Dancing with wisdom - chapter 9

Much of our life is spent in our heads. . . fears, worries, doubts, negative thinking. A rule of thumb estimate is that we have as many as 40,000 thoughts in a single day. What do we do with all those thoughts? How do we decide which to keep and which to discard? How do we handle the fears and insecurities? What do people think of me? Is this idea or plan crazy or worth pursuing?

I provide a safe space to explore the morass of ideas going through our heads that we might feel unsafe about expressing openly. Our sessions are non-judgmental and provide a space for brainstorming and exploration without any sense of having to be committed to a single course of action. It sounds so simple. But, it is difficult to find a place for exploring and developing those thoughts and ideas at the back of our minds, so that they rise to the surface to be truly fleshed out. One of my favourite questions during this time is what Dan Sullivan calls the R-Factor Question’. R stands for relationship and asks, ‘If we were sitting here together three years from today, what would need to have happened in your personal and professional life for you to feel immensely pleased with your progress?’

The power of this question lies in it being focussed not so far in the future that it’s unreachable but also not close enough for there to be any assumption about doing more of the same thing.

I’ve found this question immensely helpful in understanding someone’s true goals and ambitions. Some people can talk about their future in this way for literally hours. We focus, in particular, on the dangers that they want to avoid, the strengths that they are looking to maximise and the opportunities they want to capture.

What I have experienced as the other Person opens up to me is that there are a few deeply held desires and longings about what they want to do and where they want their lives to go. Often they have been too nervous or hesitant to share these deep thoughts with anyone else. It’s a true privilege and honour to hear someone say, ‘I’ve never discussed this with anyone, not even my spouse’.

Like nurturing a small seed embedded in the soil, we work together to nurture this tiny germ of an idea into growing and developing. It is inspiring to see enthusiasm, excitement and zest for life beginning to take hold.

Having spent time looking at various options, it becomes important to make a decision and commit to a course of action. Will that course of action necessarily lead to success? We don’t know, but until we try we can never find out. That’s why we are on a ‘quest’. The process of finding out is as much about becoming the person we are called to be as it is about the fulfilling and satisfying work we are looking to put at the centre of our lives.

This is a journey of discovery. We do not know where we are going or how the journey will evolve, but it is still exciting and enormously meaningful.

Any journey of self-discovery is going to involve failure and set back. The temptation to throw in the towel and give up may be very strong. How can we learn from failure, rather than allowing failure to bring discouragement and abandoning our dreams? In order to learn from our setbacks, we need to develop internally the thinking and externally the relationship structures that will pull us in the right direction rather than thwart and inhibit our progress.

A favourite verse in my favourite book is:

The word for workmanship in the original is the word poema, from which we derive our word poem. We are literally a work of art that God is sculpting and moulding to create something beautiful and lasting.

The journey to get there is not easy, but with patience and perseverance it is possible. This is the ‘quest’ that we talk about—a long search for something that is difficult to find, or an attempt to find something which is elusive. As we have pointed out, the person you become is at least as important as the goals you seek to accomplish. In working towards this personalised solution, we need to ensure that there is the correct balance between being and doing.

Resilience is the ability to not only overcome adversity but also to confront and survive challenges in such a way that we become stronger and an inspiration to others. Frederick Nietzsche famously said, ‘What does not kill me only seeks to make me stronger’.'”? With so many challenges from so many different directions, how can we develop systems and processes in our life which ensure that in spite of anything that happens we are able to keep putting our best foot forward?

All healthy organisms and organisations grow. The essence of life is to keep growing. We do not stop after climbing one mountain, but continually strive towards future goals. We were created to learn new things and grow. Most people pursue learning through popular media or the opinions of others. What is the quality of this approach?

Once we grasp that we are called to grow, an entire ocean of possibilities opens up before us! To capture these opportunties we need to learn how to clarify our thoughts so that we can process our feelings from the perspective of making better and wiser decisions. Coaching can assist in making this possible. Coaching works through equipping us to clarify our thoughts and process our feelings so we are in a stronger place where we can make better decisions.

However, as I have sought to explain throughout this book, wisdom is not only about finding ways to change our circumstance’ in order to get what we want. To develop wisdom, we also need to develop a hunger for growth, which is more important than simply changing something about our lives.

In Where Your Treasure Is Eugene Peterson expresses this as: