You're about to learn to see it early. Across five sessions, you'll map four subconscious regions that determine what you consider meaningful:
Mapping Meaning — Identity · Energy · Legacy · Aspiration
These aren't theoretical concepts. They're biographical facts—built into your subconscious through decades of experience. You've already prioritized them. The question is whether you're aware of that prioritization, or whether it's running you blind. The videos accompanying this workbook bring that awareness to the surface. They replicate the stimulus-and-reflection rhythm of our live programs, allowing you to experience the patterns before you can name them. This isn't training. It's an excavation. The outcome isn't knowledge—it's the ability to navigate a crisis before it forces your hand.
What you're building: A map of your interior world. The ability to see a crisis forming before it becomes catastrophic. The discipline to navigate your own meaning-making map without losing yourself."
In the next post, we'll explore the introduction to the paradox of Extrinsic/Intrinsic conflict in My Culture.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY CULTURE 5
You practice not to achieve peace, but a ceasefire. In conflict, it is rarely possible to find permanent peace — but rather an enduring ceasefire.
SESSION FIVE — GROUNDING
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Culture - Session 5 - Principles’
Alongside the Principes video, I have included the ‘Activation Narrative’ that is part of this session in the self-guided workbooks. The stories I tell aren’t comfortable, nor are they trauma porn. They are designed to elicit a specific response from the reader, tied to the topic our clients are working on in this session.
The Fifth Red Rule:
“It is hard to think it is ok when you are free-falling.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
This activation narrative discusses mental health issues and PTSD openly. This can be triggering to some readers. You are all tier-one operators with high IQ/EQ levels. I fully expect you to be able to manage your own mental health while working through this session.
It was just before Christmas 2010 when I walked into a therapist's office in St. Louis. I was there for the holidays, visiting my wife’s family, before we got on the road in the new year for a two-month work trip. I’d been talking to a therapist for a couple of years, once a month over the phone, because the organization we worked for at the time required staff who were deployed internationally to invest in a holistic wellness program that included mental health check-ups. Cindy was my monthly health check-up for two years, and during the summer of 2009, she sat me down and carefully explained that she didn’t feel qualified to keep talking to me about my mental health. Her exact words escape me 15 years later, but the gist was that I needed to find someone who specialized in PTSD. I had begun to experience panic attacks the previous year for the first time, which was shocking to both me and those around me. Because of my early years, very little could make me afraid, so while I had a passionate and aggressive personality, I was also a great person to be around when life got stormy. Then all of a sudden, I developed a fear of flying after years of traveling around the world and loving flying. I became risk-averse and stopped going into the mountains. Cindy believed it was PTSD, finally manifesting, and I needed to get help before it got worse.
That day in late December 2010 began a 14-year journey into PTSD therapy. It was brutal, painful, and terrifying. But it also set me free, and now offers me a life without the ticking time bomb of untreated PTSD waiting to rob me of my family and a productive life. I doubt any of you who have worked through the narratives of these programs are shocked to discover I suffered from PTSD.
I’ve always been a fighter, unwilling to accept the limits set by others, and willing to fight for that right to do what I feel is right with anyone who decided they could impose limits upon me. That mindset has been immeasurably helpful in getting me beyond my origin story and giving me the passion to chase wildly unrealistic dreams to their successful conclusion. But the challenge to find my footing in the long, dark road of trauma recovery changed how I walked through life. I am now far more grounded. I’m still aggressively competitive, but there is now a calmer layer around that competition. I can feel ok.
In the next post, we'll explore the introduction to tension between navigating crises through the tension of Complexity and Simplicity. This will introduce you to My Life, the third of our core programs for My Success.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass
MY CULTURE 4
You practice not to achieve peace, but a ceasefire. In conflict, it is rarely possible to find permanent peace — but rather an enduring ceasefire.
SESSION FOUR — DELIGHT
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Culture - Session 4 - Principles’
Alongside the Principes video, I have included the ‘Activation Narrative’ that is part of this session in the self-guided workbooks. The stories I tell aren’t comfortable, nor are they trauma porn. They are designed to elicit a specific response from the reader, tied to the topic our clients are working on in this session.
The Fourth Red Rule:
“The power of play to disarm conflict is seen on every playground in the world.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
For many people familiar with my childhood, there is a sense that I never got the chance to play. But kids always find ways to play, even if it is while also scanning for danger signals. One of the advantages of being raised by wolves is that you have an extraordinary amount of unsupervised free time. As long as we went outside and stayed away, adults tended to leave us alone. Most of the time, I ran with a pack because safety in numbers was always an underlying concern on the streets.
But every so often, I’d break away. I loved to climb as a kid. I’d climb anything, but trees were one of my favorite things, and I’d get up high into the branches, and find a solid branch with interesting shapes, and disappear from my life and become some grand hero on an adventure. I had a trove of stories in my head because I also loved to read. I’d get up in a tree and become one of my book’s heroes, and lose myself for an hour or two before I had to climb back down into the grim reality that was my life.
I’m 54 and still love to climb, read, and get lost in my imagination. Currently, I am immersed in creating the workbook you are reading. There is a school of thought, and admittedly, I for a long time ascribed to it, that you can’t create a workbook that would produce a similar outcome to one-on-one coaching. To overcome this obstacle, I’m in full delight mode right now. I’m reading Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929 and cramming podcasts about AI, as well as daydreaming with my son about what our next car should be. John is eleven and has recently joined my delight in cars and driving. We have just finished watching Ford versus Ferrari and F1, and are now planning to attend a race.
At this point, I'd like to pause and explore a fascinating insight that this program occasionally offers. In the one-on-one coaching version of this program, our coaches need to capture the client’s basic motivation by working out the percentages of extrinsic and intrinsic home-mindset locations. For instance, my unique motivational percentage is ¾ Extrinsic because I am intrinsically motivated in this area. I have spent years in entrepreneurial settings and in content creation, both as a teacher and a coach. I find it somewhat strange that others focus on titles, status symbols, and extrinsic recognition. I genuinely don’t care. I am highly competitive and extrinsically motivated in most areas, so I have learned to play the game, collecting the extrinsic tokens I need to achieve success.
In the next post, we'll explore the first vehicle you'll learn to drive—Grounding—and how it allows you to travel between Competition and Stability without losing your home.
THIS IS NOT TRAINING. IT'S CALIBRATION.
Self-guided workbooks: $297 | Live coaching: $10,000 per series
They call me 'Sherpa' because I help people get to where they want to go. I can't promise you will have all your fingers and toes when you reach your summit. But you'll achieve it. If you're looking for easy, this isn't it. If you want transformation, start here: Sherpa Intro Tree — Bespoke Compass
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar | Bespoke Compass