Who Are You and How Did You Get Here?

Have you ever wondered about how you got to this point in your life? I certainly have. Sometimes it’s in the middle of all the busy-ness, other times during a yoga class, or even in the middle of a friendly gathering. If we haven’t had these moments of confusion, anxiety, or overwhelm, I wonder if we are simply living on autopilot. Life is on cruise control. 

Have you consciously chosen the life you are leading? What stories have you told yourself or have been told to you about where you find yourself today? What has been your cultural context? What family pressures were exerted? What gentle supportive forces encouraged you? 

Are you conscious of how you make decisions? What unconscious forces keep you repeating patterns in new settings? 

I remember a client, Stella (pseudonym), I worked with a few years ago who was struggling to perform to expected organizational standards, but more importantly, to her own standards of excellence. She was highly intelligent, disciplined, and risen in her career at a fast pace. But she wasn’t feeling motivated and most definitely didn’t appear to be happy. Stella’s frustrations were showing up as anger towards her team, her children, and even her husband. 

At one of our sessions, when Stella  was speaking about a recent situation with a staff member who was not performing and therefore affecting the team’s outcomes, I reminded her of something that I try and keep close in my daily interactions – No one wakes up in the morning and says, “I’m going to intentionally screw up and mess with your day.”. She resisted this. After a few sessions, she began to open up to the idea that people weren’t purposefully “sabotaging her” and more importantly, that she also didn’t wake up every day to “mess up”. Stella soon realized that what she was resisting, was persisting. She had been raised by high performing professional father and a stay at home mother. Her siblings were all professionals. Stella had chosen a career path that was not congruent with family values and yet her behaviors, growth trajectory and successes were choices coming from unconscious drivers learned a long time ago. Stella and the situations she was challenged and perplexed by were more complex than what I am sharing here, but it gives you a taste of how there is so much more going on than our idea of choosing a life out of complete free will. With Stella, she eventually came to a place where she realized she wanted nothing more at that moment than be a stay at home Mom to her two kids. Later, as the kids began full time school and she had more time, she chased her dreams of becoming an entrepreneur. 

It’s not easy to accept that we have such unconscious forces playing havoc with our lives. We live in a world where we believe we can do anything we want and that our determination and will is enough to make things happen. And then we get perplexed and frustrated when things don’t go as planned. We can also become downtrodden and begin to believe that life just wasn’t meant to be fulfilling. We become more and more stuck. 

The good news is that these moments when you are questioning life, are the cracks that will let more life in. The specific situations or the individuals that are causing you to react and behave in ways that aren’t congruent with you are the signs to help you see what you are yearning for. Just as there are unconscious forces working that don’t serve you, there are also unconscious forces inside of you calling you to what you desire most. Beyond our mind, it’s our body, heart, and spirit that springs up time and time again to give us glimpses of what more life can be. 

What are you waiting for? Start noticing the symptoms. Start questioning the noticing.