Five things I learned while transforming my life.
If you’ve taken the courageous, exciting and powerful step to hire a coach or create some formal structure within which to actually create your dream life and business, first of all, congratulations! It’s an extraordinary thing to back yourself all the way – and build a team around you who are totally committed to that, too. And if it’s something you’re mulling on - that is not nothing! There’s a seed of possibility in your plant pot over there, and this post is also intended to offer something for you – I see you, too!
I’ll level with you. The first time I made this kind of investment in myself – my legs were shaking, and it did not feel 100% good. My wonderful coach at the time had spent hours with me before any money changed hands – giving me space to lift my head out of the sand to actually envision what could be ahead for me, if I were prepared to take steps towards it.
The vision was so compelling that I could not un-see it, so I went for it; a whole year of support (mainly so that I did not have to be with the FOMO I’d just created for myself). At the same time I did not really believe that, even with a coach by my side, I could actually have the utopia I’d glimpsed – I sweated over the thought that I’d been hoodwinked into frittering away my hard-earned cash with an oily svengali, wondering if my gremlins would still be violently snacking after midnight. And don’t worry, they were definitely there, and still are, occasionally splattering the walls with whatever fits into the thought blender of self-sabotage.
But that year of my life changed everything. The part of me that actually likes myself - and believes that I can have anything I want - got the microphone for the first time in – well, pretty much EVER! She planted the seeds of radical change and almost six years later I am the protagonist in a very different movie. I’ve moved to the Kent coast with my husband, I have my beloved dog, walks in nature, the city and all its allure is a stone’s throw away – and now, so is France – and I spend my working days doing something that I love so much it hurts. But it’s the growing kind of pain. I’m living what I thought was impossible – and creatively inventing my ‘what’s next’.
You CAN have your version of impossible (and more). And I am going to tell you (some of) what I wish I had known six years ago.
1. You really will go further together.
Loneliness is one of the top causes of workplace burnout, according to the Harvard Business Review. We aren’t meant to do this alone – humans are naturally inclined to interconnection – and inspired, emboldened and empowered by it. One of my clients said it to me yesterday – “I make my ambitions smaller when I’m left to my own devices, so that I can content myself with what I have. Our conversations have opened me up to what lies beyond my own glass ceiling and actually got me into action towards it and feel it’s all possible”. I can’t say it any better.
2. The path to freedom is ownership.
If there is one thing that I could give you in a gift box to open and look at every time you feel stuck it’s THIS. Look to what you can own, everywhere. It’s taken me years to truly understand this, but if I am facing some sort of uncomfortable mess or uncontrollable situation, if I first look at the ways in which I may have created (or co-created) this, I now have identified something I know I can own and control. I have my power back. And from there I get to choose who I show up as in any given moment, what qualities I intend to bring into any room, how personally I take something, how I clean up a mess I made, how much I hide, how I confront, when I take action, when I choose rest, how much love I let in, how much love I give, how much I am willing to see another person’s greatness even when their actions or words are hurting me. I have never felt more free than when I practice taking a look on my side of the street for what I can own, first. Try it and see how your world changes.
3. Your fear is a useful barometer.
At the centre of your universe are your fears. I’m not talking about fear of spiders or heights, not those external kind of fears. But the fears that live in your head - perhaps around how others will perceive you, what it might mean about you if you were to fail, how things ‘should’ be in any given moment. We construct our lives to avoid experiencing what we are afraid of - leading us to inhabit smaller, more restricted lives. When you start creating your world around your desires, rather than shrinking it to avoid disasters, you will inevitably come up against your fears – you can’t grow without this. I’m not asking you to abandon the intuition that tells you a dark street at night may be unsafe to walk down. I’m saying that feeling afraid as you move towards something you want will be taking you into unfamiliar territory – if you want anything new, expect to feel afraid – welcome it as a barometer for your growth and courage, and get support to move forward anyway.
4. Where your focus goes, energy flows.
I came into this work hoping to fix all the ‘wrong’ things about myself, once and for all. That’s where I wanted to put all my energy and focus – but notice what happens when you sit with a complaint about yourself for a whole minute. What happens to your energy when you relate to yourself as a problem? Now notice what happens when you relate to the complaint as one of the stabilisers on the bike you’re learning to ride. Now shift your experience to the bike ride itself – what’s it really like wobbling on this bike, what can you see from your saddle – where could it take you? Are you still on the bike? There you go!
5. You can always get back on your path.
We are all on a path. Some of us are sleepwalking along it, barely conscious that we’re even on a path, or where this road might be leading, until we get up in a drone and take a look. Perhaps you are heading towards More-Of-The-Same-Ville, twinned with I’ll-Change-Things-When-I’m-An-Expert-Town? That was me. Every path leads somewhere – is it where you want to go? And if it’s not, what path would you leap onto and start following if you knew what was waiting for you? Once you have your map, are you following it? Or did you wander off to inspect something shiny? It’s fine to do both, of course, just know that you can get back onto your chosen path at any time. I love this thought, I find it gently calls me back when my gremlins hand me a dramatic ‘chuck in the towel just because I took a little detour’ smoothie.