Episode 119 – Helping Yourself with Self-Help

this is Rebecca clark Episode 1 19 helping yourself with self help This podcast is for anyone that knows they haven’t yet found and offered up their best work but are compelled to seek it out and do it. Are you ready to move your desk? Yeah, mm hmm. When you choose to make coaching, part of what you offer in your work, you’re really choosing to become a part of the self help industry and it is an extremely valuable industry. I remember as a young girl seeking out books that would help me how to win friends and influence people. And books by Viktor frankel. And then of course I got into books on tape from zig Ziglar and back when Tony Robbins was Anthony Robbins and I would listen to these things, right? Went from books to tapes to cds and now we have all of those at our disposal. And I really enjoyed learning how to improve learning how to grow, figuring out myself and in that process I was more aware of myself but I also think I increased my judgment of myself, right? Oh, I’m not measuring up. I’ve got more to do. Surely there’s more habits I need to take on that will help me become super successful. The word success has changed definition for me throughout my life as I realize what’s really important to me and what appears to be success, but underneath may not be and that kind of thing. And so recently I have gone through another phase of personal development as I bring together the old in my life and the new and what I want to be and trying out all of this combination of advising and consulting and coaching and having products and helping people with kind of ad hoc requests they have that they know that I can help them with and bringing it all together and going, what do I want to do with my time and realizing that maybe I can just allow this to emerge. Maybe I’m helping with resumes one week and maybe I’m helping with some consulting another and maybe I’m figuring out a product the next and it’s all okay. It doesn’t fit into the neat box. It used to fit in where I had one title and I focused on doing everything associated with that particular job. So I’m reading through old journals and when I do that, I also look up people to see what they’re doing and and what’s going on. And sometimes I reconnect with them and sometimes I just kind of find out what they’re doing and I’m content, right? Like, oh, great, It looks like they have a good life. Oh, that’s sad they had this happen and depending on how close I was to them at the time, usually dictates whether or not I reconnect right? But in that process I started to feel bad about myself and feel like I was not living up to the potential of all of the experiences I’ve had in my past and started to judge myself and get down and think I’m doing worse than I thought, right. Like I’m not fulfilling my purpose fully. Because look at all these experiences I was given at a young age and all these opportunities and I should be so much further ahead than I am right now. And I just have this cascade within me of negative thinking that kind of goes into this spiral and I think I’m having even more of this right now because I’ve chosen to be more aware of my thoughts and feelings and to work on them. And that can be painful because I can’t just go eat something. I can’t just go work more or learn more in those moments. I had to really be willing to sit with it and go, what’s going on. And as I was getting coached this past week from MJ, she noticed that I said, I want to get myself right. And that’s a very tricky thought, because when you pay attention to that and see that I want to get myself right. What I’m really saying is I am wrong in some way, I am incomplete in some way I’m incorrect. I am not enough. But that is taking me down a path of self defeating behavior, Is it not? And so we took a look at this to find out what’s really going on when I think that I’m not enough and I’m doing worse than I thought. And I’ve got to get myself right because I’m somehow off track and the feelings that came up with that was this inadequacy and this insecurity and disappointment and failure and worthlessness and confusion. And when we’re in that place of those emotions, we can get ourselves into a thought loop, can’t we? Where we just churn and think about all of the reasons that we aren’t good enough and that we are inferior and that we have kind of wasted our life in our personal life. We’ve wasted our work life. All of it is for not. Why are we doing all of this? And get into some of this all or none thinking well, because I have not reached my potential because I am approaching things wrong, that somehow everything is lost, right? I’m going to be a failure the rest of my life. But we keep finding evidence that we are a failure or keep ruminating on it and making things worse than they are right? Because we’re viewing it from this place. And at the end of the day, we confirm that we are not enough with this kind of thinking, right? That that we truly are less than And it just brings up all of these other thoughts that support that like, listen to all the thoughts I already gave you, I am not enough. I want to get myself right. I’m doing worse than I thought. And none of these things are helping me move forward, helping you move forward. And how do we do that? I’ve been thinking about this and I discussed it with my coach because here I am offering to people how to help them up, level their work, to seek out the best work because they want it, they want to be better. They want to improve and all these things. But when we say we want to improve, where is that coming from? Is it coming from this place of not feeling like we’re enough or that were right? Or is it coming from a different place? And I would offer to you what I’m offering to myself and that is that we can choose to improve upon ourselves from a different mindset that serves us better to understand that we are already enough, we’ve come to this earth, we’ve been given all these resources that are accessible to us even though we may not know how to get them yet. There there we have support, even if we don’t think that while we’re in the mind turn and we are fully capable of taking on new and exciting challenges just because we want to just because we’d like to see if we could do it just because it’s available and not coming from a place of I need to pursue this because I am not enough as I am that I am somehow less than right now and if I do more, I’ll be better know your already great, you’re already a full person, you’re already present with all the capacity and capability to become, what you want to become. But understanding that in that process, you are not something broken that needs to be fixed. You’re not something that’s less than that needs to prove yourself with more bullets on your resume, but that you would just like to pursue that because it’s available and you’d like to see how it feel to be operating at a higher level of contribution or a higher level of talent and helping others. So if we take a look at this from a different perspective and say, okay, I’m on this journey, I just kind of want to push the limits to see what’s possible to see what I could do. And I have a thought that I want to see what I’m capable of. That triggers a whole different set of emotions and behaviors in us, doesn’t it? We can feel inspired or exhilarated or empowered because we’re not trying to improve. We just want to see what we’re capable of and I want to help others do the same when we have that emotion, I can even feel it in my voice is I’m talking all of a sudden I’m like, you know what, I’m just going to take another step. I’m going to try this thing. I know I’m enough, I’m trying to do what I want to do every day, but I’m doing it from a place of wanting to see what I’m capable of wanting to see what I can help others do. I’m not trying to fix me. There’s nothing wrong with me. I am who I am right now. I’m a combination of all the decisions I’ve made prior to this and all the experiences that come from that. And I’ve learned a lot. I’ve heard a lot. I’ve thrilled a lot. I’ve done a lot. Mhm. Just like you. But now I just want to see what I’m capable of versus I’m trying to improve and when I come to it were from that different place where I just want to see what I’m capable of. I just see there’s so many options, I want to try them out and I want to up level from that place. It’s more fun. It’s more thrilling to roll up the sleeves and figure it out and wonder what possibilities can come from it. This is a delicate balance when you are in a self help thing because often you see in marketing efforts and you see in the presentation of materials that and the self help industry, we’re often told to say, okay, here’s a problem and here’s a solution. And we start to see, oh, part of showing people that there is a problem, it’s almost like saying you are broken, but I have the solution to help you get fixed and we’ve been taught that that’s okay. And sometimes that works for us right? Because we go, yeah, that’s right. I do have that problem and I do want to fix it and I want that solution, but to be very careful in that process with our thinking to realize maybe I feel broken, but maybe this is just an opportunity to learn and grow, maybe this is just part of my journey, this is something that’s causing me angst and pain and it’s causing me angst and pain because I choose to think of it a certain way. But if I choose to think of it as an opportunity to learn and grow to find out something about myself, to find out something about myself that will then help someone else or to just be something I find out where I can gauge in interesting conversations with my friends or co workers or family or people online about that are thinking about those same concerns. Our minds will serve us up negative thoughts throughout the day throughout the week at whatever point it wants to, especially if you are up leveling and trying to change something about yourself in some way and I encourage you to just start to notice and to decide that you are not broken, nothing’s really gone wrong. It’s all there to serve you, all of these experiences that seem negative, all of these setbacks, all of the pain you’re feeling is there to serve you in some way. If you choose to view it that way and decide to use that pain for your advantage. So, you know what? This is painful for me. It’s painful because of my thinking about it because I think it should be a different way. I think it should be better. I think I should be more successful. I think I should have that different job, I think I should have that different mate, whatever it is and to go, you know what, I am going to use this to figure out what I’m capable of and to figure out what the possibilities are. I loved one of the taglines at my undergrad college, the world is your campus, It is, this whole world is a campus we’re here to learn and grow just because there’s so much capability and capacity in us and for some reason all of us signed up somewhere Mhm. Along the journey, I believe, to experience life in the way that we’re experiencing it, he said, yep, I’ll take that challenge, that trial, that pain point, that location to live those people to be around. So I can learn certain lessons because apparently through that process of those lessons, I’m going to become that thing that I desire. There’s something that I desire to become and all of this stuff that I experience is at odds with what I think I want to become or is it maybe it was there for you to learn how to discover that capacity and capability within you try. So nothing’s gone wrong, right? This is just the set of challenges and experiences you were provided to help you get to where you want it to be. And it could be a beautiful thing. I am still learning all about this. I feel like I go and fits and starts in my life where sometimes I have this grand vision opened up to me of all the possibilities and how all of the trials and challenges are serving me. And other times I’m stuck in that thought loop going around like the hamster on the wheel not figuring out how to get off because I’m caught up in the thought consumed with the thoughts that are holding me down from discovering that capacity and that potential and I start to make it mean that there’s something wrong with me and then I’m broken in some way and then I’m behind, that’s my most common one. I’m behind somehow on where I’m supposed to be. No, you’re right where you’re supposed to be and you can choose to take everything that’s happening and use it to discover that full potential that is within you. I’d love to know your thoughts on this and I’d love to bring people on to talk about it because this is a constant concern or constant set of thoughts that plagues a lot of us that are trying to up level in our lives and our work and I’ve learned to recognize that sometimes I’m going to be plagued by this and sometimes I’m not going to be in that red at all. But it will return, especially as you go through actual circumstance changes in your life, but also as you choose to continually change. And it’s very difficult for me right now to express this in language that does not come across as confusing the matter, right? Because in the midst of talking about this, I’ll probably re listen to this episode when I’m editing it and realize that even as I share this concept about looking at this from a different way, I will still use words and sentences that show that I fully don’t believe or understand it yet. Isn’t that interesting but give ourselves grace in the process as we figure this out. Because most likely when we fully figure it out, we will be at a point in our life where we’re not going to be on the planet much longer, right? Because we will have fulfilled our purpose. Perhaps interesting discussion. It’s such a great topic to reflect on, I think and decide from that place like, oh I do want help, but I want to approach it from a place where I’m not as broken. I’m just exploring, I’m learning, I’m growing, I’m going to learn how to fulfill that potential that I can kind of see in myself and I kind of desire because I just want it. I just want it, that’s all and why not want it. Okay my friends, I hope you have a wonderful week and keep offering up your best work and do it because you want to and because you love the process of doing it. I will talk to you soon. That’s Mhm. Thanks for listening to the show today. If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you’d write a review and share the show with your friends, sign up for a weekly nudge at move your desk dot com. Mhm.