Are You Ready To Dig Deeper
Over the past several weeks, we’ve talked about values, setting intentions, showing up as your authentic self, and the inner critic. We then moved on to a leadership series; leader vs manager, catabolic vs anabolic, and then last week we talked about perspective. How do you view your world? We all view the world thru a filter, the lens of our life….
So all of this learning has gotten us here. What now? What’s the next step? It’s time to go deep, pull off the mask, and get to the truth of who you really are. If you want to be a better leader in your career and in your life, you have to get unstuck. You need to rid yourself of what no longer serves you, and pivot and take that journey to discovery. If you are overwhelmed, feel like you are in a pressure cooker and the title of your life story would be called Chaos, it’s time to dig in.
So what is your story? What’s holding you back? Whatever it is that’s holding you back, that exact thing is your opportunity. Whatever the frustration or the pain is, that thing is your path forward. If you’re miserable and can’t get out of your own way, your life feels like Groundhog day, chances are there is something that you are not being honest to yourself about. You’re stuck in a story. The story creates a narrative that you begin to live out. The story will separate you from the life that you want, by applying filters and creating a false reality out of those filters.
How then do we go deep and see thru the filter? You have to be open, open to being in this world without filtering it, without judging every experience. Start being curious about yourself and the feelings you experience. Let me give you an example. You love to travel, but you have no one to travel with. Maybe your friends either can’t afford it right now or they have other things going on. You become annoyed and a little sad because you tell yourself that you won’t be able to go on the trip that you’ve always dreamed of. You just told yourself a story and now you begin to believe it. Since your friends can’t go, you can’t go. Why did you tell yourself that story? It’s not likely to be true. Instead of accepting that your friends can’t go, and just sitting with that feeling, you’d realize that you’re probably feeling disappointment. If you open yourself up, you can acknowledge that you are feeling disappointed, and start to get curious about it. Just because you have a feeling, doesn’t mean you have to be that feeling. You can choose at that point to be a victim, and say woe is me, or you could say – I don’t want be disappointed. I chose not to. Then you start to look at options. One option might be go anyway. Book a trip by yourself. Set an intention to be more outgoing, and meet new people. You can choose to feel excitement. Another option would be to choose yet another feeling. You can choose to think about why you want to go on this trip? Maybe because you’re stressed out and overwhelmed. You can start going deeper and getting curious about why you are so stressed out. What options do you have at work, and in life to decrease your stress. Maybe what you really need is to find a new job, get out of a toxic relationship, or start practicing self- care. You can choose to be full of gratitude, because you took the time to focus inward on what you really need, and in turn you can continue to be more mindful to yourself.
If you don’t take the time to be curious about your story, you will always be a victim. You will remain at the effect of life, never the cause. If you want to start leading and excelling, you need to be at the cause. You need to make things happen and not let everything happen to you. The world that you want to see, is yours to see. If you’re struggling to dig deeper, and curious about how coaching can help you get there, let’s chat.