How are you feeling today?
Burdened with "responsibilities"? Excited by opportunities and possibilities?
January 18th - I heard this morning that January 18th is the most depressing day of the year. Credit Card bills arrive in the mail - and it's still two looong weeks till pay day. It all just seems a bit TOO MUCH ...
So how can you move from that grey doom and gloom to a colourful uplift of bright hopes in bloom?
My coach and pal, Boris, invited me on Thursday to "Delight yourself in beautiful possibilities". I was so touched by this, it brought a huge smile to my face. I felt nothing cheesy or preachy in this at all. It was, and is, simply gorgeous.
And I keep coming back to it because it is so intuitively pertinent.
When we are feeling overwhelmed - that the mountain is too high - the possibility of achieving our goals; doing what we want to do, being who we truly are and living the life that nourishes and honours who we truly are - can seem so remote.
Sure, our hopes and aspirations tantalise, taunt and tease us - yet they remain bitterly and painfully beyond our reach. The desire may be real, but the likelihood of realising those dreams seems utterly and hopelessly unrealistic.
I know what it's like to feel weighed down with obstacles, challenges, circumstances. I may be a coach but I'm human too! :-)
And ... I also know that identifying too closely with that "possibility deficit" is a huge stumbling block for a coach. Our role, after all, is to help you to expand beyond the limitations that chain you. To help you find new vantage points which open up new possibilities and new pathways.
When I'm hamstrung by internalised limitations of what's "realistic", I can find it hard to shake off other people's stories and "stuff". This is a tough place to coach from. It's like spinning on the spot in a world of "no can do". It's a vortex of frustration, disappointment and despondency. It's a boiling, freezing vat of "no way out" so "what's the point?"
My coach noticed the other day that it's like I was running and running very fast and getting nowhere.
Why am I telling you this? As a coach, it could be professional suicide! Well I'm telling you because I DO understand. I empathise. I know what you're going through. You want to practise your art. You want to act, to write, to paint, to sculpt, to sing, to dance - to play ... and it feels like you can't for more than a few moments. Because you need to eat. You need to pay the rent, the mortgage, replace that old pair of boots that's letting in water and giving you cold feet ... And living your art and from your art - and getting paid handsomely - seem poles apart. An impossible juxtaposition. Possible for the rarified few, but not for you. It's beyond possibility, it's beyond what's "realistic".
I know how all that feels. I'm climbing the mountain with you, sometimes ahead of you, and sometimes right alongside - and always with those nuggets of coaching insight, from my training and the deep wells of wisdom of other coaches whose worlds I'm immersed in.
I'm learning to look beyond long-standing limitations and delight myself in beautiful possibilities. Colours, textures, feelings, sounds, sensations - Ta Boris!
I'm also mentally bookmarking this contribution from Cynthia Morris, in a creative artists coaching online discussion forum:
"I find I cannot say the word 'realistic when working with clients on goals. Who knows what's 'realistic'? So much of what happens is beyond what we recognize as real. Miracles, boons, unexpected outcomes ... we would perhaps never have allowed space for them if we were being realistic."
Plus this extract form The World Needs Your Passion by Corrina Gordon-Barnes:
"Following our hearts, responding to our passion's call, have been sneered at as luxuries that only some of us can afford.
So here's another perspective ... Our duty is to leave the job we don't enjoy, the lifestyle that doesn't fulfil us, and follow our passion. When we look at how interdependent we humans truly are, we can suddenly see that staying in that unfulfilling job is a selfish act. We can see how not following our passion, not doing what we feel called to do is selfish. Our duty, in actual fact, is to sacrifice the drudgery, the complaining, the settling and the plodding, and devote ourselves to discovering and acting upon our deepest desire to contribute."
So, there you have it, on January 18th - the most depressing day of the year - the opportunity to Delight Yourself in Beautiful Possibilities, to follow your passion contribute what the world needs from you, and ignore those finger-wagging exhortations to be "realistic".
Yes there will be challenges. Yes there will be obstacles. Yes, at times you maybe like me wish you could have a magic carpet to fly over them. And maybe that's OKAY! It is, after all, one way of getting around them!
What's important is to believe that they are surmountable.
So go on, delight yourself. You're allowed to!
Here's: the links to Boris, Cynthia and Corrina
http://www.boristhecoach.com
http://www.OriginalImpulse.com
http://www.youinspireme.co.uk
Wishing you a delightful year of sparkling possibilities ...
© Annie Wigman
Dancing Tree
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