Running From...or Leaning Into

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Tom Patterson, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

One of the strongest forces that seems to compel a person to look into coaching is a sense of frustration, dissatisfaction, and/or hopelessness about some aspect of their life. Whether it’s vocational dissatisfaction, frustrations with trying to achieve more balance in life, or maybe even the fear that a long held dream will have to be abandoned for “practical” reasons, many initiate a coaching relationship from just such a place. What fuels and sustains the process, however, is something altogether different.

If you’re like me, then avoiding pain always feels like a good thing. When I’m in pain, I want it to stop. The problem is, if our main focus is on “running from” pain, then we are not “leaning into” anything in particular. We are not “leaning into” what brings us joy, what is life-giving, what is energizing for us and gets us out of bed in the morning. (And by the way, a focus on the latter is not a denial of the former.)

Think about the postures of “running from” versus “leaning into.” Running from discomfort, pain, frustration, etc., is a defensive, avoidance maneuver. It’s about trying to anticipate where pain might come from, and making sure we aren’t around to get smacked upside the head by it. Leaning into what brings us joy is proactive, goal-oriented, positively focused, and calls for clarity of our values, our dreams, our personal best.

We’re usually pretty sure we know what we don’t want, but how do we get clearer on what we do want? For me, this is the joy of coaching: helping people make positive, lasting changes in their lives, by learning how to reframe their experiences and become truer to who they know themselves to be.

What gets your heart racing? What brings you joy? What gets you out of bed in the morning before the alarm even goes off? What will it take for you to “lean more into life?”