Monday mornings are great for metaphors. I thought i’d go with the car for today, and see what exciting life-coaching gems I can come up with. Getting unstuck is something everyone always wants to know about, whether it’s in their business, or their personal life. Here’s a few tidbits I’ve been motivated to think about relating to my trusty, 120K+, Honda Pilot. Which needs it’s tires inflated.
- Make sure you’re not in park.
There are innumerable ways in which we sabotage ourselves. No matter how much you step on the accelerator, if your car is in park you’re going nowhere. Obvious, but we do this to ourselves all the time. Are there any ways in which you’re sabotaging yourself? Can you identify a limiting belief that keeps you where you are? - Keep your tires inflated.
We usually use the metaphor “filling your cup,” but we tend to only address that when the cup is bone dry. That’s another problem. One of the things we ask in “the business” (life coaching, not the mafia) is “what’s your area of least satisfaction?” The goal is to keep everything running as close to optimal as possible. What would your life look like if you did that? If you exercised enough that your body felt good? If you drank enough water so you were adequately hydrated all the time? If you got enough sleep? - Find the Bad Smelling Thing.
This is, in a way, the opposite of #2. If one of your children ate sushi in the car and left it on the floor of the back seat, near the heat output, TWO WEEKS AGO, your life is going to suck. There’s usually something like that in our lives that we just deal with because it’s not as dramatic, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t having an effect. Marie Kondo that shit out of your life. - Do not wear shorts when sitting on a leather seat in hot weather.
This is also similar to the corollary “do not spray glue craft items on your writing chair,” though in that case being stuck in your chair is a good thing. Think about it though — when we talk about getting stuck, we think about it in a big dramatic way, like “OMG I am going nowhere in my WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE and what do I do?” Realistically, though, we know at least a handful of very particular ways we derail ourselves in the course of the day, like spending too much time on Facebook, having six cups of coffee in the morning in an effort to wake up, forgetting where we put our keys AGAIN. Find something blatantly stupid, and don’t do it. - Clutter matters.
We spend a lot of time in our vehicles, but we don’t clean it out nearly as much as our actual living spaces. And we clean out our thoughts way less often. Think about the clutter in your life, and in your mind. The result can be a rather comical reflection on just how bad the inside of your head might be. Do I really need to travel every day with a smudge stick, a guide to how to speak Mandarin, and an emergency inflatable chicken? Whose pants are those? Is old coffee really a solid?
