It's All About You...Really!

I'm in content creation mode. This is the time of year when I take concepts and ideas and come up with a virtual program that works. For example, for our 'It's All About You...and Others" program, a human behavioral program, writing content wasn't so difficult for me. Sending it to my R & D team for their input, edits and thoughts and expecting to just get regular every day feedback is next to impossible. Consider a 26 week program which means 26 segments along with intro sheets for each being analyzed by coaches. Do you think any of them agree on concept, approach and impact and not want to talk about each and every point? I think you’ve figured out the answer to that one.

R & D teams are amazing resources and I am very thankful for mine and the other one’s I’m involved in. Getting my 'It’s All About You…and Others’ program vetted, tweaked and launched was probably one of the most difficult tasks I’ve ever undertaken. It wasn’t because it was so hard to write content, as let’s face it, humans are very unique, multi-faceted beings so I’d have enough content to write for the rest of my life! It was that the dialogue that evolved because of the button-pushing questions in the program was so good none of us wanted it to stop. Perhaps there’s a blog in there somewhere.....

We can either live in a rationalizing world or one where we look at the truth of our lives and our places in them and change, tweak and embrace pieces of it accordingly. When we live in a world of rationalization, we tend to make or try to make the unacceptable acceptable and that’s where cracks in our foundation of life start to form. Cracks can become craters if we’re not careful.

People tend to ignore those cracks and often only start paying attention when a chasm forms.

In one of the weekly modules I state “People fail to see that they are the magic wand they wait and wish for. They’re always looking somewhere else for a magical solution. Why are you looking for that magic wand? What choices do you have to make to create those results all on your own?”

That one thought inspired weeks of dialogue for us personally as coaching professionals and because of what we see in the lives of our clients as well.

How many wait for that perfect time? What is that perfect time exactly and what makes it perfect? They wait for ‘one day’, or for retirement. They make lists of places they want to travel to and yet never pull those lists out of the drawer because they’re waiting for that magic wand to give them their promotion first, the winning lottery ticket, that grasp at the unreachable, which is reachable only if they started making changes in their lives. It’s so much easier to lead others than lead ourselves through life.

Someone I was in a group session with recently was so busy talking about her past that she had no thoughts at all focused on her future. She could articulate every single thing she ever did in her past, endless numbers of jobs and careers… all aimless, none focused on helping her achieve and live her dream. She looked at what was, not what is or what might be. It was so much easier reliving the past through the filters of rationalization. Her work is in limbo, her life is static and that magic wand is slightly out of reach.

Oh yes, 26 weeks of content wasn’t difficult to come up with. Choosing only 26 centers of focus was.

Are you waiting for that magic wand to make that job better, give you the perfect career, the perfect hours, perks, or location? How could you look at your life right now as perfect, even if it clearly isn’t? There’s perfect according to you and perfect as in you’ll learn more about yourself in 'this' context than anywhere else for it’s the biggest challenge you’ve ever encountered. You might look at others and how they react to things in their worlds, and criticize them for it but are really looking at them or yourself?

If you lead in any capacity, look at the impact you have on everyone around you as they will watch what you do and how you do it and respond to that way more than the words you speak. It really is all about you, how you look at things, process things, accept, gravitate to or reject people, experiences and opportunities. It’s much easier to critique others’ ways of being than our own. And for those who want a reality check and have kids, just ask them what they've paid attention to over the years; what you've said or what you've lived.

How can you become your own magic wand?

And what will that life look like?

Best..
Donna Karlin