Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [33]
With his answer, I realized that John was suffering from a severe case of addiction to the opinions of other people. He had fallen into the worst trap. After hearing his story, I asked him why we were together and what he wanted to work on. He said his business had suffered considerable losses and his profits had become razor thin. I asked him what actions he had taken to improve sales or decrease his expenses and overhead, to which he said there wasn’t much he could do because the majority of his clients weren’t doing the volume of transactions they used to.
I asked, “What financial cuts have you made to accommodate your lack of income?”
His response was “I can’t fire anyone because people will think my business is suffering.”
“What about all of your expensive toys? Can you cut back or liquidate those?”
“I can’t do that! If I did, people would know there’s a problem!”
Can you see the trap that John was stuck in? His behavior was about impressing other people, which he believed fueled the perception of a successful business. John was being irresponsible by not cutting back on his personal expenses and business overhead. He was more concerned about his image than he was the welfare of his employees, his family, and ultimately his career.
I spent the rest of our lunch explaining that no one except you really cares about the stuff you have, the car you drive, the clothes you wear. I’m not saying that caring about those things is bad, but for some people it can be a turn off. I told John he needed to make tough decisions, and they had to be made at once. He would have to cut his overhead, which meant reducing salaries or terminating employees. He had to sell most of his “toys” so he could reallocate his assets to make it through tough times.
Up to that point, everything I said was basic common sense. The real coaching I gave John that day was that he wasn’t the kid from the other side of the tracks anymore, nor was he all the excess he had accumulated. He was just like everyone else, doing the best he could to survive. If I could get him to see that what was holding him back was his attachment to what others thought, he would be able to more easily let go of his made-up identity and find his true self.
The addiction to what other people think has another significant impact; it represses us, which in turn keeps us in a sort of purgatory, afraid of the consequences of pursuing the life we really want. “If I do this, they will say _______.” You won’t be happy because you believe that people are judging you. It becomes easier to stay miserable so everyone else in the status quo will be fine. John was a perfect example of this kind of repression. So is the woman with the following story.
I have a client who was living in total denial about her sexuality. I kept telling her that her true potential was dependent on coming clean about being gay. Although a handful of close friends knew she was a lesbian, she still hadn’t told her parents—something she had been avoiding for years. She worried that her folks wouldn’t love her anymore if they found out. The truth was that her parents were well aware of her sexuality. She had had the same roommate for eight years. They surely noticed one king-size bed in the master bedroom and the small, never-used trundle bed in the guest room when they came to visit. And still my client insisted that her parents couldn’t possibly know, and she felt it would kill them to find out she was gay.
I told her she had to address the elephant in the room. If she didn’t have the courage to face the truth with her family, who was she as a person? I asked her if she was willing to wait for her parents to die before she could finally live her life free of this self-imposed shame and guilt. That question was the one that helped her see that she had to set herself free from all of those emotions.
She finally told her parents. Of course they knew, and told her, “We love you for who you are.” Can you imagine the weight that was lifted from her shoulders and the stories that were released