Why Do You Want To Be?
She waved her arms at me, almost yelling at me to stop. I haven’t known her for all too long, but that behavior seemed to be a little out of character for her (although she does wave her arms a lot 🙂 ).
That fact that 20+ people were watching made it even more fascinating, because there’s nothing like trying to explain yourself in front of a (virtual) room full of people, and realizing that what you just did was exactly what she was expecting you to do.
No, she’s not a crazy person. She’s actually one of the smartest people I know, and I know some pretty impressive people.
Not that she would necessarily own that description. She’d probably laugh. Not out of any need to self deprecate, but because she’s pretty balanced in her soul, which is why she’s so good at helping other people get their head in the right place.
She’d just say that she was trying to help, and needed me to stop talking so she could point out where my problem was.
Which I did, and she did.
A little back and forth followed, and in the 3 days since that exchange, I’ve been thinking a lot about what she said to me, because it’s exactly the kind of thing I would have said to someone I was working with.
I would have done it a little differently, because we each have our own style, but the concept that she was teaching me was one I already could see in others around me.
But not in myself.
Because when it comes to ourselves, we’ve got so many emotional linkages to our stories that we rarely stop ourselves to analyze exactly what it is we’re doing or saying. We’re too busy “be’ing” a certain way, believing a specific thing, that it takes an incredible amount of practice to catch ourselves in the middle of our statements, and go deeper to understand what we are actually saying.
But because she’s good at what she does, she helped point me in the direction of where I want to be…
Not where I want to go, or do, but who I want to be. The difference there is critical, because as she’s been teaching me recently, I’m the kind of person who has to believe I am, before I’m going to go and do.
I don’t just do things, because to me, the actions I take speak about who I am, and if I don’t feel like I am that person, then to ‘do’ the things, without being the person, would be a lie.
And I try so very hard not to do that anymore.
But that becomes a problem if I actually believe a lie that I told myself about who I am, and who I have to be in order to do a certain thing. Most of us are walking around with a belief or two inside of our heads that is stopping us from doing what it is we really want to do, and some of us have a LOT more than we should.
So we don’t ‘do’ what it is we want to do and could do, and that feeds back into the BElief that we are not the person who could do that.
A feedback loop that goes on and on – until we find some way to break it.
Which is what I’ve been trying to do these last 2 years with this work, both for me, and for you.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings