Posts tagged Contentment
Be Yourself, Everybody Else Is Already Taken – (How to Get What You Want)
Dec 2nd
One can only imagine how genuine these words felt to Oscar Wilde when he penned the expression, “Be Yourself, Everybody Else is Already Taken.” I wasn’t even sure myself until I stumbled upon the quote, was moved by its honest humor and researched the Irish writer’s background to understand what he meant. Wilde was an intelligent, once privileged and highly educated playwright who suffered greatly for opinions and choices that were outside of London society, eventually leading to his imprisonment, poverty and an early death.
No one strives to live a life in exile. Adversity comes at us every day in rapid fire as we dodge and take shelter from its surge. How we handle adversity evolves in many forms. We start by avoiding with denial. Then we survive just to get by often burying ourselves in long hours, rejection, backstabbing or drudgery. We cope sometimes with useful mechanisms such as exercise and communication and sometimes with the negative influences of the vices. We manage by setting goals to be productive but still are void of satisfaction. And eventually, we hope to achieve the ability to elevate ourselves to true contentment and do the same for others. But how we get there remains the dilemma that can keep us imprisoned from all that we desire – peace and fulfillment.
The formula for this is very simple: First, you want to identify what is the thing that if accomplished would bring you the most fulfillment in life. Second, you want to eliminate the single biggest thing that stands in its way. This isn’t as easy. The challenge of eliminating your greatest oppositions has been at the root of self-help books and therapists’ work for centuries.
How to Get What You Want
1. Make an “Area of Importance List.” Write down every area of your life that is important to you. This may include friends, sports, achievement, community service, work, family, etc.
2. Set two or more “Targets” for each Area of Importance. Identify two to three things you’d like to accomplish for each of the areas identified.
3. Identify the “Barriers” for each Target. Barriers could be a feeling or a tangible obstructer ie: don’t have the confidence or don’t have the needed education. Spend thoughtful time on this list as this is what is keeping you from what you want.
4. For each Area of Importance, select the one “Key Barrier.” Which area, if addressed has the greatest potential of helping you the most to reach fulfillment?
5. Prioritize what “Key Target” (from #2) is most important to your fulfillment. This is the one thing that were it to occur, you’d never again feel as if you were out of alignment with yourself or what you want.
6. Prioritize what “Key Barrier” is keeping you from your “Key Target.” This one barrier is so vast and so overwhelming that just the thought of it lapses you back into a state where you can’t even imagine fulfillment coming to life. This barrier obstructs your vision of a life of peace and harmony with yourself and all that is around you.
7. “Clear the Key Barrier.” This is the most difficult part of the exercise. This barrier has been part of you for so long that you are comfortable having it around even though you know it hinders your happiness. You don’t know how to let it go because you are not sure what to replace it with nor are you comfortable with the sustainability of replacing it with anything.
In my years of executive coaching I have seen these barriers effect corporate culture, team synergy, productivity and personal happiness for dozens of very well educated and accomplished professionals. What I will tell you is that the people who are able to win the battle with their “Key Barrier” and get it out of the way do it with two key strategies: 1) They become curious about the “Key Barrier” and 2) They become compassionate to it.
They understand that this “Key Barrier” is part of them and will likely re-surface intermittently for the rest of their lives. They accept that. They recognize when the “Key Barrier” is rearing its head earlier in various scenarios than they used to. And they know what to do with it.
From a curious perspective, they ask themselves what is going on in their body and their emotions when they start to notice the “Key Barrier.” What is that barrier trying to protect you from? Ask it. Why is it showing up now? What is the worst that could happen? What would happen if it were to take a back seat for today?
From a compassionate perspective, they embrace that the barrier is trying to protect them from something – harm?, hurt?, pain?, loss?, disappointment? They notice how they feel about the part of them that is only trying to protect them. It helps them to suffer less resistance to it – be less shut down. They want to nurture it and assure it that the worst that could happen is not likely. They invite it to experience joy.
Be curious and compassionate about your “Key Barriers.” They’re part of you. This way you will get back to being yourself. After all, everybody else is already taken. Start now!
Swimming With Jellyfish – Creating a Positive Attitude Despite the Recession
Sep 16th
Most of us only tend to live our lives at about 50% of our potential. In other words, we’re doing only half the things we could be doing. In fact, I’ll put it even more bluntly. The lives most of us are missing out on are the goals, hopes and desires that we REALLY want and need to make our lives more complete and worthwhile. And those are the ones that require confidence so we can enable ourselves to have a go at achieving something which we can later look back on with contentment and, as a result, greater confidence.
It’s much easier to take the less challenging option and live with that, but, in so many of us, there are niggling thoughts about what could be or even might have been. This is down to a mixture of fear and lack of confidence. Whether it’s bungy jumping from a perilous height, taking a spontaneous motorbike tour of Europe or asking that special person out on a date or leaving the job you’ve never really liked and starting your own business, most people take the safe option of maintaining the status quo.
Doing the things that unnerve or even frighten you takes you into the Adventure Zone – a mysterious, unpredictable and limitless place where anything can happen – where you have to address any lack of confidence as it’s the only way to experience and enjoy all this environment has to offer. It’s unsettling, but it can be excitingly life-changing.
The other option is to stay in the Safe Zone – an easily identifiable, predictable and limited place where only certain things can happen – where limiting beliefs and limiting attitudes flourish with little risk of you benefitting from anything that might change your life for the better. It’s the place to settle if you don’t want to change your life for the better – but most of us can and probably need to improve our lot – and want to spend too much time wondering what you and your life could be like if only you took that crucial step into the relatively unknown.
I know this from my personal and professional clients and from the seemingly endless number of people I meet who live as If Only people in the Safe Zone. If they have a certain level of life ambition, they exist with this manacle of often polite and restrained frustration because they haven’t really given this part of their life a proper go. This could be because they’ve been made to feel bad about themselves when a youngster, because they’ve never got the job or promotion they really wanted, because they’ve got an overdraft, because their partner left them to marry a gnu called Bernard in the Far East, etc.
Some or all of these things may well have happened – even if the gnu wasn’t called Bernard – but that doesn’t mean you have to be tied to that experience for the rest of your life and let it flavour and dominate how you live your life, particularly if it doesn’t make you feel good.
Would you swim with jellyfish if you knew they would sting you?! If you have to think about that for even a second, then Bernard beckons as does some bizarre ensuing marriage ceremony. Wouldn’t you go and find somewhere else for sting-free and limb and life damaging-free swimming? And in doing so you’d more than likely have to explore new places and options which in turn would give you a new perspective and you’d also be more thorough about finding out how safe the water was to swim in. You’d do more, gain more and feel more in control. You’d make things happen and, in so doing, develop the level of confidence you may well have been lacking.
Confidence gives you the impetus and therefore the self-belief to grasp opportunities in life so you can enjoy them and even succeed where you might not have otherwise. Therefore you can find new and deeper ways of fulfilling your potential to achieve happiness, success and stronger self-esteem. And if you are married to a gnu called Bernard, then good for you for giving it a go with a rather dysfunctional and hysterical migrating wildebeest. As that takes confidence.
