Over the course of refining my work and what I offer to clients, I’ve come up with several ideas that define me:
Practical Spirituality
Dancing Star
Bridge over troubled water
Follow the Magic
And as a public speaker – The Myth Buster
What’s in a name?
Everything I came up with resonated with an aspect of my work, I’ll share my favourite at the end though. The Myth Buster may actually be the best, because it illustrates something I passionately believe in, that over the centuries faulty social thinking has been passed from parent to child, but teaching children to question that thinking is the province of a minority of caring, clear, thinkers.
I certainly wasn’t, in fact questioning things usually earned me the title of stupid. There were many things I was told were stupid that I now know to be right. But my parents felt they were right, we were children, and I do know that to their minds they guided us in the best possible way.
The fact that we don’t question is important, because changing your life isn’t about delving back into the past, change happens in the now and benefits the future. It’s not about being like your parents, it’s about finding out who you are. It’s one thing to understand, but another thing to accept what doesn’t work for you because people have a handy cliché to justify it.
What really floats my boat
Is new thinking, new ways of looking at life, new inspirers and old inspirers I’ve never encountered. Without new information we’re simply clones of the past, and victims thereof.
In order to be fully ourselves, untethered by the past, unaffected by the thinking of others, we have to question everything that makes us uncomfortable and decide what would make us comfortable. Especially when it comes to thinking.
Those Myths
I could create a list a mile long of the kind of social thinking that serves no useful purpose, but for the protection of your eyesight I’ll skim over a few:
Struggle is a part of human existence
Of course it is, but don’t choose it deliberately. This is the myth that keeps you in the wrong job because struggle is natural so why would you need to do anything about your discomfort?
Life is unfair
There are times that life does feel unfair, the loss of a loved one, friend, or pet. Working hard only to be made redundant. That sort of thing. But those are discreet events, not life itself. Much of life is within your control, so don’t blame life when things go wrong, don’t blame anything, work out what you need to do and do it.
* This doesn’t refer to death, illness, accident, redundancy, etc.
Happiness isn’t realistic
This is possibly the worst myth. Did anyone ever discuss happiness with you when you were young? If they did you were deeply fortunate. It’s very rare that happiness comes up as a subject, or a thing, or important. Yes life deals out blows. Yes people can be unkind. No you didn’t want to have to work but you can like your job. Yes bad things happen.
But good things happen too, and what you think about grows stronger.
So whenever possible think about happiness, what would make you happy, face what isn’t and change it. But don’t, whatever you do, believe that you deserve anything but the best.
THAT IS NOT TRUE!
My favourite job description
This image is from the famous sketch with the brilliant Andre Previn, and iconic Morecambe and Wise. For those who don’t remember it, no composers were hurt during the execution of this sketch.
Previn was supposed to be conducting Eric who was lead piano for a piece of classical music, except that Eric couldn’t play the piano. When challenged that he was playing all the wrong notes he uttered the immortal line “on the contrary, I am playing all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order.”
My favourite job description by a coaching client was “You’re the Eric Morecambe of Coaching, you do all the normal things just not necessarily in the normal order.”
This describes what myth busting is about, take those normal words, accepted ideas, and look at them in a different order.
To your happiness
Deb xx
Deb Hawken 