Connect, don't Correct: Life Coaching Life Hack
In our common conversation, most of us have had a particular style of communication modeled: listen to respond. We want to keep the flow going. We want to entertain. We want to impress the listener. We want them to feel less alone in their experience.
All of these are valid reasons to share personal anecdotes and stories during a conversation.
We may see ourselves, our past mistakes, our would have, could have, should have gremlins may awaken as we reflect on what someone is telling us, and we want to offer advice to help the speaker deal with the challenges they are sharing with us.
We have been programmed to respond. Which is to say, we are programmed to assume that when someone shares a part of themself with us, that they are asking us indirectly for our opinion on that matter. That they are asking us for our acknowledgement, for our validation of their experience and their choices.
Put that way, how do you feel about this way of responding? Do we share our stories for validation? Do we want advice?
When we think back to the most healing, connecting moments in our lives, they don't usually include receiving advice. Or if they do, that advice was very cleverly cloaked in love, presence, and acknowledgement for how we were showing up in that moment, with that challenge, to face it. We felt empowered. The listener served to help reflect back to us what we had already shown: that we were capable of facing this. We need support, we need community, we need love. And more than anything, we need to know that we are complete and capable.
When leaving our childhood home for the first time, a common feeling shared by many is the feeling that we just don't know what we are going to do. Are we going to make it? What is the right path?
And many of us, 10, 20 years down the line, may look back at that time with a bit of sadness and grief if what we received in that moment was advice. Was a roadmap. Because we weren't asking for that. What we really wanted was to feel that we could succeed. To know that the world was big, but our potential was even bigger, and we just had to trust ourselves. Learn to follow our gut, to invest in our future, to build our skills and habits and trust in ourself. To collect the data to prove to ourselves that we are capable of doing great things. That we can fail, fall, get back up, brush ourselves off, and keep going, new lessons in hand. We can't take the fall with us, but the lessons? Those are portable.
If we were deprived of our autonomy, and given the roadmap, and we followed it, and did not listen to our inner voice, once we get to the big goal on that map, it's very likely that we won't feel the desire to celebrate. Because we haven't proven to ourself that we are capable of being true to ourselves. We unknowingly left ourselves behind long ago, and arrived at a place that may be a desirable place, may be a safe place, but if it isn't our place, we can't find peace and satisfaction there. And we may grieve and resent the younger version of ourselves, or those who advised us. But resentment just cycles us back to the past, and keeps us on that path that wasn't ours.
So, what do we want to do?
How can we help one another to stay on our path?
How can we show up for one another in a way that honors our completeness and recognizes the unique gifts that we have to share with the world…
