BE A STATEMENT OF YOURSELF. BE YOURSELF.

My B, my destination…

During my coaching talks I hear very often about what people want to be, what they want to do, where they want to go. We usually agree that this is the destination. As if you would input the destination into a navigation system. It is like going from A to B. It is my B.

Be a statement of yourself

From A to a

In a typical navigation, though, you cannot define the route to B without knowing the A. Without knowing where you are, the navigation cannot start. If you want to go to Hamburg, it makes a difference if you are in Munich or Amsterdam, Berlin or Rome.

In the first coaching session, we try then to get from A to a. What does it mean?

It is like going from “You are here” – you might have seen it on maps while walking in the park – to “I am here”. The uppercase “A” is the outside perspective. Somebody else tells you that you are here. In our lives it can be our boss, our parents, our peers but also our fears, our stress, etc. The lowercase “a” is the inner perspective. It is you who says I am here.

So we try to uncover the “a”, the I am here by identifying and removing the externally imposed layers represented by “A”.

What is left is YOU. You as you actually see yourself, feel it, like it… You without the quotation marks.

Quotation marks provide a cozy and safe opportunity to those who want to be part of debate without risking their own opinion. Sometimes they go as far as becoming a quote themselves. They give up living their own real life and prefer to live a resume, a life that the audience likes. And ‘likes’ they get… How can one not agree with a nicely polished resume?

Sometimes never but often sooner or later, some of us realize that our life is not just to please the audience. We want to contribute our part to the world. Without our little part, the overall puzzle will not be complete. So we break free and leave the social pressure, the peers benchmark, the own fears behind us. We live a life and not a resume.

BE A STATEMENT OF YOURSELF…NOT A QUOTE OF SOMEBODY ELSE

If you like this, you may also like the movie THE GATE. It’s about us in and outside of the professional life: https://youtu.be/uUg_AWStq64?si=Sd0UgdpLIx9HrA9F