Chapter 6 of my First book: What about YOU? Thinking of making a change to YOUR Epitaph? If so, I wrote this book for YOU!
CHAPTER 6: What about YOU? Thinking of making a change to YOUR Epitaph? If so, I wrote this book for YOU!
DRAFT
I took a picture of this handy little tool when buying some new shoes recently.
I can’t think of a better analogy to making change.
It is all about trying something out (a.k.a. on) to find one’s fit.
You can measure it first.
But you are only really sure that something is a fit, for YOU!
once YOU have tried it on (a.k.a. out)
“Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all” – Helen Keller
Sharing MY story in the hopes of Inspiring and/or Empowering YOURS.
My book is about life-altering, midlife, self-transformation. The change for me has been like night and day. I am finally coming out the back end now, I am ready to start living my second half, so I thought it was time to share my story and some lessons learned with you. Sharing them with YOU in case YOU are contemplating a self-change or self-transformation of YOUR own. Or, if you already have one underway, I hope that you take something away that you can use on your journey. Some things to help you navigate some of the peaks and valleys along the way. Some things that you can use to make one or hopefully more, positive changes in YOUR life.
In his book, HALFTIME, Bob Buford describes the purpose of halftime as a time “to take stock, to listen, and to learn”. Well I took stock, I listened, I finally listened to myself and to others and, most importantly, to my heart, and I learned. I learned a lot and I would like to share some of those insights and lessons learned with YOU, in this, my first book. For those of you who would like some more details on any of the specific topics and/or concepts, then you may find some of my blogs of interest. They are archived on my website. I will try and reference them where relevant. What can I say, I like to share!
I realize that everyone in unique. Everyone has their own unique dreams and aspirations. Everyone has their own unique situation, one which is changing all the time. Will what I am sharing with you, work for you? Some of the things that I tried out as part of my journey worked for me, and some of them did not. In the end, it was only by trying them out, that I was able to find out which ones worked for me, and which did not. My hypothesis is that you will find what works and does not work for you in the same way, by trying them out. They are, after all, only ideas and suggestions. Ideas and suggestions, that, although they might have worked for many others, they might not work for you. I love the saying, we don’t know what we don’t know. If you think of it, everything is theory until we make it real. Make it real by trying it out. So, go ahead and try out some of the ideas that I am sharing out on you, and don’t be shy to reach out and share some back once you do. After all, as previously mentioned, I did not come up with anything new, I just tried a bunch of stuff and stuck with what worked for me. I just found my fit, like a pair of properly fitting shoes, and before you knew it, I was off to the races.
BEG, BORROW and Steal. Helping you find your fit. Go for it. I did.
This is MY story. This is MY journey. This is MY Experience. If you can glean something from it, use it. I did not come up with anything new. Why reinvent the wheel when there is so much out there to try? As a very wise man once told me “beg, borrow and steal”. Well everything in here is yours for the taking. So, Beg Borrow and Steal away. I insist, so you don’t even have to beg. Steal away! You won’t go to jail. Leverage what works for you, and by you, I mean the UNIQUE YOU and what works for you.
Over the course of my journey of self-transformation, I read over 100 self help books, I took dozens of self-assessments and I read and/or watched as much as I could on the topic of self-awareness and self-transformation. I also connected with over 200 people over the past couple of years to exchange notes and takeaways on the subject.
As part of my coaching training I was also spending a lot of time on me and my personal foundation. I actually took a year off to explore the topic. I decided to take a sabbatical year and instead of back-packing around the world, or traveling the Serengeti, I decided to learn all about myself and the process of self-transformation. And how does one learn? By reading and watching and discussing? Partly. But in the end, what I found was that most of what I read and what people told me was all really just theory, and often as seen through their lenses. It was about what had worked for them, in their situations.
So, I decided that the best way to understand it, was to make it real. That is when the learning started to really take place. That is when the magic started to happen. That is when I started having Ah-Ha moments. That is when I started to experience shifts. That is when stuff started to stick. The learning and growing started to occur when I started to make the theory real. Making the theory real by trying it out. Trying it out, but just as importantly, PROCESSING IT i.e. Taking the time to reflect on what I had just done and what I had just learned from it. As I now like to tell people, “I believe only a quarter in what I hear, only half of what I see but all of what I do”.
As you will learn as you read through my book, I tried out a lot of stuff. I made a lot of the theory real. It was not always easy. It often took courage, and I was more into being comfortable in those days. But I tried them out nonetheless, and what did not kill me, made me all the more courageous. Hopefully there will be a few of them in my story that inspire you, inspire you to try them out. To try them out on YOU!
If YOU do decide to try some of this stuff out. Remember to make it EASYer on YOURself!
As previously mentioned, I learned a lot during my journey but if there was one thing that really helped me in enabling my journey of self-transformation, and then maintaining it, it was the notion of making it EASYer on myself. From the outset, I tried to make it a practice to do my best in trying to come up with options and opportunities that were the least painful as possible. Making it easy on myself soon became my guiding principle. Making that change something that I was looking forward to doing instead of something that I was dreading doing. I hope that after reading this book, that, every time that you are provided with an opportunity to make a change in your life, that you will ask yourself, “What can I do to make this change easier on myself?” “What can I do to make maintaining this change easier on myself?”
Are YOU ready to go? Are YOU ready to make it real?
If I can help inspire you to start exploring YOUR EPITATH before I did, or, if I can help you in rewriting yours, if you have already started your journey, well, nothing would please me more. If reading my story of how I summoned the courage to make so many positive changes in my life, brings out more of the courage in YOU, well, nothing would make me happier.
——————————————————————————————————————————
So, What did I learn?
How did I make change EASYer on myself 😊 (or not ☹)
——————————————————————————————————————————
Making the theory real. Just doing it. Just trying it out, or on, for size and fit. In the book “The Four Agreements”, the author, Don Miguel Ruiz, challenges us to do away with assumptions and instead, focus on creating HYPOTHESES. Unlike our assumptions, which the author reminds us, are most often wrong, hypotheses can be tested out in order to see what is real, and what is not. Testing things out in order to make them real, as opposed to assuming something, that more often than not, turns out to be wrong. I can’t think of an EASYer way of exploring change than that. 😊 So, what are you waiting for? What hypotheses would YOU like to test out?
======================================================================
——————————————————————————————————————————
That was all about me. What about YOU?What are you doing to make your journey of change EASYer on YOU? 😊 (or not ☹)
——————————————————————————————————————————
Do you have a hypothesis on how you would feel by making an important positive change in your Life?
If so, What is stopping you from testing it out?
LOOKING FOR SUPPORT FOR YOUR JOURNEY?
Schedule an initial (and complimentary) 30-minute coaching call now
