Even if we all had wings
very few of us would fly
like most things in life
it’s not what we are capable of
it’s what we are willing to do
image and quote from Bigstockphoto.com by graphicphoto
Category Archives: Creative Mind
Where the Heck is my Magic 8 Ball?
As I am navigating my life, in the great unknowing, it occurs to me that knowing the future seems to be a wish that most people have. We want someone or something else to “tell” us what we should do, or what will happen. If we do A… then XYZ will be the outcome. If we marry this person, we will be happy. Or, if we take that opportunity then we will be wildly successful. We want guarantees that follow a, “if… then…” and the irony of life is that until you dive in, you will never know how warm the water is. Life requires us to take leaps of faith. We can gather up all our skills, we can collect all our supporters, and we can spend a lot of time collecting tools to make sure we have the very best chance of winning the day. But, at the end of it, when the time comes to make a choice, you are going to have to walk through the unknown. There are no magic wands or magic 8 balls to steer us through the void. And, this is where your personal story can help you, how you decide what you are worth, how you believe that your message is powerful, and what you decide to share about yourself, will ultimately determine how you handle these leaps.
Leaps of faith are at the center of our brilliance, they generate the energy of creativity and they push us into being strong and having fortitude.
“All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.” Henry Miller
A leap of faith is required if we are going to move, change our life, change our career, or do anything of real importance and meaning to us and the world. There is no action that you might take that doesn’t require this leap. You can fight it, wish you knew the future, pretending that you have everything under control, or you can leap luxuriously into your life, no Magic 8 Ball needed.
Be brave and let’s get to the other side!
Stop Screwing Yourself Over
This is a really great TED talk. Mel Robbins really calls us out on why we don’t get what we want. “Getting what you want is simple, it’s just not easy.” This TED talk is worth a view. Stop telling yourself that you’re “Fine,” she says it’s time to force yourself to take action.
Becoming Yourself
An interesting thing happened on the way to my new life…
I had moved from New Mexico to Washington State and I had the opportunity to reinvent myself. I took the opportunity with both hands and I began the transformation from Therapist to Coach. As it often happens with any change, it hasn’t been exactly comfortable. As I shifted gears, (visualize a big boat turning… slowly) I found that I didn’t exactly know how to even think of myself in different ways. I was comfortable in my old story of myself and the reinvention forced me to think, a lot, about how to describe myself, what I do, who I work with, or even what exactly I was passionate about. I didn’t want to seem wishy washy, but I was going through various ideas of myself and descriptions, like trying on outfits at the mall. I am a Therapist, I am a Coach, I am a Life Coach, I am a Business Coach, I am a Leadership Coach… I was trying on niche labels like trying on jeans. Some looked ok, but didn’t feel right; others just didn’t fit at all.
I have a very good friend who is a Business Coach and I admire her. I thought to myself I have had a business since 2004, I understand business systems, I have done a lot of marketing, and I have a lot of training that supports businesses. I have designed team building trainings. Yet, I wasn’t really resonating with the idea of calling myself a Business Coach. Calling myself a Therapist seemed easier when I began my private practice 11 years ago because people seem to know what “Therapist” means. There is a issue with Coaching in that everyone on earth seems to want to be a Coach, trainied or not. So, I was told I have to differentiate myself from the Coaching masses and in ways that as a Therapist I didn’t feel that I had to. So, what does the label/niche really mean? What are the words that resonate and empower you to communicate clearly who you are and what you do? And, how does one traverse the journey of personal discovery that you have to navigate as you go?
The point of sharing my identity crisis…
A friend asked me why I felt the need to call myself a Business Coach instead of a Life Coach or some other type of coach? I responded, “Because I thought it sounded better…”. We both started laughing. I am person who works with people to find their authentic voice and there I was doing just the opposite. The huge take away for me was that it is easy to get sidetracked when you are discovering yourself. Our brains want to be in some sort of comfort zone, and at times we might be willing to slap a label, any label, on ourselves just to be done. Yet, it also feels uncomfortable when we slap on a label that doesn’t fit and we are not being authentic. Internally, I was dealing with the anxiety that comes from feeling lost, like I had an no authentic message and desperately wanting the internal churn to stop. The hardest thing I had to do was I had to sit in this place of discomfort and breathe into the experience. I needed to allow my mind to wrangle with these ideas and not throw an instant “fix” just to superficially stop the discomfort. And I discovered along the way just how wrong it felt to be heading down some path that didn’t feel right, because I had no words to authentically express the right path.
Aha Moment!
Words clearly matter and they are very literally attached to the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. This is true for all of us. When we aren’t being authentic, if feels wrong inside. Oscar Wilde once said, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” So how do you just “be yourself”?
