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  • Home
  • About
    • The Happy Fan Club
  • Offerings
    • Redesign Your Life 2.0
    • Get Creative
    • Personal Coaching
  • Creativity Conversations
  • LET'S CONNECT!
  • Blog
    • Live Free Your Way
    • Seeing Things Differently
    • Mistaking Assumptions for Truth
    • How Humor Keeps Us Sane
    • Know Thyself
    • Peach Pie for Breakfast
    • Explore Experience Express
    • Should You Be Downshifting?
    • Stop the Hustle!
    • Do Your Habits Serve or Sabotage
    • Settle Down? Down Where?
    • What Lights You Up?
    • Saying Yes When Your Mind Says No
    • Independence From What?
    • Letting Ourselves Off the Hook
    • Letting Go of Assumptions
    • Is Kindness Allowed?
    • How to Throw a Wrench in the Works
    • Happiness
    • Daring to be Lighthearted
    • What Happens When You See Things Differently
    • Find Delight in Everyday Life
    • Are You Saying What Needs to Be Said
    • Is Your Life in Alignment
    • Are You Trapped by Your Past
    • Can You Love Your Life
    • The Hallmark of Creativity
    • Out Of Ideas?
    • Waking Up to a New World
    • Are You a Possibilitarian?
    • Want to Love Your Life?
    • Is Creativity Necessary
    • What's Stopping You?
    • An Unexpected Discovery
    • Free Your Mind
    • Is Your Creative Genius Hiding
    • Empty Headed or Clear Minded?
    • Is Stress Really Necessary?
    • Will Creativity Improve Your Life?
    • Is Creativity In Your Future?
    • Replace Fear With Love
    • How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    • Just Take A Moment
    • You Don't Have To - You Get To
    • The Good News About Being Stuck
    • Interested in Inner Freedom?
    • Are You a Hoarder?
    • What Remains
    • Co-vid 19 Free Pass to the Roller Coaster
    • Grace Under Pressure
    • Now is the Time To Notice
    • Hanging With the Wrong Crowd
    • Make Your Life Simpler
    • What Could Be Different For You
    • Everything is a Miracle
    • Do You Have A Negativity Bias
    • Are You Really Seeing Or Just Assuming?
    • Happiness and Resilience
    • Wherever You Go, There You Are
    • Is Stress Making You Sick?
    • What I Wish My Humans Knew
    • Looking Backwards
    • Daring to Change Course
    • Lost in Thought or Taking Action?
    • Still Can't Focus?
    • Do Your Thoughts Get Dark and Gloomy?
    • Can't Focus?
    • An Instant Formula for New Ideas
    • Talk Yourself Out of Another Great Idea?
    • Is Your Busyness Keeping You From Getting Things Done?
    • What's that Feeling In the Pit of My Stomach?
    • How Cool is This?
    • How to Make Your New Year Happier
    • Why Be Open To Life?
    • Simple Ways to Transform Your Life
    • Get Clarity and Confidence
    • Are You Driven by Fear or Love?
    • The Number One Way to Keep Your Vision Alive and Well
    • Why Stop Trying to Figure it Out?
    • What Are You Trying to Prove?
    • Do Your Goals Reflect Your Hearts Desire
    • Why My Cat is My Spiritual Teacher
    • Surviving the Holidays
    • 3 Convincing Reasons
    • 3 Secrets to Enjoying the Holidays
    • 5 Quick Steps to Get Your Mojo Back
    • 3 Ways to Keep Your Energy High
    • 5 Reasons to Do Good
    • Pain Relief for the Soul
    • Tired of Living by the Rules? Go Rogue!
    • What? You've Made a Mess? Excellent!
    • Why You Need to Be Inspired Now
    • Change Your Life in Just 48 Hours?
    • The Cure For Mental Overload
    • 5 Infallible Ways to Stay Inspired
  • Newsletter

What Are You Trying to Prove?

2/19/2018

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One of my clients, a successful lawyer, recently confessed that as she was pushing to accomplish one of her goals, and stressing about whether she could in fact make it happen, she was stopped in her tracks by a single insight. She realized she really didn’t want that particular goal.  Has this ever happened to you?

Carol (my client) didn’t know why she hadn’t realized this sooner. But then, she was busy, involved in all the details, involved with other people who were part of this project, wanting to look good in their eyes, to demonstrate that she could make it happen.  Everyone else was fully engaged, believed in the cause, spoke the same language and wanted the same things. But suddenly, she could see that their goal wasn’t her goal, and she had been caught up in the momentum of their expectations. She felt like a fish out of water.

It’s considered normal to strive for ambitious goals in a culture where job titles, wealth and power are often the common measures of success. And yet, those measures of success never quite replace whatever insecurities we’ve brought with us into adulthood. They often magnify them. Worry, self doubt and fear may still be driving us, but it becomes more difficult to identify when our sole focus is the accomplishment and acclaim of an end result and not the internal rewards of the process itself.

When Carol and I started exploring how it was possible that she could have lost sight of what she did or didn’t want, she realized something else: even after all this time as a “grownup” in a well-respected career, she was still trying to prove something. To other people, certainly, but most of all, to herself. And it became a never ending cycle: the more she accomplished, the less she recognized that trying to prove herself was an underlying motive. What Carol needed - and began to do - was stop listening to what others expected of her and listen to what she wanted for herself.

So how did she do that? Carol made a point of making time to get quiet and feel into where she was at this point in her life and ask herself what was truly important. She began to identify what was rewarding and what was a burden, and what she could stop doing. She started noticing where she was postponing her own happiness - sacrificing something that would give her pleasure in order to get something done that someone else expected of her. She began to make changes, small ones at first, that allowed her to enjoy life, to rest, to play and appreciate what was all around her rather than just get through another day. And the sense of isolation that had characterized that need to prove herself began to give way to feelings of freedom and being connected to something greater. She found herself smiling more, sleeping better, and learning how to trade proving herself for finding herself.

This didn’t happen overnight. She asked for help and acted on what rang true for her. The more she followed that sense of rightness, that inner guidance, if you will, the more clarity she had about the direction she wanted her life to take.
​

Any good story involves a protagonist who comes up against a challenge that requires making choices, taking action and hopefully transcending that challenge. Carol had no idea that her challenge would be to let go of the need to prove herself, or that letting go of that tendency would open her to a whole new world of fulfillment. But that was her story. Do you have something that you’re trying to prove or convince others (or yourself) about? How will your story turn out?
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