Results are like the Weather

Many coaching conversations go around the subject of Motivation. People say “I know what I need to do, but I am not motivated to do it.”

Some people told me “If I knew that the action would be certain to lead to the result I want, then I would do it instantly.”

Going deeper, we discovered, perhaps, the main culprit – the thinking of “If I am successful, then I am worthy; but if I am not successful, then I am worthless.” In other words, people inadvertently link their sense of Identity with the results of their actions, and the risk for an unsuccessful result makes them stop acting altogether.

What if you were to look at those ‘results’ as you look at the ‘weather’? Both of them are out of your control and neither of them could be a criteria for who you are as a person.
– If something is important to you, do you give up doing it, just because the weather is different than expected? Would you not marry the person you love, just because the temperature dropped today?
– Do you decide that you are a bad or incapable person, based on the level of humidity in the atmosphere today?

Obviously, you’ll adjust your actions to the weather, but it remains foolish to use it for judging your worthiness or for deciding if you should Ever start or continue a particular project.

[I’ll talk more about this subject in future blogs, because it’s so common in the human psyche – and it’s so easy to give up trying when you take your thoughts or your feelings too seriously; however, becoming free to act the way you want is just an insight away]

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I want to be approved of

It’s a common tendency, having ancestral roots in our psyche. But what if we are wrongfully interpreting the meaning of this word?

Etymologically speaking, Approve = A + Prove

The prefix “a” means “not, near, without, toward” (latin).

So, “approve” means “not proved [yet]”, as in “it may not be popular”, not “in trend”.

In other words, “approve” does not refer to “me” (as a person, something that others should do for me), but to “the thing” I’m about to do and that I am shy about. It is “the thing” that is not “proved yet.”

It was a time when, if I wanted to sail around the world, people would not approve of me. However, once that activity was proved to be valid, if I said that I wanted to sail around the world, “being approved of” wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

If you feel the need “to be approved”, most probably that means that – in your reality – the thing you’re just about to do is “not proved yet”. Most probably, you feel unsure about it and you crave the approval of others, to give you permission to do it.

That’s a good moment to realize that your feeling of “craving approval” says nothing about the “provability” of the thing you’re about to do. That means that you are, actually, allowed to go and do it, and – as a result – prove it.

And, once you’ve done it, that thing is now “proved” and you are “approved of”.

Just for fun, look at the page below: Failed Technology Predictions. It’s interesting how many people expressed that they “don’t approve” of something, until that thing was, actually, demonstrated by having been done.

http://listverse.com/2007/10/28/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/