I am constantly amazed at the number of people who just live! They have no plan for their lives, no ambitions, dreams or desires beyond the short term. They must have had them. I don’t know a child who does not have dreams for the future and thoughts about the cool things they want to do when they grow up. What happens between the age of 10 and 40 to change this?
My answer is that ‘we’ happen. Society happens, social expectations happen, negativity happens, the grind of day to day life squeezes the life out of people. Work environments demand a beige existence with unrealistic expectations of performance, pay and behaviour.
The unspoken messages within our communities are insidious and incredibly powerful. Being cool and popular is more important than being a good person. Having the right body shape is prioritised over health, living in a huge house with flat screen TV’s and air conditioning take priority over the environmental cost of this. We make sacrifices to meet the spoken and unspoken demands of the world we live in. These sacrifices result in most of us being unhappy, living lives that we never envisaged.
I ask clients all the time if they are living the lives they thought they would be when they were 15, almost all answer no. My followup question is whether their actual life is better than the one they envisaged as they were growing up. The answer is also almost always a resounding No.
Are you living the life that you want? Do you know the reason you are here? The reason you exist?
I do….
“To trigger real change in others through honest and transparent Help, Guidance and Advice.”
I did not arrive at this statement by taking a questionnaire or asking someone to tell me what it is, I invested significant time on the question, “Why am I here?”
Notice that it does not say that I exist to be a coach, or a pilot or a vet or a doctor. These are jobs, not reasons to be here. I can do a number of things to meet the statement above, I just happen to have chosen the profession of coach because that is what I love doing, and it enables me to spend lots of my time being congruent with the above statement.
Work on why you are here. Invest the time in and on yourself to know the answer to this. Most of us believe that we are only on this earth once so it seems a terrible shame not to make the most of it. If you don’t know how to work this out contact a coach for help. It is probably one of life’s most important questions!
Tim is a Speaker, Executive Coach and Pragmatic Leadership Expert who works with individuals and organisations on delivering results and being more effective. He can be contacted at tim@timothykitching.com or through his website at www.timothykitching.com.
