The blossoming of the coach in me
Posted on June 29, 2020 by Priya Sharma Shaikh, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
This article is about an epiphany I had one fine evening on my self-awareness
I have made many wrong choices. Countless actually! But I was too busy swimming in the ocean of life, to learn from them. I reflection I see that certain scenarios recurred in my life and invariably I made the same choice yet again.
I’d cry out aloud, the proverbial statement “Why does this keep happening to me only!?” I received no convincing answers from my inner circle. All I got was one more critique-laced lecture and how I need to mend my ways. As you can imagine this frustrated me even further.
But then something strange happened. I started noticing a pattern and I note that my practiced behavioral responses and subsequent choices and feelings thereon became a part of my personality. Meanwhile my internal demons of GUILT, WORRY, MISTRUST, etc. kept growing. My shadow side reigned supreme. So what were these choices, you might ask?
I did not think things through, and in the process made poor bargains for myself
I listened to and followed external opinion with ease and suppressed my own instincts
I did not maintain boundaries — I gave too much of myself into personal or professional relationships
I yearned for external validation and felt tears were a good way to get attention to myself
I made judgments about people and mistrusted them, without knowing enough
I’d blame others easily & refuse to see any mistakes in myself
I have occasionally hurt a few people when I spoke before thinking
I failed several times and indulged in self-pity and then gave up the race
I’d say YES to people almost always — the people-pleasing marker must stay high, right!?
I’d come up with amazing ideas but fear to take them to fruition …
One sultry evening in Mumbai, almost by design, while I was furiously deep-sea swimming along in my usual “people-pleasing-but-feeling-frustrated-within” way, with the millions of other fish in the sea of life, I had an epiphany. As I sat in the midst of the babble of people, I felt a silence and life as if came to a definitive paused … it felt a void.
What am I doing here and towards what cause?
Under normal circumstances, my inner voice promptly suppressed my feeble attempts to seek change, ‘You are here because you care for your family and have to pay the bills.’ And … ’You are a good person and you don’t want to get blamed again that you can’t adjust with anyone! So, making adjustments is a good thing.’ … and I’d usually shrug and get on with life, but that evening my pause stayed and I stayed with it.
I realized that I had lost my originality and I felt a vacancy, deep down in my heart … there was an absence of me in ME. My internal demons had completely taken over my true being. The original, authentic I, was absent. And I had become a sum of all the influences that I had allowed to be in my life. There was no place for the real me, as my heart was cluttered with all my people-pleasing ducks in line, being happy with people saying to me, ‘You are too good Priya’. That evening, the so-called short-sighted happiness I had been treasuring, seemed so superfluous and I realized that if I really wanted to be happy, I had to be happy within and with me, loving all of me.
A few days later I met with my mentor coach for the first time. I was all of 50 then, and as the learning progressed through the day, I realised that finding, acknowledging, and taming my internal demons was a necessary self-love exercise that I had to do in real-time. I needed to pause a lot more and watch what I was thinking and being while life played out for me.
Needless to say, it was an uphill task, because this required changing the usual go to habit and a paradigm shift in my perspective of myself and of the world. But I was committed. So, I took on the responsibility for my life and I stopped being what the world thought I should be, I stopped explaining myself to people, and I got a hold of my purpose of being in this world.
The clouds soon started clearing as I became one with the real me understanding the shadow sides of me within my alike.
The blossoming of the coach within me and around me finally happened. I slowly adoped a coaching mindset of listeing to self, pausing before decising, observing myself without judgement and being accountable to myself before anybody else.
I am happy that I am filling my cup with self-love each day! Of course, I still make mistakes sometimes, but I’m now aware of them as they happen and I course correct with love and forgive myself and move on, knowing that its okay to err and I don’t dwell on it with guilt like before. I learn instead and get on my way. After all… it’s my life and I am in the drivers seat charting my journey on my terms of love integrity, abundance, respect and courahe … and I deal with the consequences of my choices.
Today I’m a successful coach and I LOVE MYSELF THE MOST – I take time out for the things I love, I invest in myself and above all, I trust myself to show up for ME!
#Coaching #Leadership #Executive #ICF #Culture #Learning #Community #Transformation #Career #experiencecoaching
