Persist
NYT Wordle, May 13, 2025
Maybe the entire post should just simply say… “DON’T!”
Fair enough. In coaching it’s not unusual to spend quite a bit of time uncovering, mitigating, and making peace with the thoughts in my client’s heads. For most of us, the inner judge is pretty f’in bad. Often mimicking your Middle School enemy or worse. Volleying untrue statements, or our worst fears on repeat, getting in the way of motivation, action, and progress.
While that’s a big part of working together, that’s not actually the judgement I am referring to…there are questions that seem simple but are profoundly challenging to answer and can be critical to uncovering goals and what you want.
How DO you judge if you are…
successful?
a good friend, parent, manager, colleague?
prioritizing appropriately?
capable of handling this?
responsible, moral, honorable?
taking smart risks?
resilient and able to handle change?
enough?
These are not simple questions. At first each may seem personal, and you can only answer for yourself. But there’s a bigger context, within our families, collectively with our community, through corporate expectations, even in this period of time that we are living. Who you spend time with, the area you live, the organization or industry you work within, and very likely your last performance review, all impact how you may be answering these questions. But is that the right frame?
How do you judge yourself? What is success for you? What are you capable of? Often, the answers come from discovering what “feels true” and inviting some space to talk about what’s causing grief or joy, what (or who) is weighing you down or lifting you up, where you feel fully in your creative energy or diminished, what you regret or what brings you pride, what you share or what you don’t say out loud. And a little bit of all of these things and so much more mashed together to create your life view.
Coaching is a balance. Understanding and respecting culture, boundaries, motivations, and desires can be an important aspect of the relationship. And within the context of what you want support with, often we’re bringing the unconscious conscious. For most of us, there’s an untangling as we consider what expectations and judgements are the product of circumstances versus what you actually, sometimes secretly, want for yourself.
And sometimes there’s truth humming in the moment, and it may be outside the bubble of your normal. It’s like the muse just joined the conversation. There’s momentum and weight pulling beyond the everyday smallness. Where you can embrace yourself. The film of uninvited expectations clears. And there’s no show, you trust the genius within to guide what’s next, critique frankly and with love, and help paint the more abundant future where you are mended with gold.
And then you can see that the goal is not to focus on answering the questions, but find your path of confidence. These questions are for way finding not judgement. The practice of asking “am I still on my path”. And the calm trust of YES.
I think it’s what I am always seeking, what I want to be in tune with and tap into. The conversational chord that seems to resonate with tomorrow’s universal truth.
