The Self-Led Life

 

Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels

Human beings manage their concerns and fears unconsciously. By bringing those fears and management strategies to the surface, we have an opportunity to consciously change how we unconsciously view and react to the circumstances of our lives.

As children, even in the most loving and supportive homes, there were times when our needs weren’t met. We experienced scares and hurts. Some were neglected, abused, or abandoned.

We are all capable of processing and recovering from the impact of unmet needs and trauma. In safe, loving environments with patient, capable, and attentive caretakers, children feel and express emotions that are appropriate to their experiences. They are helped to make sense of what has happened. Their sense of value and worth if validated and the child fully processes painful experiences.

Photo by Fabiano Cardoso from Pexels

But when it doesn’t feel safe to fully release emotional energy and express natural curiosity about painful and scary experiences, the pain gets stuck and the experiences go unexplained..

This leaves the child with the ongoing burden of unexpressed emotional pain along with the challenging task of making sense of what happened. This burden creates an emotional wound that keeps the child tethered to the past until it can be resolved.

Sensing that they have no power or control to prevent more scares and hurts, children take responsibility for what happened. They blame themselves, concluding that they somehow caused the scare, hurt, or traumatic experience. This self-blame gives them a sense of power and control in otherwise powerless and sometimes hopeless situations.

In this way, children form shame-based beliefs about themselves.

Of course, we were all children. No matter how capable and attentive our caretakers were, no one escapes the experience of an unmet need, getting scared without comfort, or being hurt without protection or safety.

Our identities – how we viewed ourselves, gradually shifted from worthy and valued to unworthy and deficient.

By blaming ourselves for painful circumstances when we were young and dependent, we created a Shame Identity of “not enough-ness” or “too muchness.”

We feared others would also realize there was something wrong with us – that we weren’t enough or that we were too much.

So, we tried to hide or overcome our shortcomings.  We created a False Identity to present to the world; an identity that we hoped the world would accept and approve of. An identity to keep us safe and help us get what we wanted in life – love and acceptance.

The strategies we used to hide and to try to overcome our faults were designed to keep our Shame Identity hidden from the world.

But, in the process we lost the free and easy sense of who we really were – we hid our True Self from ourselves.

The Personal Development Continuum

 The personal development continuum begins at birth as we become acclimated to our bodies and our environment and continues until the day we die.

We can embrace the personal development journey consciously and voluntarily, or we can resist it, insisting that reality bend to our comfort and convenience. Either way, life seems to call us constantly to develop into better and more capable versions of ourselves.

Carol Dweck identified the growth or fixed mindset in her book, Mindset. Those who embrace personal development tend to have a growth mindset. They meet life’s challenges with confidence and determination. Those who resist when faced with what is unfamiliar tend to have a fixed or survival mindset and struggle.

As we grow from childhood and adolescence into adulthood, most of us become increasingly independent. We develop the capacity for dealing with whatever shows up in life through the lens of resistance or acceptance.

Learning to get along with others and to thrive in the world requires that we be open and teachable. Those who are unable to meet these challenges find themselves in a fight with life that can become all consuming.

My experience with the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model has provided a lens that helps me understand my own journey of personal development. For more information about IFS, go to IFS-Institute.com.

For example, when I joined a 12-step group in 1982 and got sober, I certainly didn’t understand that my alcohol use was protecting me from feeling the discomfort of unhealed emotional wounds. I got sober because my wife believed my alcohol use was a problem. I was afraid she would leave if I didn’t quit drinking.

I hated the idea of never drinking again. I didn’t want to label myself as alcoholic and resisted doing so for about 30 days before finally introducing myself in that way in a meeting.

Calling myself an alcoholic triggered a cascade of internal reactions that IFS has helped me understand all these years later.

• There was a part of me that felt shame to identify as an alcoholic. As I introduced myself in the meeting that night and said, “I’m Bill and I’m an alcoholic,” I choked on the words, barely able to enunciate them. My throat tightened and my eyes teared up.
• There was a part that had resisted identifying as alcoholic during the first 50 or 60 meetings, despite tremendous internal and external pressure to comply with what everyone else was doing.
• A part wanted to be included in the group and eventually succeeded in getting me to call myself an alcoholic. This part sought the approval and acceptance of my new friends.
• A part craved the meetings for their raw and vulnerable human exposure. This part recognized something that had been needed and missing from my life.
• There was a part of me that, with each day of continuous sobriety, influenced me to feel the pride of success and progress.

Over the next 20 years, I continued to participate in the 12-step program. I stayed sober and embraced as much of what was suggested and inferred as my parts would allow me to.

But skeptical, critical, and suspicious parts of me consistently questioned and challenged the culture of the program. I had an angry part that resented the efforts of long-time members to bully me into their ideas of how I should “work my program” and live my life.

My abstinence from alcohol has been important to my personal development because sobriety made it possible to find ways to heal and grow. If not sober, the ongoing toxic patterns that alcohol use made tolerable would have continued. The dysfunctional life created by progressive alcohol addiction would have made personal progress impossible.

I became a sponsor in the 12-step program and found that I loved to work with others who were trying to get sober. After about 20 years, I discovered The Work of Byron Katie (thework.com) which taught me a form of self-inquiry that helped me overcome my survival mindset. While working with others and going to meetings always provided temporary relief to my depression and anxiety, The Work yielded long term results.

