One of the ways I love to help clients is coaching them on how to make better choices on which way to go next.
“Do I go find another job or work to make this one better?” “Which choice do I make to invest and grow my business?” “Should I go back to school and get an advanced degree?” “Can I really afford to retire and if I can, do I really want to?”
And I share similar questions for myself: should I keep up the hustle with finding more business or go back to a job working for someone else? Where do I want to spend my time to achieve my goals/dreams and have good balance between working hard and having fun?
I ask clients and remind myself to consider these choices from a place of,
what do I truly want, not what others expect or say that I can (or should) or can’t (or shouldn’t) do, from a place of feeling into my heart and gut and listening to my own voice of what is true for me?
One of the ways I keep this at the front and center for me is I have these “Top Five Regrets of the Dying” (from the book, linked) posted on my refrigerator (where I’ll see it multiple times a day). Bronnie Ware, a nurse and author of the book, worked with many dying patients and heard these same regrets over and over again:
- Courage to live true to myself
- Don’t work too hard
- Courage to express my feelings
- Stay in touch with friends
- Choose happiness
That first one is the focus of this post and stay tuned for more on the others in later posts.
How do I have the courage to live true to myself?
Get clear on your values
In The Daring Way™ and Rising Strong™ workshops that I facilitate there is an exercise/tool to help clarify your two most important values that will help light the way. Click here to see lists of values to choose from, pick your top 10, then narrow to five, finally two. There’s no right or wrong values on these lists, it comes down to what you need to have in your life on a regular basis to feel alive.
I’ve re-assessed the list over the years and always come back to my top two: making a difference and connection. If I don’t have these in my life in some form or fashion then things are not good. Once the values are clear, I ask clients (and myself), is this choice going to take you closer or further away from practicing your values?
Pay attention
When I’m rushing from item to item on my to-do list and they’re all swirling around in my head I miss things/clues. Things like recognizing that my heart is beating a bit faster and I’m feeling dread when I have to do a particular task and that task is something that I’m doing out of obligation that later causes resentment instead of out of responsibility that later causes me to feel good that I helped. Or I’m doing something just to prove that I can rather than what I really want.
When I’m centered and paying attention or being mindful, I catch the more subtle clues in myself and in others. I notice that I’m pushing forward on a task that may not be aligned with my values and stop to assess whether I need to change course.
For me, in order to be centered enough to pay attention, I need regular meditation and exercise time, with out them, I stop paying attention and start missing clues that I’m veering off course from living true to myself. What habits can you put in place to help you pay more attention to be true to yourself?
Explore with Curiosity & Rise Strong
One of the good things about getting older is I know more of what I don’t like/want, often through trial and error. It takes exploration to find out if it’s true to myself or not. If I don’t even give it a try then how am I to know if it is or isn’t? Sometimes you just gotta take that leap. Then the key is to be okay with it not working out because that becomes data on what is not true for me. Learn from it and move on, take another leap.
It’s easy to say or type this, but how do you have the courage to do it over and over again: leap, fall or soar, learn, leap again? I love the process that Brené Brown shares from her years of research in her book, Rising Strong, and in the workshop I facilitate by the same name.
I know that doing this challenging work keeps me from looking back from my death bed thinking, I wish I’d had the courage to try that…And not one of those regrets from the dying is about taking the easier or more certain paths. Well, maybe the one about not working so hard, I’ll explain that one more in the next post…
What will you do today to courageously live true to yourself?