Coaching #1 - Be Who You Want To Be
If you look in the mirror and can confidently say ‘I am
being who I want to be’ then read no further.
You are doing what you want to do and going where you want to go so keep
on that happy track. If like many people
you are dissatisfied with who you are and the life you are living, then let’s
see if we can open your eyes to the interesting possibilities open to you that
you are currently ignoring.
In every present
moment there are an infinite number of new and exciting realities available to
all of us. We avoid the exciting
possibilities we want to be as we see them as risky and posing danger to
us. The possibilities we expect
ourselves to follow appear safe to us even when we know they do not make us
happy.
All of our presents were shaped by our pasts and often by
other people who thought they knew what was best for us. Professional people like doctors, dentists,
lawyers and accountants often decide for their children that the professions
are the best route to a happy life for their children. Some parents come to the same conclusion and
direct their children in to such careers.
Teachers guide students away from an academic career or an
entrepreneurial track in to working for a big corporation. The intention of the guide is often good, but
it does lead to many people doing something they don’t want to do and an
immense amount of frustration and dissatisfaction with the life they are living.
Think about how you decided to do what you are doing and be
who you are being. Were all the key
decisions freely made by you? How did
you feel about those that were made for you?
How do you feel about them now?
Write down some of the answers you come up with for these questions and
reflect on those answers and how they impact who you are today.
In every present
moment we rely on our past to shape our future.
We treat the past as our story of who we are and comfortably slip in to
the future that past proposes. By
allowing our past to shape our future we prefer the dissatisfaction that gives
to the risks we see in the many exciting possibilities available to us in the
present.
It is important to say that not being who we want to be is
quite normal. I went to University,
studied mathematics and had a place to do post graduate doctorate on the path I
thought I wanted. My goal was to be a
university lecturer. A combination of
people including my parents, friends and mentors persuaded me to consider a
career in industry instead. I went in to
the Oil Industry and had a successful career.
My coping mechanisms saw me through the challenges, but I always had a
feeling my true calling was in academia.
In my current life I am being who I want to be and I am now much more
aligned with my own interests and motivations.
I am now a coach and a photographer.
When we choose to do the things we do not want to do it is
our brain functioning as it is designed to do.
Our brains evolved to protect us.
It is constantly looking out for things that could harm us. It is comfortable with the things it
understands from past experience and knows do not harm us. Things it has not yet tried will be seen as
threats and our brains will magnify the size of that threat to make sure we
focus all our energy making sure the threat does not harm us. Put another way our brain is much more
comfortable moving us along an unhappy path it understands and has seen us
survive than it is giving us permission to take on something it does not yet
understand.
If the brain is
presented with one unit of something it knows and understands such as ‘I am an
oil industry executive’ and one unit of something it knows little about yet
such as ‘I am a photographer’ it focusses little attention on what it knows and
understands and triples its concerns about what it knows little about. This means that something you are doing
unhappily but is not harming you is of three times more interest to you as a
way to go forward in your life than an exciting possibility that might make you
happy but is not yet understood. We have
all experienced this as our minds go in to overdrive with concerns about
something we would like to do. We all
know the phrase in our minds ‘I can’t because…..’
The good news is we can interfere with this process and be
who we want to be. It is going to be a
fight and take commitment and effort to get there but success will take us to a
better place. Our brains look at a new
possibility for who we want to be in the same way it might consider an
approaching tiger with you in its sights.
The trick we need to apply is to ask if the risk of doing something
different and being who we want to be was one third of the risk our brain
thinks it is then would we do it? The
answer is often yes and acting intentionally with this knowledge can transform
our lives to get closer to who we want to be.
There is already a lot to think about here and reflect on
how it relates to who you are being and the life you are living. For now, spend some time in this reflection
and if it makes some sense to you we can proceed to the next step. If your brain is shouting ‘don’t listen, this
is all dangerous nonsense and far too risky for you’ then it is doing its job
and we are going to have to find ways of calming this organ down, so it can
accept the change we want to make. We
can do this in the next step by asking the question ‘what do you want?’
Len Williamson
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