What are up to in the world?
I don’t mean what tasks and activities fill your days, I mean what are you really up to? What is your life about? What are you committed to? What are you creating? Who are you being? What matters so much to you that it feels like an ache, so much that when you speak of it you get tears in your eyes or you get so passionate and excited that you jump up and down in delight? What are you inspired to devote your precious life energy to? What is getting in the way of you living the life you truly want?
When I begin working with clients, they often describe themselves in one of four ways:
- stressed, overwhelmed, worried, or filled with anxiety that can sometimes verge on panic
- apathetic, dead, depressed or uninspired, or isolated
- scattered, unfocused, confused, stuck
- ready to step up to a new level (in their career and/or their life), but unsure of how to do it or aware that they lack some of the skills necessary to do it
The common thread is that they know that what they have been doing isn’t working anymore, and before I agree to work with them, we talk long enough for me to recognize that they are:
- willing to really honestly look at themselves and how they have created their current reality
- open to new possibilities, new ways of being and alternative approaches
I have found in my work and in my own life is that the presenting problem is often a symptom of the real problem rather than the real problem itself.
I know you want to be even happier or more content or feel even more alive and engaged in your life. I know that yearning. What would it be worth for you to wake up every morning excited to begin the day? How would it be to lie in bed and feel gratitude wash over you for everything that is already true about the life you are living? What if you felt entirely inspired about your life? What would it take for you to love your life?
My biggest single piece of advice is:
Invest the time to get clear about what the problem really is and what you really want.
Do this before you begin to make sweeping changes. We are often so eager to make things happen, so impatient to get away from whatever we dislike about our current situation, that we move into action based on things that are at the surface level. Getting clear about what the problem really is is like making sure the ladder is propped up against the right building before you start climbing it, or doing enough probing to make sure there is a water table below you before you begin digging a large well.
You can begin by simply asking yourself, repeatedly:
