I owe you an apology

What I’m about to share with you is not easy for me. Let me start with an apology I owe you.

I haven’t been completely honest with you. Then again I haven’t been completely honest with myself either.

Last week I spend a good amount of time reviewing the past year. (Use these questions for reviewing your own year)

As I looked at the goals I set myself for the year, I had to face up to the fact that I hadn’t reached my goals of working with a certain number of clients or growing my email list to a certain big number.

Of course this didn’t come as a complete surprise to me. It’s not like I don’t track these (and other) stats throughout the year. So I wasn’t entirely caught off guard.

When I started delving deeper into the why of not reaching those particular goals, I had to face another rather uncomfortable truth.

Yes, I had done a lot of things that were supposed to help me realise the goals I’d set myself. And they did – up to a point.

Now – as I forced myself to be honest – much of that work looked a lot like busy work and a lot less like the actual work necessary.

Yes. I devoted a lot of time to creating content, sharing it with you and putting it out into the world, but much less to the all-important act of actually connecting to real people.

I hope you, after reading this article, will conclude that you enjoyed and took something away from it. I f you did, I would appreciate you getting others involved in the conversation by sharing it with your friends/network. Thank you!

Why not?

Because I somehow had decided that connecting to real people meant I would have to make coaching and how that might help them the main topic. I completely neglected all the other ways in which I already connect in – often times meaningful, fun or both – conversations with people. Conversations in which coaching may come up, but also may not.

I kept putting talking to people purely about coaching off because it didn’t only make me feel a lot of dis-comfort; it felt disingenuous too!

When it came up in a naturally flowing conversation, it felt – well – natural. But to connect with people solely for the purpose of possibly coaching them or people they knew somehow felt wrong!

And not just because it  takes me waaaaaaay out of my comfort zone either!

I realised something else – more important – too. And this is where my apology to you comes in.

In pursuit of the goals I’d set myself I neglected and at times completely forgot to maintain my connection with the mountains and nature. Not only that; I completely forgot to have fun. Everything got to be about work and stressing out over the goals I’d set myself.

I failed to honour some of my most important values: to stay connected with and spend a lot of time in the mountains and… to never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun!

That’s not how I want to live my life! That’s not the example I want to set!

Here I am – a coach who is all about knowing your values and living a life in which you honour them – and I forgot to honour some of my own!

This is why I have to offer you my apology!!

Looking back I can clearly see the trap I walked into.

Now I’m sure I’m not alone in walking into traps of my own making. Raise your hand if you’ve done something similar!

Mine looks something like this:

I know it is time for me to stop what I’m doing. Both my mind and my body are telling me I need a break. Common sense tells me I need a break. If only to get a fresh perspective on things.

BUT ….

I can’t go out and play! There is still so much to do! I can’t possibly think of spending a day – or heaven forbid a couple of days – away from my desk. Now is not the time to play! What am I thinking?! I have goals to reach and things to do to reach them. I don’t have time to spend time with loved ones. There are still so many things on my to-do list. No! I can’t possibly go out. If I did I’d just feel guilty about spending time away from what has to be done! I’d just be wasting precious time.

So instead of doing the things I knew would likely do me a world of good, I ignored my common sense (a.k.a. my wise and sensible Soul) and listened to that nagging Inner Voice.

Rather than listening to my Soul, I opted to listen to the maniacal Inner Voice that has a nasty tendency of bashing me over the head with lots of negative talk.

It took me a while to push that Inner Voice back into her corner. To not have her hold so much sway over me!

I’m sure there will be other occasions when she’ll come out swinging. You may remember I wrote about one of those times only two posts ago (read it here).

What I said in that post holds true today: “…as I’m growing I’m also learning to act faster and catch her before she gets there. Not yet succeeding, but getting better at it.”

As I’m getting ready to create my plan for 2018 I’m re-committing to honouring my values.

I’m starting by declaring ‘FUN’ my word for 2018.

Call to action!

Let me know what the trap you find yourself occasionally walking into looks like!

And I’d love to hear what your word for 2018 is going to be!

As always…

Go dare greatly!

Photo credit: Photo by Cosmic Timetraveler on Unsplash