I learnt something about myself the a few days ago. I learnt why I have such a strong feeling about evolution of a person needing to follow a natural rhythm, rather than be forced or pushed. Have you wondered where your beliefs come from sometimes?
There has always been one place where I differed from my main mentor; it wasn’t on philosophy or methodology, just about the timing of things. He is always in a rush, there isn’t enough time, you can even tell by looking at him, as he has a slight tendency for his neck to be pushing forwards. He wants to get rid of people’s pain and baggage RIGHT NOW. He wants them to have more inspiring, fulfilled lives RIGHT NOW. Whereas I’ve always had the belief that there is a time for everything, and sometimes it isn’t the right time for sorting stuff out. It’s kind of a feminine intuition, roll with the natural cycle of things attitude. But it is just a belief. Neither of us are right or wrong, it’s just one of our values/priorities about life.
I’ve sometimes wondered where my perspective came from, but a few days ago I got an insight.
First, lets back track a little into the ‘science’ if you fancy it. Your ‘values’, affect your priorities and your beliefs. So they are what makes you tick, and why you do or don’t like different things. They rule who you get on with and who you don’t. They rule who you find easy to talk to and who you don’t. They even rule who you love and who you don’t. Understanding who you are, makes life a heck of a lot easier. You can make decisions that suit you. You know how to pick up your energy quickly. You can understand the difference between your view of the world and your children and learn to talk to them in their language. And you can even encourage yourself to do the things that you just aren’t getting around to do. Being a bit of a human behaviour fanatic, I love values. (If you want to learn more I’m offering a free online course at the moment, where you can learn about your values, if you sign up for my email newsletter before the end of Jan 2011).
Values come from all sorts of places, but some come from when you are very young, so they are often so core to your being that they affect you deeply in all areas of your life. There have been a few conversations going on around me over the past few days about timing of projects, taking time out from work, timing of client sessions, relationships under stress and Africa (bear with me, there is a connection). Suddenly the other night a little light bulb went on in my head (things like that happen in there, it’s a pretty weird place), and I worked out one of the reasons why I am the way I am.
I thought about how my value on timing affects me. It is specifically in the evolution/development of people that I have this issue about following a natural sort of timing. In other places I’m all for speed and just as impatient and frustrated with lack of progress as the next man.
My value on waiting for the ‘right’ or ‘natural’ time means that I don’t tend to chase up a client who could do with my services, but who doesn’t really feel to me like they are ready for it. Which might be great from the perspective of integrity, but does often mean I miss out ,as others in my line of business are sometimes not so sensitive; i.e a hell of a lot more pushy. So it works for the client who gets a chance to come back to me a few months later, but not necessarily for the client who ends up with someone who is likely to be less well experienced or well trained.
When it comes to relationships I always say ‘a relationship isn’t over until it’s over. Don’t worry where the journey is going until you get there, as you still have to go through the journey’. I see so many people jumping the gun and threatening to end things, when they really don’t know where the relationship could go with a little guidance. That works for someone who wants to be sure they tried everything, but not attractive for someone who doesn’t want to put any effort into their relationship.
In my own life I have to be careful sometimes that my reasons for taking my time are to do with a natural instinct about going with the flow, rather than being stuck in a rut and not resolving problems. It’s a question of listening to your heart, rather than holding back because of fear. Not always easy to tell the difference.
So why? There are so many memories that flooded over me, that patently I’m meant to be this way. But one of the major ones that stood out was my huge love of Africa (Zimbabwe in particular) having gone yearly from a tiny baby, and how much it hurt to see it wrecked. My memories of Zimbabwe were of gorgeous smiles, beautiful colours, amazing country side, and feeling taken care of. Despite the wildness, which has a magical sense to it, I also felt immensely protected. How my beliefs were formed I don’t know, as I don’t think that they had much to do with my parents view. Plus being so young I didn’t (and still don’t) understand an incredibly complex culture and situation. But some how I held the original settlers hugely to blame for rushing in and not thinking through the effects of massive change, with little breadth of education (i.e. more than academics) and an injection of western love of power along with the more obvious change in life. In one paragraph I can’t cover why things went so pear-shaped in zimbabwe, just that I loved it, loved the people, and I can see now that I felt that such a sudden evolution destabilised the most magical country in the world. Basically I felt I lost a magical place where I was protected and safe; no wonder I was pissed off, it epitomised what a lot of us feel as we grow up. Such progress means that it will be decades before the stability returns, so what can appear quick has a downside, and that is that it can take longer on the long run.
Now this is just a one-sided perception, as there is always a silver-lining to everything, and now that I’m more aware of it I can look for it. Immediately jumping to mind with little effort is the people for whom the progress was perfectly timed, as they did want to become doctors or scientists. Plus the amazing opportunity it provided to people like myself to visit, or in the case of my god-father to start a farm over there. Did you know we trained our pilots there in the second world war? That’s how come my family have a connection with Zimbabwe, as my father was trained there and fell in love with it as I did later. There will be more balancers, it might just take me some time and research to find, that is all.
Why bother to look to balance my viewpoint? Well, this deeply, but quietly held belief has been affecting me without me knowing it for a long time. There’s no problem with that, but I’d prefer to be able to use it, rather than it use me. Does that make sense? I’m unlikely to change my natural tendency to look to follow a more natural flow, as it is such an early and core belief in my making. However, I’ll now be free to break from tradition where it is suitable for me, or my family and clients.
At the moment I can see it affecting a few concerns I have.
1) There is Curly Headed Boy’s school, where the education is amazing, but the ‘breadth’ is missing, and the competition is intense.
2) Having lost my last few days of work due to him getting sick, I will now struggle to hit my Jan 18th deadline for my free webinar and program launch. Well, I can hit it, but as I say it will be forcing it to do so, and I will probably not have done enough ‘launch activities’ to get a reasonable result.
3) It’s also affected the depth of the program I have created, and the fact that I realise it is probably a six month self-coaching program. The question is, am I giving too much? Should I break it into two 3 month programs, or do people want and understand that real change will take them a while?
4) Then there is this blog. It’s liked, but not liked tonnes. Probably because I haven’t plugged it enough or been controversial enough. I haven’t had the time for controversy, as it does take time to respond and deal with being disliked as much as liked! But I’m in the mood for a little controversy in 2011, maybe the time is ripe?
So many questions for me to ponder in the hours in the middle of the night with Little Dimples and her teeth. Can’t wait for the days when I can easily transpose straight from my brain to my blog, because I could blog a lot more then!
Is there anything that you do without thinking, that possibly could do with challenging?
What do you like to take your time over, or do quickly? (keep it clean ladies!).