Now, it’s time for mid-year reviews. What’s better than that?
I have been doing a shit ton of thinking, and just in case you didn’t know, that’s way more than a metric ton. You probably have too. I hope you’ve spent a day with the TV off at least once. I hope you’ve seen a friend, even if it’s on Zoom. I hope you have a life coach.
Thank you
I’ll start with the thank you. I want to thank my client, who began our recent coaching call, telling me she’d been thinking about me and asked how I was. If you think I’m writing directly to you, my friend, with your amazing smile, I am. Your grace and concern for me meant the world, especially considering all that you have on your plate right now. Thank you – One Million Times – for demonstrating the absolute best response to any situation.
“I’ve been thinking of you. How are you doing?”
In any conversation, the normal ones, the difficult ones, or the awkward ones, starting with words that say “I see you as a person and I care how you are” is the most honest and most welcome thing anyone can say. So, if there’s someone that you work with or care about, and they don’t share all your life experiences, maybe you disagree on one or two ideas, and you’re unsure on how to begin, try this:
“I’ve been thinking of you. How are you doing?”
Truth #1
The only place where we can deal with the human condition– is now.
After having to make an utterly unwinnable decision about the life of my dog – I’ve been thinking about death. I have a client with anxiety about death. I told her that I start my morning meditation acknowledging that all the work I do today, will be required again tomorrow. Oh, and none of us escape death. You get it. We all get it, but sometimes the world around us just makes that fact more crystalline. More cutting. More devastating. One morning I found myself asking – how? How does anyone do it? How do we live knowing this?
The answer my brain gave me was immediate. Now. We live now, the only place we can live. When we are now, right now, we meet the world where it is.
Truth #2
There is only one way to deal with any issue – you must do it as who you are today.
I hope you have a life coach. I do. I get coached regularly, and I also get randomized coaching – I sign up, and any coach available, shows up on the other end of the Zoom line. Both my random coach and my on-the-regular coach told me the same thing as I did my own work on racism, politics, and police. They told me to stop. They picked and prodded. They kept bringing me back to my body, my feelings, not letting me escape into vague solutions or diversions. They wanted specific situations, concrete examples, actual feelings. I had to sit in my own soup. Not fun. Not what I ever want to do on my own. So much better with a coach.
They both insisted that I stay where I am, not changing, not going anywhere. They both told me there wasn’t a timetable. There is no specific date when this latest self-project is due, nowhere to go. It’s always right now; I’m always me. One black coach, one white coach. Both letting me see that I’m OK right now, and I’m not going anywhere without bringing myself along.
Whether I’m trying to understand how I got to June without getting the right things done at work, or I’m trying to deal with my fears for my son or my frustration at being back here again as a country – If I’m running from my feelings, hiding from the truth of my current thoughts, beliefs, and emotions, I can’t get to the next, maybe better, version of me. I can’t deal with any issue as an imaginary, somehow better, version of myself. I only have who I am now.
Why do these two ideas matter?
There is only one place from which you can deal with the organized chaos that is work or the ferocious change that is life. You must handle them both from the here and now, as the person you are today. Marginalizing your feelings, distracting yourself, and being unwilling to sit in your soup, sends your brain off dreaming about the future or ruminating on the past.
So what?
So, you are missing your chance to act, to observe, to experience work and life – as it is now.
Emotions are a giant doorway into the now.
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Treat them as objects – things to be handled, cradled in your lap, held up to the light – known.
At work, and in life, the more you can bring yourself back, again and again, to the specific feelings you’re having, the more you can stop trying to become a different person and just accept the person you are.
Having a coach lets you be you – out loud and unjudged, honestly, imperfectly. With a good coach, you find nothing but compassion and acceptance. He shows you that you can be accepted as you are.
Accepting yourself, you can relax and start to be curious about this person you are.
That softening of judgment, that’s the opening. As you stay here, with the opening, the opening starts to change around you. For me, it’s like relaxing. I stop feeling like someone or something is trying to impose expectations on me. If I’m OK as I am, then there’s no reason to resist change. There’s a new perspective, naturally arising in the moment. From that new now, a new me breathes in.
And that? Is how you move forward.