Being On Purpose
When we are rigidly attached to an outcome we set ourselves up for failure. Events are just neutral; they have meaning only when we assign meaning to the event. We can choose responses, rather than being attached to an expectation of others’ behavior or an event.
Planes, Trains & Automobiles is the classic movie reference I make in this episode!
Once upon a time a week ago we discussed the idea that goals exist to serve you and not, as is popularly thought, to cause guilt, consternation or overwhelm in your world.
In the past (that place Dr. Seuss so brilliantly describes as “the waiting place” in his classic, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!), you may have set a lot of goals, or a couple of doozies at a minimum, possibly even written them down and you certainly shared your objectives with at least one other person, then promptly didn’t achieve whatever you set out to do.
You may even have engaged in some self-talk:
Why does any of this matter?
Land squarely in that space in which you create goals because of what they do for you, and you’ll be ready to reset your relationship with yourself.
The habit patterns you are building by keeping your commitments with you increase your capacity to make and keep the next commitment and the commitment after that.
I’m Not a Marathoner, BUT
Runners don’t start by running in a marathon; they gradually increase their capacity to run 26 miles, so by the time the day of the marathon arrives they know they can cross the finish line with confidence because they’ve been running the distance incrementally for months in advance.
Your relationship with yourself is the foundation of every other relationship in your life.
Keep your promises to you.
Steve Chandler said,
It’s not what a goal IS that matters; it’s what a goal DOES. So when you think of this goal, what does it do for you? Your goals are creations; you create goals to serve yourself. The goal is supposed to serve you.
WHAT?!!!!
Back up. Rewind. Reread.
No wonder we get discouraged and don’t feel excited about the novel we committed to write, or the gym membership we paid to use, or the sales number we pulled out of a hat, or the company projection we’re anticipating, or the global domination we intend to execute.
When you think you’re not motivated to act on that goal it has little to nothing to do with you; it’s the goal, itself. Chances are you set the goal because of what it represents and not for what it does.
I’m all about vision and creating amazing things AND I know I can’t jump farther than I can jump.
Let me put it another way: If I’m not walking around excited about what I’m creating and in the act of DOING it then I know my goals are clearly under the IS column and not the DOES column.
Right now is a perfect time to review your goals. Are they serving you, or is it just a goal for the sake of being a goal?
Are you looking for ways to motivate yourself toward actively accomplishing your goal?
Do you feel “less than” or embarrassed because you’re not working toward your goal?
Does looking at or thinking about your goal incite fear, frustration, overwhelm or excuses?
Create a smaller goal that DOES for you what a self-help book never will: keeps you in action in your own life.
That, my friend, is serving you.
#thatwaseasy
Before you know the difference between being a “pro” and an amateur, you wonder about how you spend your time during your business day. A lot of colleagues and/or “others” are lunching together and so you think that’s what professionals do: they lunch. The question is never whether to accept a lunch invitation. The question is whether to turn pro. I reference Steven Pressfield‘s book, Turning Pro, and highly recommend you read it! I also reference the personal versus your professional self video.
In the midst of a blizzard, traffic lights still blink red to green, pausing momentarily on yellow.
Yet there are no vehicles to pay attention, to slow down, to stop or to go. And if there were, the snowy conditions would most certainly impact the capability of those vehicles’ performance.
Are we sometimes like blizzard-bound signals — rotating through our three indicators assuming the traffic around us will heed our signals without question?
Do we keep flashing directions when there’s a blizzard swirling?
Stop.
Notice the blizzard.
Consider what messages you’re sending out on repeat.
Review your messages’ purpose and content in context of the current situation.
Ask for whom those messages are intended, and whether they’re being received.
Reinvent yourself from a blinking lamp that’s become irrelevant in the storm into the maker of snow angels, the spontaneous thrower of playful snowballs, the shoveler of new paths, the clearer of slippery stairways, the Zamboni of all icy surfaces.
At the core of every single “issue” (professional, political, personal, and religious) is a dis-functioning method of communication.
Is there anyone in your world who’s upsetting you? Disappointing you? Not listening to you? Talking back to you? Ignoring you? Resisting you (or your ideas)? Not performing their job the “right” way?
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Albert Einstein
Try a different connection; the one you’re currently using isn’t working.
Clearly.
Oh, and you’re the one with the faulty signal — in case that wasn’t clear.
Give me a call if you’re still getting a patchy line on that one.
Sarah told me the following story from her childhood and with her permission I’m sharing it with you.
Sarah’s mother, Mary, had prepared one of her usual delicious evening meals and invited the five hungry children to the table to eat. Not long after they sat down, Sarah’s father, Dan (who had made a choice to visit the pub after work rather than coming straight home), entered the kitchen through the back door.
Dan was visibly irritated to discover the family eating without him and started loudly verbalizing his displeasure. Quietly and without comment, Mary began opening the kitchen windows one by one as Dan continued his rant.
Suddenly, as if only just noticing his wife’s activity, Dan shouted, “Why on earth are you opening all the windows?!”
Unfazed, Mary sat back down at the table, casually picked up her fork and replied, “I want to be sure the neighbors know how upset you are!”
Upsets (“I’m upset because. . . “) only occur inside of us. No one else can ever upset you, or make you angry, or disappoint you, or make you sad, or cause any emotional response in you. That’s all you. Only you. Every single time.
You have a choice every single time you find yourself in an upset:
1. REACT and blame someone or something else and see if that really feels good to you. Does it make you feel any better sitting in that discomfort and pointing a finger, validating all the reasons it’s not possibly your fault?
2. Take a deep breath and look inside yourself first (before you start pointing fingers) and ask yourself what’s really triggering you in this moment? Then RESPOND with awareness of your internal issue that simply wants attention and resolution.
Pema Chodron said,
You are the sky. Everything else — it’s just the weather.
Take back ownership of your emotional well-being. Resolve whatever triggers your upsets. Dance because it’s raining and notice the sun’s refusal to shine has nothing to do with you.
The lens through which you choose to see your life experiences determines the quality of life you live.
And every single time you experience something you get to choose anew your response to said experience.
But only every single time.
Feedback is a highly effective way to grow ourselves and to positively impact the lives of those around us, both professionally and personally.
Too often we receive and give feedback from a negative emotional space. When on the receiving end we don’t want to hear something we perceive to be a negative judgement against us. When giving we have often already passed judgement against the other person and our feedback is couched in negative energy.
Feedback, however, is nothing more than information that allows you to evaluate how you’re doing.
Instead of judging the information, receive and give feedback neutrally and with love.
If you’re receiving what you perceive to be negative energy, just ask yourself if it’s your issue or whether it belongs to the person delivering the information?
And once you’ve neutrally received the feedback, how you want to use it is entirely up to you! When we stay in neutrality around the exchange of information — leaving emotions out of it — we can more-readily see the possibilities of how that information might be of benefit.
Remember, it’s just information — how might that improve and/or shift your reception and delivery of feedback?
Melissa Ford is remarkable. No, seriously. She’s one of the most amazing women I know, and I know a lot of amazing women. It was such an honor to talk with her about service and to gain clarity around this widely misunderstood behavior and quality.
On the (rather early) morning of our scheduled conversation, the first thing Melissa said to me was
I would only get up this early for Arminda or Santa Claus.
And that is a high praise I’m taking to the bank!
My recommendation is that you listen more than once and really let sink in these refined nuances of what service really means and allow yourself time to identify areas in your world (professional and personal) where you can make some adjustments.
Melissa Ford, Business Coach, JD, PCI Certified Coach
As a coach, transformational speaker, entrepreneur and lawyer, Melissa brings deep insights, laser focus and diverse, rich experiences to her clients. For over 20 years she has been empowering people (entrepreneurs, small business owners, executives, parents, individuals) to create positive, permanent change in their lives, enabling her clients to do more and to have more.
You can find Melissa on her website and on Facebook.
I work from home and currently my office is being renovated. New flooring, new wall colors, new shelves, new desk. Overhauling the lot of it.
Exiting my bedroom requires a careful navigation past the pink bins that up until now have been in my office, neatly holding all my stuff. A quick glance down the hall reveals the painter’s ladder in my recently-vacated space and stacks (and stacks) of books plus two empty bookshelves greet me as I descend the stairs.
As giddy with excitement as I am for my new space to be completed, I also know it’s going to take a little while for me to really be IN the new space because I’ve got to sort through all the bins, which harbor all the papers, and the pictures, and the pens whose ink dried up long ago, and the files, and the business cards and the who knows what else is hiding in there for me to discover.
And this, my friend, is what reinvention really looks like.
Steve Chandler’s book, Reinventing Yourself is such a personal favorite I have purchased hundreds of copies (see “stacks and stacks of books” above)! As a coach I use this term and extend the invitation to reinvent constantly — for myself and for my clients.
Reinvention, while highly recommended, is not easy work. And it’s certainly not done overnight.
The reinvention of my office space has taken me a year to conceptualize, plan for, hire the right help, rework the original vision, pay for, acquire the right materials, ask for physical support from friends and family (those bookshelves don’t move themselves), and finally to oversee its implementation.
And in the midst of all that, I’m negotiating pretty pink bins and their contents.
Life and its reinventions look exactly like this!
We first have to see the possibility in ourselves to reinvent. Once you’ve taken that step, you’ll catch a vision of what wants to be created within you. You’ll want to hire the right help and pay for your support (hire a coach, read an impactful and inspiring book, take a class, create a sticker chart to track your growth). And as you’re implementing the changes, you’ll navigate bins of stuff that you forgot about because it’s been so neatly contained on that top shelf, out of sight until now.
Don’t put it back on the shelf.
Sort through it.
Resolve it.
Shred it if it’s no longer useful to you.
And then recycle that shredded history in service to someone else.
Once it’s complete, that new office space will be a reflection of the love I bring to it because I loved myself through every step of the process and didn’t cut any corners or retain anything that no longer serves me.
Tidying up and reinventing ourselves is a process, not a procedure.
Reinvention begins at the level of thought. Don’t let your thoughts think you. Build a life, don’t try to make a living. Reinvent yourself from someone to whom things happen, to someone who builds. — Steve Chandler