Most of the work I do with my clients (and myself) starts with checking into their alignment.
Who they are and what they want vs. what they believe about themselves and what they do
As I often point out, your identity can tell you so much about why you do the things you do (or why you DON’T do the things you want to do).
It’s important that they’re comfortable enough and willing to share these things with me, but more important, they need to be comfortable thinking about them.
Whenever I work with another coach and they ask about my vision for the future, I struggle. I’ve gotten better over the years, but in the beginning that was the part i hated kind of like that question- tell us something interesting about yourself. How about you tell me about yourself first, and then I’ll have an idea of what you’d find interesting about me.
Sorry, I digressed.
Whenever asked about my vision for the future or what I want, I’d think about it. I’d do my best to “see” it in my head, but I avoided writing it down. To be honest, the viewing in my head was more like short scenes from a music video, definitely not the film version needed to fully get a grip.
Every time I tried to write it down, I’d stop short. Either I wasn’t sure of what I wanted or something seemed …not right.
And as I always do after a while, I started to ask myself “why?”
And as usual, the “why” wasn’t easy to come by.
They “why: behind most things aren’t easy to come by, but sometimes we don’t have the luxury of discovering it first, and then moving forward.
I knew that I was uncomfortable . I knew that something was up. Maybe I didn’t believe I could have those things? Maybe I heard voices of other people from my life saying “It must be nice” or laughing at the things I dared to dream. Maybe it was a lack of confidence.
Maybe it was ALL of those things, but that didn’t matter at the moment.
In the moment I had to get clear on what was blocking me (and as usual, it was me):
Me not allowing myself to be fully honest and open with what I want and dare to dream
Me not allowing myself to make as little of a commitment as to write it down on paper
Me running away or putting it off every time I was asked to do it
Those were the things I needed to get clear on and then face them.
For whatever reasons, I was stopping myself from moving into my vision, my future, because I wouldn’t allow myself to articulate it.
Imagine telling your friends that you’re going on a trip but you can’t say the name or look up the location because it makes you so uncomfortable. What is the likelihood that you’ll go?
The “why” is important, but the action- the “What do I need to do right now to get me moving away from this feeling or thought that is keeping me stuck?”- is what we need to do as soon as possible.
I had to write, even though I didn't want to. Even though every bit of me wanted to avoid it.
I had to sit and allow myself to see it and then write it down.
These days, I have far less resistance to writing down my vision for my future.
Each time I do it, the vision gets longer. Each time I add a little more to it,
Each time I can see it better.
And you know what? Now I have an idea of where I’m going. And it’s a place that I WANT, not a place that I'll end up because I allowed my life to drift with the tides of life and things happening around me.
I have to be able to SEE where I'm going and envision myself there before I can get there.
So do you.
Get busy getting clear. Get busy writing it down. Then get busy getting there.
What do you need to do right now to get you moving away from the thought or feeling keeping you stuck?