Coaching My Real Life
I awoke to freezing temperatures this morning. If by this I meant the temperatures outside, you might not lift an eyebrow. I live in Maine, and after all, it’s the middle of winter. But the low temperatures I speak of were inside, and they remained low even after I turned on the heat.
Two hours into the drill, it was apparent my heating system was not cooperating. This wasn’t shaping up to be a great morning and it occurred to me some self-coaching might be in order. Just a thought.
While waiting for the heat to materialize, I jumped on the bathroom scales. I’ve been working on shedding some of the pounds I’ve added during these months of isolation. The scale’s message was in direct contradiction to the careful eating and exercising I have been committed to for the past three weeks. I cursed loudly and went back to bed. It was a warm hiding place, and I needed both.
When failure strikes (both internalized failure and failure of circumstances), it’s easy to take our eyes off what is most important.
Connecting to core values is a cornerstone of the stabilizing process at the center of failure recovery.
My heat came back on, finally. I am grateful to technicians willing to brave a snowstorm.
I am also feeling more centered this morning, after spending the first half of yesterday a bit shaky.
My journey these past four years, from complete failure to a life of expanding hope and almost childlike excitement for what comes next, has helped document a process which I titled The Failure Recovery Formula.
The formula grew out of my struggles after a life-altering failure. Built on a solid understanding of core values, the formula is at the center of my coaching passion today. I spent a ton of time exploring values on my own, but things got interesting when I connected with a coach who super-charged the core-value discovery process (yes, coaches have coaches).
I carry my core values on a note page in my iPhone and reference them daily. They ground me and help bring balance when things get out of proportion like they did yesterday.
My Top 6 Core-Values
- I am non-judgment
- I am creativity
- I am vulnerability
- I am loyalty
- I am serenity
- I am courage
Eliminating judgment from my life (of myself and the world around me) will be a life-long pursuit, but it is one I whole-heartedly embrace. It’s difficult (to the point of seeming impossible, at times) but worth the struggle.
It is what nudged me yesterday from a dark, inward-looking place to a place of greater acceptance of myself and of the life-circumstance that I found frustrating.
By removing my knee-jerk judgments about myself (I’ll never reach my fitness and health goals) and my lack-of-heat (this should not be happening to me), I was able to experience two small but beautiful moments:
1. I saw more clearly that my journey to better health is not a destination but a process. If I remain committed to the process, over time, I will achieve my goals. Today does not define me.
2. I saw with greater clarity how fortunate I am. One phone call and help arrived. People with knowledge much more significant than mine we’re available to help. I was neither alone nor without hope.