Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [20]
You may be thinking that your life is peachy, that you’re on the right path and don’t need to make drastic changes. The likelihood, though, is that if you bought this book, you’re looking for help. You may not yet be totally aware of what areas need your attention, but something inside you is saying, “There’s got to be more.” I refer to that as “the problem of no problems.”
It would be easy for me to give my clients answers to their problems. What’s hard is to help them understand why they have issues in the first place. If you’re thirsty, I can give you a bottle of water, but I’d rather you know why you’re thirsty and talk about the natural ways to quench your thirst. To do that, we both have to dig deep. And for all of us, that starts with a clear understanding of where you come from, where you’re currently living, and where you see yourself in the future.
If you want a vivid picture of what your life looks like to others, ask five people around you to tell you about yourself. Give them permission to be totally, brutally honest. Let them know you came to them for their candor—that you trust them and are ready and willing to hear the truth. Ask these people to tell you about the things you do they admire. What actions do they think are working for you? Then ask what they see that doesn’t work or isn’t in alignment with what you say you want. (We all have these discrepancies!)
A friend recently took this advice and asked five of his closest pals, including me, to tell him something he does that is not working.
All five people told him he stretches the truth—sometimes just to look good personally or professionally.
Whoa. When five people tell you you’re basically a liar, it’s time to make a change. Once again, the problem of no problems reared its head.
When we expressed what we saw that didn’t work, my friend was shocked. He thought that no one knew he stretched the truth. It wasn’t so much his fabrications that mattered as it was why he felt he needed to stretch the truth to have us see him in a certain way. He was addicted to the opinions of other people, meaning he cared so much about what other people thought of him that he was willing to lie to gain their approval. (I go much deeper into this subject in the next chapter.) My friend was desperate for everyone to believe that he was more than he actually was. When we delved deeper into his reasons for doing this, what came out was his low self-esteem. When he looked in the mirror, he wasn’t happy with what he saw, so he took every chance he got to project what he wanted to see in the mirror. I’ve seen this pattern of false projection many times. Somewhere in their addicted minds, these people believe that if they keep lying about themselves, eventually other people will see it as the truth. Unfortunately, this strategy does not work.
Remember that this man asked five of his closest buddies to tell him the truth about himself, so he was clearly looking for change. When we divulged our observations, his level of awareness went up, which made him a more responsible person. He now knows that if we knew he was stretching the truth, his spouse, co-workers, and everyone else he had a connection with knew it too. That newfound awareness was enough motivation for him to make the choice to change. Today, instead of saying everything is “great” in his life, or everything is “working,” he has the power to admit when things aren’t going right or he’s having an off day—something he’d never have done before this exercise.
EXERCISE
Ask five people around you to tell you about yourself. Ask them to answer the following three questions:
1. What do you admire about me?
2. What do you see that I do that really works for me?
3. What actions do you see that I do that really don’t work for me?
Give these five people permission to be totally honest. Ask them to tell you about the things you do they admire and what negative habits you have that everyone