As lockdown guidance lessens in many countries, we are tentatively venturing back to the old normal or forwards toward a new normal. It’s as if we’re learning to swim again, having tread water for many weeks. So, if the waiting is almost over… have you considered what have you been waiting for?
A few years ago, my coach at the time, posed the question that’s the title of this Simple Note, and it stunned my thinking? How could I possibly be there? Wherever there might be! The question explores the nature of the striving, the urge for more, the nagging insatiable feeling of ‘never enough’, and the subtle, below the surface malingering sense of disappointment. These compound to deprive me of ‘now’ and making it difficult to accept anything fully. Succinctly put… my ability to live life fully, be all that I can be and enjoy it all, no matter. The delicate balance between INTENT and CONTENT.
I’ve condensed into that previous paragraph the findings from several conversations that followed the “are you there yet” question. Furthermore, I recall talking about my fear of giving up, accepting my lot, stifling further potential growth, which is simply not true.
Has the daily pursuit of your goal, your assumed purpose paused and is it simply a case of beginning again? Will you reawaken the old familiar striving to be something, someone, to get ‘there’?
Perhaps though, this is it. The environmental circumstances, distancing regulations, ways of engaging with friends and colleagues will continue to change, but who you are today, as your read this, is already ‘there’!
As the months and years passed by following that ‘are you there yet’ coaching conversation that question stayed with me and, as my thoughts often circled back past, the more I discovered about its power. I challenge you to sit with the following questions for a few weeks this summer, as you embark on the reassembling of life and work, with and beyond the effects of Covid-19:
• If part of me has been waiting for something, what might that be?
• Am I ‘there’ yet?
• How would life, everyday be if I was to accept that I am ‘there’ already?
It is more about how you accept yourself, your skills and attributes, your foibles and quirks, your circumstances, and challenges. It is about shifting the emphasis of your personal journey from effortful striving to harmonious and effortless evolution. (see 2018 Simple Note Do You Flaunt Your Quirks?)
Pose these questions without judgement and feel free to spread the questioning to family, friends, and colleagues. IF there are aspects of your approach, your style that you do want to shift (perhaps a recurring feedback), great! Make them your focus for the rest of this year, just them, actively releasing the often accompanying, all-encompassing feeling of never quite being ‘there’.
The simple act of exploring (and journaling) your answers to these questions will include boosts to:
• Self-acceptance
• Everyday acceptance (allowing things to be as they are, no resistance)
• Creativity (as you loosen the grip to the way things ‘should be’)
Living life in everyday resistance to who you are today demands huge reserves of energy, is constantly tinged with micro-disappointment, sapping the moment by moment bliss that is available to you.
Polish your edges, raise a standard, be consistent… yes, but accept who you are, fully now. Embrace your individualism, be grateful for who you are, for what shows up, for how things are, for who is here with you.
The waiting is over, this is you, and here you are!
Simon