This is not a post about substance abuse.
This is a post about the little things you do every day that pull you away from what you really want for yourself.
It is about addiction to habits and behaviors that suck time away from us without adding much back to our lives or our souls. And often we hide our eyes from these addictions.
Before I became a coach, I didn’t know much about coaching.
I’d heard the term “life coach” tossed around, but I didn’t understand why people needed to be coached in their lives. Why would I need someone else telling me to do what I already know I should be doing?
(Now I know that coaching has nothing to do with being told what to do.)
如果教练行业的计谋ld be distilled to the single most valuable tool for clients, it would be accountability.
In my previous post, I wrote about how essential it is to create a life vision for yourself and gave you an exercise for writing your own life vision.
Often when I do this exercise with coaching clients, after they have written their vision, they begin to panic. They have just written this detailed vision for their life, but it looks very little like the life they have right now.
Their unspoken (or sometimes spoken) fear is, “How on Earth am I going to make all of this happen?”
When you create a vision that incorporates every aspect of your life and involves hundreds of actions and changes, not to mention facing some fears and self-doubt, it can be a bit daunting. How on Earth does one make all of this happen?
You’re driving down the highway, going with the flow of traffic, minding your own business.
When you look in your rear-view mirror, you see a car ten car lengths behind you, darting between lanes, cutting it close between other vehicles, and quickly coming up on you.
The next thing you know, he is right behind you, nose to your bumper, trying to get around you. But there’s a car next to you, and there’s no way to pass.
There are pockets in the world wherepeople live longer.
Not just a little longer, but many years past the average life expectancy.
In fact, in some of these places, people have three times the chance of living to 100 than Americans do. Ouch.
And they aren’t warehoused in a nursing home or confined to a wheelchair. They are still active, engaged in life, and happy. Theyenjoy living and prefer it to the alternative.
I certainly don’t want to be an old creaker, sitting in a diaper while somebody feeds me warmed-over pablum. But if I could live to 90 or beyond and still be healthy, happy, and active, would I want to? You bet. And I bet you would too.
So what do these centenarians have that we don’t?
All of my life I’ve been a good doobie.
I was a rule follower.
I was the compliant child.
The pleaser.
I grew up in a household with more than its fair share of turmoil. Everyone around me was breaking the rules and creating havoc.
So it became my job to keep the peace.
Here in Atlanta the weather has been crazy.
One day it is 40 degrees, then the next it’s 70. The trees and flowers are starting to bloom, yet we are hardly out of February.The last few days it’s been looking like spring but feeling like mid-winter.
This struggle of the seasons is so analogous to our personal life transitions. Winter is desperately trying to hold on, while spring is emerging in spite of winter’s weakening clutches.
You’re going to think this is a weird way to begin this article when you read what I write next, but bear with me. You’ll see the relevance shortly.
Sometimes in the morning when I’m taking a shower, and it’s cold in the house, I can stand under the warm water forever.
It feels so good and relaxing that I want to linger there, just enjoying the warm comfort of it.