Six quick thoughts:
- The journey of authenticity requires you try on different ideas of yourself like clothes, but it also requires you to feel if the outfit actually fits for you. Be willing to try again and again until you start to feel what resonates. The focus is on becoming “You,” not trying to become someone else. And, it’s certainly not about slapping on some label that is doesn’t resonate.
- Discovering your true self is scary and often messy. You may think something feels right, then as you wear it for awhile, you may find out, you need to tweak your direction. This is all part of the discovery process.
- There are two types of discomfort to be aware of.
- You have to listen to the discomfort you feel when you are going off course by not being true to yourself and trying to be someone you’re not comfortable being.
- You have to breathe through the discomfort and worry, that maybe you’re not good enough the way you are, that you’re not smart enough, or that no one will like you. This will probably take more than one breath.
- The more you focus on developing yourself, listening to you body, playing with what you love to do, and exploring how you want to show up in the world, the more clarity you will develop.
- The more you share your truth, the quicker you will discover your tribe of people. That tribe includes people you have never met, but when you do, and you share your authentic self, they will resonate with you and appreciate your unique message. This includes finding a job or career that you resonate with, choosing friends, and most importantly, finding intimate partners.
- Not everyone is a part of your tribe. If some people you meet don’t get you or like you… well, that’s ok. I spent many years in my 20’s trying to make people like me, it meant I was like a chameleon, constantly changing my color depending on who I was with. It was exhausting. Truthfully, it’s a big world and your job is to just focus on being you. The right people, the ones who will “get you,” will show up.
Ira Glass, from This American Life, says it very well, “Everything is more compelling, the more that you are yourself.”
images from BigStockPhoto.com: Transformation Cartoon cartoon resource and Five Girls Image conrado
StoryJacking
Storyjacking™ is a technique that can be used in several ways, but at its core it is the recognition that stories are important. We hear stories of success and stories of failure. We tell ourselves stories about ourselves and about others; some stories are painful, while other stories lift our spirits. In each story we are playing out different parts and depending on the part we are playing, it makes all the difference in how we move forward in our lives.
Stories are epically important to how we view and interact in the world around us. We define ourselves, our abilities and even our goals by the stories we believe and share. These stories become part of our personal view of our world. Organizations also create goals, missions, visions and values, and those become intertwined with the story they tell and believe. Stories attract us to our friends, our lovers, our community of people and clients. Stories fill out our memories and impact our feelings and adjust how we think about everything. Every now and again when we notice something isn’t working or isn’t feeling right, we need to notice the story that we have assigned to the situation. If our story isn’t serving us, negatively impacts our families, our communities, or our organizations, we might just have to find a way to “StoryJack” the story, transforming it, and creating a new story that we resonate with so that we can “Jack Into” a better version or experience the story – and our life – in a new way.
How StoryJacking works –
1: We “StoryJack” a story when we change it. Maybe there is a story we’ve heard or a story we tell ourselves and we want to rewrite the story, changing the message into something that works better for us. Maybe we have a story about not being good enough, or smart enough; these would be good stories to StoryJack. It can happen with a story we’ve been told, like a fairytale, where we change the story into something more meaningful, maybe the princess kicks butt and saves the prince for a change. Really, we StoryJack all the time. Anytime you create a vision of a future that is different than the moment you find yourself in, you are working on StoryJacking. The people who successfully StoryJack their lives go to the next step in the process of Jacking Into the story.
2: We can “Jack Into” a story that resonates with us. We feel the connection to our new story and “Jack,” that emotion into our own story. We have all had that experience when we hear something that creates a powerful and positive emotion or excites us. We want to see and feel ourselves in the story. We have a resonance that occurs and it deepens our understanding of ourselves or the world around us. It’s in these moments that the story and you connect. “Jacking Into” a new story can be exciting and even scary. It may be moving from the story of being a student to becoming a fully fledged adult. Maybe it’s shifting from being an employee to becoming an entrepreneur. In business, it may be shaking up the story of the dysfunctional team and creating the new story of the Team that Rocks It! In intimate relationships, it might be the move from being “unloveable” to seeing ourselves as “loveable.” These story shifts are epic. To do this well, we have to really create a story that matters to us. These shifts can be so big that it is important to create a rich and full bodied story, to create an excitement that propels you into your next story. We won’t commit to stories that feel lukewarm to us. No one wants the cold oatmeal story! We want the exciting, passionate, and empowering story. We may want our story to be a force for good, even a force for change. We may want to share our gifts with our families, with our communities, with the world. But, no change happens without a strong desire and StoryJacking is about how we create and manage the desire to change we want to have.
StoryJacking is rewriting the stories that aren’t serving us and creating a more powerful connection to the stories that do serve us. Then we can “Jack Into” them. Then the power of our new narrative can be felt – and shared.
I will be writing more about the process in the coming weeks. It all begins with once upon a time…
images from BigStockPhoto.com: retro typewriter Vagengeym and open book Remains
Develop your Positive Intelligence
Shirzad Chamine at TEDxStanford
What a great TEDtalk! By understanding your inner saboteurs, you can challenge all the negative self talk, and then start listening to your inner sage. The guide to being happier and more successful is inside of you. Develop your Positive Intelligence.
http://positiveintelligence.com
Every Moment Offers us Choices
Every Moment Offers Us Choices
Choose wisely
Because the Choices You Make, Make You
Lyssa
photo from Katmai National Park, Alaska
The Learning Journey
There is something interesting that happens when we get new toys and want to play with them. We unwrap them with all sorts of anticipation. The excitement of the new experience courses through our brains and gives us little adrenaline bursts.
Just like a present, new and novel experiences light up our brains like candy. Unlike that new gift, we may discover that learning something new isn’t always so easy. All that excitement can be transformed into frustration, because becoming really good at the new thing doesn’t come so easily. The exciting idea doesn’t always transmit into practical application.
I am thinking of myself here. I was so excited to build my website! I got my domain name with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, only to be hit with the reality of using WordPress to build a website. There is a real learning curve involved. You can insert the new mastery of anything: WordPress, Marketing, any Adobe product, making friends, getting a degree, anything. We start off with loads of enthusiasm, and we might end up quitting because the new thing ends up being harder than we expected.
It’s important to know that there is a process to learning; let’s call it the “Learning Journey.” The learning journey is made up of four stages, Unconscious Incompetence; Conscious Incompetence; Conscious Competence; and Unconscious Competence. Understanding these stages will help you not feel less like quitting just because a hard new learning didn’t get instantly downloaded to your brain in 5 minutes.
Stage 1 – Unconscious Incompetence
This means that we don’t even know what we don’t know. Let’s say I see a beautiful photograph, I have no idea what went into making that picture. I just know I want to make a beautiful photograph too. What I may not understand is that the photographer had to understand how to use the camera, how to choose the shot, she may have had to use Adobe Photoshop (or some other software) to clean it up and adjust it. But, I don’t know all that yet. When I decide to get a camera and start taking pictures, I may find out my images aren’t as pretty, and I don’t know why. So, I start to investigate, and find myself moving into the next stage.
Stage 2 – Conscience Incompetence
This is the stage at which we begin to know what we don’t know. It can feel like there is so much to learn. This can be incredibly frustrating. We’ve begun to have a clear understanding of what’s expected, but we really don’t yet understand how to make that happen. In fact, this is the stage in which most of us give up. This can be true of a new skill, a new g
ame or new software. It isn’t so easy to figure out, so we quit. Or, it can also apply to a new way of doing something, for instance, changing our diets or managing our anger. This is the stage that we have to start educating ourselves. Reading books, taking classes, fiddling around and trying different things to see what we get. It is truly the stage for exploration. If we can persevere and make it through this stage, we will have the benefit of moving on the third stage of the learning journey.
Stage 3 – Conscious Competence
We now know what’s expected and we know how to make it happen. We have been learning, maybe teaching ourselves, reading tons of books, we have watched YouTube videos till our eyes bleed, taken classes and maybe consulted experts. Camera’s are complicated and good photography is not just a quick snapshot. It still takes a lot of energy to do the new task, but we are starting to feel confident. Neuroscientists have taken P. E. T. scans of the human brain during stage 2 and stage 3. What they have found is that the brain uses a tremendous amount of glucose as it is learning and concentrating on new tasks. Your brain wants to attain mastery so it can do its thing with ease. This is exactly what occurs in the fourth stage of the learning journey.
Stage 4 – Unconscious Competence
Finally, we no longer have to think too hard in order to do the task, but rather our brains can coast as we go into automatic drive. This is the stage in which we feel the most competent doing our task. We have all felt this at times. If you drive the same route to work every day, you may find that you left home and then arrived without noticing much of the drive; your brain didn’t need to focus on the skill of navigation, just on driving. It’s also the stage that we always wished we started in, especially when we start a new skill.
Finally…
As we decide to learn new things or change patterns of behavior, we find ourselves moving through the first, second, and third stages again and again. The harder the thing we are trying to learn, the more frustrating it can feel. It’s helpful to understand these stages so that when you find yourself learning something new or changing some behavior, you can recognize and understand what stage you will be in. Then give yourself a break. Honor that you are even trying something new! It takes time and fortitude to become a master. It will happen if you keep on pushing through the stages of the Learning Journey. Oh, as for me, I finally got my new website up – WordPress and all. Check it out.
images from BigStockPhoto.com: stairs bestdesign36 and woman photographer olly2
Creative Human Solutions 