
A real photo of my senior thesis.
I got coached by a friend yesterday. I came into the session with the past two weeks containing more stress and anxiety than I’ve felt in years. Here’s what happened.
It went well. She’s a great coach. But often times we go into a coaching session thinking we’ll leave with total relief and clarity. We believe if we come in with negative emotions, we’ll talk out our feelings and reach the insight that we don’t need to feel them at all.
But that’s not always true.
When she asked what was going on, I told her that in the past two weeks:
• my biggest possible client pulled out • I have a big presentation coming up, and • I’ve been falling off with my habits
Talking this shit out is always powerful. Talking it out with a coach who knows what she’s doing is always 50 times more powerful. These were my three biggest takeaways:
1) Nothing’s wrong.
Feeling discomfort—stress, anxiety, uncertainty, doubt, fear—is a natural part of the human condition. Why then do alarms go off when we feel these ever-occurring emotions? Our fight or flight response is activated and our bodies tell us in one way or another that something’s wrong.
I had to remind myself that I’m constantly stepping out of my comfort zone, I’m running my own business, I’m new at it. Rather than thinking I don’t need to feel stressed, I came to the realization: Of course I feel stress! And that’s okay. Who wouldn’t?
In other words, nothing’s wrong.
2) Three magic questions.
Be it with my coaching, my hobbies, or anything else I want to pursue in life…I basically boiled down my life purpose into three questions:
• Am I having fun? • Are other people having fun? • Is this helpful?
The answers to those three questions tell me whether or not I’m in the right space.
3) I always figure it out.
I have flunked out of college, tried to kill myself, and been in $80,000 worth of debt with no job. And I’m still here…typing out this blog.
We often feel like if we don’t “figure it out” (whatever the hell ‘it’ is), we’ll fall into a black hole. But no, we just wake up the next morning. We adapt. We figure it out.
The important thing is to continue to be vigilant about figuring it out. Ask questions. Get a coach. Share thoughts and feelings.
When we do all of these things consistently, we come to understand that no matter how we’re feeling…nothing’s wrong.