Raise your hand if you get in your own way on the regular? How loud is the sound of a collective world of hands flying into the air? Probably loud. Visualize yourself looking around and realizing how many people stand alongside you in the Making Life Harder Than It Has To Be club. You are not alone. We can do hard things. We can also do the things that we make hard but don’t have to be - let’s consider a list:
Asking for a raise
Getting out of bed to get some exercise
Giving your direct report feedback on their performance
Telling someone you love them for the first time
Striving for that next level at work
Asking for something you really want… in the bedroom
Telling someone you don’t want to go out with them
Asking someone out
Telling a new client the rates you charge
Increasing the rates you charge
Smiling at a stranger walking down the street
Returning something to the store that doesn’t fit
Sending food back to the kitchen in a restaurant when it’s not cooked properly
Letting someone down to honour your own boundaries
How long could this list get if we just kept going? It’s limitless. The other seemingly limitless thing in our life might be the voice of our inner critic telling us these things are hard, or creating barriers for us in aspiring to all the things that could potentially fulfill us, bring us joy and see us soar. In my last post, I talked about our nervous system, the inner critic, saboteur, or resistant voice in our heads and the role those play in our protection. Protecting us from what the saboteur wants us to believe is hard so that we can stay small and safe and out of the light. But the light is where joy lives!
What if it ISN’T hard? When we take a closer look back at the list, the common denominator is truth. Being authentic and speaking our truth can FEEL hard, but what is likely standing between us and those things is fear and uncertainty, but not reality. It’s the not knowing the outcome before we do the thing, not having the answer to the question of how that person will respond to our truth. And what if it didn’t matter? Imagine a world where your truth mattered more to you than someone else’s response. Imagine a life where you mattered more to you, and standing with and for yourself and your beliefs topped your list of priorities. Now imagine that it’s easy to do. What would your life be like, and how would you feel in it? Imagine it.
In life and in business I am designing my life with intention, and working with organizations and individuals to do the same for themselves. If what you imagined in that moment is not what you are living today, then I encourage you to consider the steps you can take towards making it so. Perhaps that means working with a coach (me!) or starting with a deep look inside yourself and asking what is possible, what do you dream of? What if it wasn’t hard? And then what…?
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