Helping individuals, businesses, and organization leaders through coaching, hiring assistance, behavioral assessments, problem solving, training, and facilitation
A few miles into a guided run on my Nike Run Club app the coach, along with the co-founder of Headspace, started talking about motivation and being enough.
They described us as having enough (motivation, inspiration, or whatever we needed to keep doing this hard thing) but also as being enough. They wanted us to picture that place when we feel motivated, inspired and enough as a blue sky.
That blue sky is always there and beautiful.
But clouds make their way in and cover that sky. Those clouds represent our doubts, fears, feelings of not being enough.
When those feelings come in, they cover the blue sky and become what we focus on.
Those clouds are what stop us from finding the motivation, inspiration, and feeling like we are enough.
But they reminded us that despite the clouds, that blue sky is still there. Sometimes we cannot see it through the clouds, but it still exists.
Even when the clouds break, sometimes we are still so focused on the clouds, we miss the blue sky coming through.
This guided run and approach reminded me of my wife’s grandfather. A grizzly and tough man who flew planes in WWII and went by Gramps but made me call him “Commander.”
I once asked him what he liked the most about flying.
“Every single day is a sunny day with a blue sky if you just fly high enough.”
Gramps (aka Commander)
Will clouds come into our lives?
Yes.
Will those clouds of doubt and fear, and not being enough be our focus?
Maybe we just need to remember to fly high enough to find that blue sky.
P.S. Thanks Commander for the laughs and conversations and for the inspiration to be Captain.
During a recent dinner with a few friends, the conversation turned towards running. They run. I run. We are all runners. Put a few runners in the same room and talking about running is inevitable.
We started to talk about upcoming runs, past runs, and our favorite routes.
We started to discuss weather and water, getting outside and getting older.
We started, and then the focus shifted.
“What’s your pace?”
Instead of talking about nutrition plans.
“What’s your pace?”
Instead of talking about the mental game of running.
“What’s your pace?”
Instead of talking about why we run and what it means to us.
“What’s your pace?”
Instead of talking about good runs, and bad runs, and the entire running journey.
“What’s your pace?”
It was the narrow and continuous focus that caught my attention. They kept asking, and I kept trying to steer the conversation away. I wanted to know so much more about them and their journey. I wanted to share more about running through my 50’s, trying to remain injury free, and the mental game of running.
Maybe I am the outlier, but I had an advantage that helped me notice what was happening.
Over the past few months, I have been both participating in, and coaching a Mental Fitness program. This program raised my awareness of my own tendency towards an overuse of achievement. This “hyper-achiever” inside me creates a cycle of constant performance and achievement for self-respect and self-validation with a focus on external success.
The conversation’s focus on pace, was triggering this “hyper-achiever” inside me. Combined with my internal narrator (or Judge) who judges myself and others (especially through comparison) wanted to share my pace and talk about my faster runs.
But comparison and competition is not what I want in conversations.
That goes for all conversations, not just the running ones.
What is the alternative?
Recognizing this pattern is the first step. The next step is learning to shift away from these default approaches, and establishing being curious as a practice. This curiosity helps you ask better questions and explore with the other person.
Instead of “What’s your pace?” try a few of these questions:
What are you struggling with?
What have you learned after all these years?
What has been your greatest success?
When do you feel at your best?
How can I help/support you on this journey?
Magic Bonus Question: The AWE question – And what else?
These questions apply to all of our conversations. Being curious and exploring brings us closer instead of creating competition that drives us apart.
For me, pace doesn’t matter, exploring and getting to really know other people brings the real magic.
Interested in improving your Mental Fitness? I have a few spaces remaining for the next group program. Contact me for details.
In the world of consulting, coaching, helping, serving, and assisting others you are going to be rejected.
People reach out, they need help.
You carefully craft a plan, program, event, or system.
You send that thing you created into the world.
You may or may not hear from them right away.
Sometimes they say No.
Sometimes they blame the price.
“It was too expensive. It was too costly.”
The first temptation is to lower your cost. “Did I charge too much?”
But your time, your talents, your efforts are valuable.
There is some truth to what they said.
It was going to cost them.
The cost of being accountable.
The cost of stretching beyond their normal pattern or rut.
The cost of doing the hard work, over and over again until they get results.
The cost of making sacrifices to change their current situation.
Maybe they were not ready because the cost was too high.
Rejection can be hard.
Don’t give up.
Keep consulting, coaching, helping, serving, and assisting others.
Keep creating plans, programs, events, and systems.
Your tribe, your group, and your people know that the change they desire will be expensive and it will be costly. They also recognize the true cost is their sacrifice and hard work, and they are willing to pay that price.
Carl Weber Consulting 