About a week ago a wise old man advised me to try and make it through 2012 without ever using the phrase “supposed to be”. To not think about what I might think should have been or was supposed to be but to focus on and appreciate what actually is. Since that conversation I have become acutely aware of just how often I and those around me use those words. It’s nothing short of astounding how, as we get older, we develop this view of the world that is ordered and logical and expect life to be exactly that. What happened to the devil-may-care of youth when we delighted in the haphazard and illogical. Is it that we have some internal clock ticking telling us we should have achieved more, done more, grown more than we actually have? Sometimes when I look around I see my friends with families, running their own businesses or top of their game, to all intents and purposes settled and “supposed to be” completely happy and yet when I scratch beneath the surface I find that same quiet frustration and chomping-at-the-bit that I often find myself experiencing. Do we always want more? Is there ever a point when we will truly believe we have or have done ‘enough’? In fact…what is ‘enough’?
A well known philosopher once posited that the greatest sadness in life is unfulfilled potential, missed opportunities and failing to appreciate the “now”. I was looking through some old papers over the weekend and found some photo albums that clearly hadn’t been opened for over a decade and spent a good few hours looking through. What I saw proved the philosopher’s point. In the photographs I am grinning inanely, clearly happy and enjoying myself, doing amazing things and surrounded by amazing people. Given I was in my very early twenties I looked possibly the best I shall ever look and with my career taking off, was the very time I should have felt that I had everything.
And yet, I can remember so clearly being beset at the time by doubts and worries about being “good enough”, “pretty enough”, “talented enough”, “brave enough”, “bright enough”….. Rather than being able to stop and appreciate those glorious moments when I really did have everything, I was in my own land of insecurity and torment. No matter how well I did, a little voice in my head still uttered “…if only you’d done better/tried harder…”
Last year when I started my journey to becoming a coach, I spent quite some time on this; my permanent sense of unfulfilled potential to the wry amusement of my own coach. Apparently it is this very sense of “more to do” that drives people to succeed but apparently the ‘trick’ is in being able to appreciate how far you’ve come as well as looking upward to the next nigh on unachievable goal. My coach said something that I thought at the time was quite banal but as time passes I realise was very sage advice.
“Every time you feel the urge to climb another mountain, face another challenge, drive yourself further/harder take a moment to stop and just appreciate the view from where you are and….just be…”
Just Be.
Learning to “just be” with whatever is going on in your life is an amazing feat, but once the art is mastered, it’s incredible. It doesn’t mean doing nothing, or hiding or refusing to face reality or act, it is purely and simply the contentment of knowing that today is a good day, even with life’s whirlwind blowing around you.
I have this coach to thank (?!) for starting this experiment. As ten of us around the world chart our year in terms of the high’s and low’s – we will learn not only what matters to us, but also that sometimes it isn’t the great achievements in life that make us smile and feel warm inside, it can be the silliest and most superficial things, and that’s ok.
And so to today:
High: Watching my best friend’s face light up as she saw me and feeling the love in her hug. Receiving a message from someone I was coaching before Christmas to say he had followed what he had learned with me and after a couple of trips across the atlantic over Christmas, he rescued his relationship against (what appeared to be) all odds. Knowing deep down that I did everything I could to save one of my own but that in the end the smart thing was to just let go and instead of feeling sad, feeling sane. And finally, after getting out of the shower, dancing round my bedroom to Lady Gaga in a towel which made me smile and feel instantly perky…the only downside being it took me two songs to realise I had an attentive audience from the design studio across the way….I personally am choosing to think they were applauding my semi robot moves as opposed to rudely gesturing at me.
Low: Discovering the aforementioned snuggly-all-is-right-with-the-world-jumper did not make it unscathed through the washing machine and is now fit for a 5 year old. The low is actually the fact that it made me so upset…I feel rather special needs! Worrying that my displacement activity of today is harming my client deadline of Friday…I sense a through-the-night work session coming on….
And for my lovely coach(ee) who followed his heart….with love…Lx
