86 Diligently Protecting Yourself from Your Next Level
It’s Anne with your Coaching on the Go.
Happy day.
I’m thinking back about instances when I have resisted my own expansion, when my pain has been greater than my ability to let go of the pain, so that I could look at myself and my life in a different way, so that I could step forward beyond that moment, beyond that story.
And when I say story, I’m not trivializing your real live experiences, feeling, senses.
In that moment, it’s happening, it’s real.
I’m not saying it’s fake, but we develop a storyline around it.
So I’m thinking about one particular moment when…
I mean, we have an ego, and our ego, sometimes it’s prickly, it doesn’t want to be messed with.
If someone says, “Who are you,” typically your ego answers and talks about numbers of superficial things that we are, that we’ve chosen, but it doesn’t get into the definition of who we really are.
So we defend all these definitions for ourselves.
“I’m a this, I’m a that, I’m a this, I’m a that.
I do this, I don’t do this.”
So when someone is working on supporting you or you’re supporting yourself in a transformation, one of the ways that’s courageous is your ego pushes on you.
I’m laughing because it’s funny and because it’s ironic, and it’s not funny and there’s a lot behind it.
Our ego is constantly letting us know who we are in the world, kind of like what is our true north?
Who are we, where is our grounded foundation?
And at the same time, the broader we can look at our ego, the biggest versions of that…
I’ve been talking to my clients about this this week.
The definitions we give ourselves, are they allowing us to grow or are they keeping us in a place where we have to prove that we are that?
We have to keep showing it, we can’t meander freely.
So in the last few years, I’m constantly in transformation, and to me, at this point in my life, it’s like lip smacking work.
So as I talk to you this week about resisting it, and if you’re ready for it and I might not be the coach for you, I’m digging in to really articulate what I’m talking about there for you.
I love supporting people in learning new things about themselves, opening big doorways of possibility that were cracked open, or maybe not even available, and now become available.
So when I look at something I did recently where…
This is a big introduction to this, isn’t it?
Recently, in the last few years, I was in a highly transformational coaching container.
And what I mean by that is, as a student, I took it on because I heard it would shift me, no matter where I was, what level I was at, and I found myself in business with some antiquated belief systems.
And I say antiquated because they were holding me back, they were keeping me from another level.
I could feel it.
I didn’t know what, but I could feel it.
So I went into this container that had maybe 16 coaches, a lead trainer, and there were over maybe 112 students.
And it was so transformational, but I felt like I was being criticized.
I felt like part of the environment there was punitive, and if I said the wrong thing, I’d be called out in front of the group, which highly embarrassed me.
I would do all sorts of things in my life to prevent myself from being singled out and then said to be wrong.
So it was so transformational that I was able to kind of put that on the side, and then I chose to coach it.
I chose to come back in as a volunteer and be one of the coaches, and instantly I felt that again.
I felt like, “Oh my gosh, I am 57 (55 at the time), I do not need to be talked to this way.
This is demeaning, I don’t need to be shamed.”
I stepped out, and then I decided there was a challenge there for me, and I stepped back in.
And what I discovered was I was able to look at the mechanism in a different way, and I was able to look at what it was setting off in me.
It took humility on my part, and a curiosity, and it took my interest in growing and stepping beyond where I was and improving certain aspects of my life, and knowing I could.
It took that to open me enough and make me vulnerable enough, and make me look at it as a thing versus a judgment on myself, and it shifted everything.
It shifted the way I saw the people supporting me in digging, and it shifted me in my ability to see things differently.
That’s why I talk about the importance of curiosity so regularly, and not judging, just looking at your situations as things.
Kind of like, “Huh, that’s interesting.”
You’re doing a science experiment, and it happens to be your life in this case, but it’s just a science experiment.
You’re looking at variables, you’re curious about them, and then you’re making sense of these variables and you’re playing with them and working with them, and trying new things and seeing if you can shift them to get the desired result.
That’s why when I speak with you, when we first meet on the zoom or on the phone, I ask you where you are.
I ask you where you wish you were, in the ideal world, where you see yourself or would love to see yourself, and then what’s keeping you from it, and I work on that with you.
So flashing back to my own situation, I can see this client that I let go a few weeks ago in myself here, I understand it.
Without judgment of the client, she’s just not ready, she’s just not ready to take it on.
And I wasn’t ready to take it on.
I took it on incrementally and I got to another place, and it opened some doors for me that I knew there were new ways to think, and that there possibly could be different interpretations for how I was feeling; judged, shamed, etc.
I understood that it could be within myself that I was seeing my situation that way, and I was able to shift it.
But until then, those areas remained barricaded, locked.
There was a moat around that castle, protecting it.
There were all sorts of protections in place.
So what protections do you have in place?
And you can feel them if you know that there’s somewhere you want to go, and when someone is talking to you or speaking to you or an idea comes up, you get defensive or you get protective, or you get feeling picked on.
You feel like a victim.
So I have come to realize that when I feel that way, ooooh, there’s a gift there.
There is a gift.
But if you’re not willing to open it…
And it takes courage.
It takes a big person to put all those structures you develop, that define who you are, to the side for a moment to look at if there’s something else there, really.
If there’s a different reality available.
Because once you are able to see that, it can get rid of a lot of pain for you.
It can just instantaneously vaporize pain from the past and free you to move forward.
So hey, that’s the big work that I do with people, and I’m not doing the work, you’re doing the work.
I have all sorts of ways that I’ve used for myself and others to free you to do the work.
So, hey, listen to this, and listen again if you need to, if you’re stuck, because I’m here to support you.
You’re at a certain level.
What level are you at, and where are you willing to go to make the transformation from here to there?
Sending you big love this morning.
Have a beautiful, beautiful day.