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?
As a life coach, I seriously geek out on any and all sorts of tools to work with in helping people or advancing my own personal development. Whether they’re ideas, books, journals, workshops, or gosh darn yet more books, I’m into them. I’m like a happy otter when I have something to play with and learn from. Recently I’ve been delving into the art of tarot and loving how it connects my interests in coaching, creativity, the visual arts, and how we perceive and create meaning. So this is why I’ve decided “tarot-based life coaching” is a thing.
The tarot is a system of cards that represent both the major archetypes in our lives and also the range of situations we find ourselves in. It’s clearly divided into these overarching personae and events or conditions in the realm of the emotional world, the mind, the spirit, and the body.
One can argue what the system is FOR till one is blue in the face. Is it for divination? Self-analysis? What is divination anyway, and what about self-will? Whatever you think, the more we examine our lives, the more we look at and and discover, the more power we have to change our current stories and make new and better choices. This is much of what life coaching is about—find an area of your life that is unsatisfying or a struggle, then poke around with a stick and see what comes out.
The problem with that, is that it’s hard. Who wants to poke a stick in a giant pile of crap? Some of us do it because, as with exercise, we know we’ll feel better afterwards. Some of us want to make our lives better and are up for the challenge. This is where life-coaching comes in. Poking around in your life is much easier to do with company, with someone to hold you accountable, or help you realize you’re smack in the middle of the pile without a stick.
But, this process doesn’t have to be awful. Self-discovery can and should be fun, and lead to freedom and a feeling of being lighter and more integrated. It’s like after you work out and realize that your blood really does pump through your body and that your muscles are connected to your bones. You may be a little worse for wear, but like the Velveteen Rabbit, you’re REAL.
I’m a visual person, and like many others, I have too much to do and not enough time. If you ask me to sit and meditate, or journal, I’m entirely likely to realize I need to shave, feed the dog, or eat and shave the dog, or SOMETHING, OH PLEASE ANYTHING other than sit here. This is also a reason that we hire a life coach — to create the sacred space to DO THE WORK. Using images helps create a focus, and also helps use our imagination to create a bridge between what we know and what we let ourselves know. Because the truth is always in us; we just need to clear the windows so we can see.