Bringing More of Yourself into the Game

Or discovering ‘who you are before who you think you are’.

Part 4 in a series

If you want what you’ve always got, then do what you’ve always done.  If you want something different, then you might want to think about things differently.

I’ve heard it said that it takes anywhere from 21 to 60 days to change a habit, so you’re also going to need persistence and consistency.

But what if you need to turn up the dial?  What if you need to go from ‘I can’t’, or ‘I don’t know how’ to, ‘I can figure it out’.  Transformation is a word that’s regularly thrown around in coaching circles and everyone seems to have their own ideas about what it means.

For me it describes an inwards journey, beyond the habits and beliefs that make our up our day-to-day world.  A metaphorical cleaning of the slate, and a remembering of who we are and what we have going for us before overthinking got in the way.

While I didn’t consciously set out on a journey, it almost became one by default as I wasn’t getting the results I wanted from change techniques alone.  I made some progress, but there was still yearning, a belief that being somewhere else, having a house full of things and a bank full of money was going to be better than where I was as the time.

These then became goals that I would use to ‘fix’ my life and can be best summarised as, more money which would give me more choice and greater status.  Improved health and fitness, which translates to ‘I just wanted to look better because I thought that was the source of my confidence and attractiveness’, which in turn would lead to deeper relationships.

Perhaps because no one told me in advance, but it’s obvious now from my current vantage point, but using goals to try and fix yourself is a zero-sum game.  It’s never going to deliver what you want because you’re looking in the wrong place.

In saying that, goals aren’t all bad.  Much like the project planning processes we use in business they’re a really good way of channelling and focusing attention and energy on an outcome.

If that’s the case, do we throw away goals because they don’t deliver on the promise?

Absolutely not.  Goals are the perfect catalyst for growth and change, just recognise that achieving a goal won’t plug an emotional gap in your life, but if you resolve the emotional gap, you’re more likely to achieve the goal.

The elephant in the room then becomes, how do we transform ourselves, which loops us back to the beginning.  By diving deep into the well of our own being.  Before the concepts of who you think you are and what you think you’re capable of, and into the endless depths of a you uncluttered with insecurities.

But first it might be worthwhile on understanding the logic of the psyche, surprisingly it might be a little different from what you’ve been led to believe.

Next Up, The Logic of the Psyche