Almost thirty years after I got sober, I became a life coach. I began by using the lessons I learned in recovery to help my clients reclaim power and choice in their lives despite circumstances and conditions.

I worked part time as a coach for about five years and was having great success with my clients. But I believed that formal training could make me a better coach. Once I was making enough money from coaching, I enrolled in a one-year coach training program which was held one weekend a month in Seattle. Halfway through the training, I quit my full-time job as a mortgage loan officer and focused entirely on building my coaching practice.

However, rather than becoming a more powerful and effective coach, I lost my confidence. As the one-year training progressed, four of the original sixteen coach trainees dropped out. I persisted for the entire year but was emotionally triggered most of the time and was, consequently unable to learn and grow.

Throughout the year, an internal war raged. There were [arts of me that insisted if I could just hang in there for one more weekend, I would have a breakthrough and get the expected value from the training. Other parts insisted that I should quit, blaming the trainers and of the program for my struggles.

At the end of the training, I looked around the room. Twelve of us had completed the course. At least ten of the graduates seemed to have embraced the training. I was aware of at least one other who, like me, had survived it.

Returning home that weekend, I concluded that I was somehow different from those who had successfully navigated the experience. They had all become better coaches while I felt demoralized, incapable, angry, hurt, and humiliated.

As I made the 5-hour drive home that final training weekend, I wondered what I would now do with my life. I questioned whether I was even capable of coaching others. I remembered one of the trainers saying that sometimes a season of therapy could make a difference for those who are otherwise too damaged for coaching to help. I feared this might be true about me.

I called Brenda, a therapist I’d met and scheduled some appointments. Fortunately, Brenda used the IFS model to help me. After just four IFS sessions, I felt clear and confident. I resumed my work as a life coach and built a successful coaching practice.

Eventually, I completed two levels of IFS training, became a Certified IFS Practitioner, and began using IFS with most of my clients.

Since becoming a life coach, I’ve learned that coaching isn’t for everyone. In fact, nobody needs coaching. But coaching can make a big difference for those who are ready for it and want the help, especially if the coach is trained in the IFS model.

Using the personal development continuum helps determine who coaching can help and who would be better served by counseling or therapy.

The difference between coaching and therapy is a matter of the client’s capacity for personal development. The client’s capacity is determined by the degree of completion with the past.

If a client has unhealed emotional wounds that require a high level of daily management, they may have very little capacity for personal development. Life consists of an exhausting expenditure of energy to manage those wounds. Day to day life is inspired by the need for safety and survival. Because of the energy spent on the effort, there is a reduced capacity for growth and personal development until their emotional wounds have been healed.

The more emotional wounds are healed, the greater the capacity for personal development.

For example, I drank to manage my unhealed emotional wounds. Although I was able to stop drinking, it took years before I discovered pathways to healing. Until I healed enough of the unresolved past, my daily focus was on safety and survival. Eventually, with the help of IFS, I shifted out of a survival mindset and now have the capacity to grow and expand.

Someone who has significantly reduced capacity for personal growth and who is living with a high level of emotional burden would benefit from the help of a qualified therapist who uses the IFS model.

However, if a client is relatively high functioning in the world, this might indicate a lower degree of emotional burdens. Their unresolved emotional wounds require less daily management. If this is the case, the client may be a good candidate for coaching because they have a greater capacity for growth and expansion. Life for someone with capacity for growth and expansion could be described as inspired, connected, and creative.

Nobody needs coaching but many people who fall into this second category can benefit from having a skilled life coach.

People can seek help in life from either a mental health professional or a professional life coach. To determine who can most appropriately serve them, an assessment of the capacity for personal development is called for.

Therapy can reduce unrealistic concern for safety and survival and increase capacity for personal development. Personal development (life) coaching can increase and leverage someone’s capacity for growth and expansion to help them create the life they want. The Internal Family Systems model can help with both.

Personal development can be thought of as a continuum. At one extreme, because of diminished capacity, we struggle to survive and endure life. At the other extreme, because we have ample capacity, we thrive.

At one end of the continuum, we feel powerless and hopeless. At the other, we are aware of, and have access to personal power and choice.

We can all find ourselves at some point on the personal development continuum.

With awareness and intention, I believe we are all capable of making progress. I began my personal development journey at survival. Over the years, I have progressed intentionally toward the other end of the continuum and find myself empowered and at choice.

Over the past five years, my journey has been accelerated by the IFS model. I now use IFS to help my coaching clients. No matter where I meet them on the personal development continuum, I help my clients acknowledge their capacity and increase it by using the IFS model.

 

I work with individual clients using the IFS model and have created a group coaching program that is based on the IFS model.

If you would like to have a conversation about where you are on the Personal Development Continuum and to decide if IFS Life Coaching is appropriate for you, let’s talk. Just go to my online calendar at www.BillsCalendar.com and find 30 minutes that work for you.

Is this all there is?

 Photo by The Lazy Artist Gallery from Pexels

I’m going to tell you a short story about the events of my life that answered this question. You may or may not be able to relate to my story, but I want you to know, no matter the conditions of your life, no matter how you have tried to endure consistent disappointment, if you’re asking the question, “Is this all there is?” then you already know that there has to be more. You may just not know how to access it.

I was about 5 years sober and asking myself, “Is this all there is?”  Life was supposed to get better once I got sober. I know for a lot of people it does. But for me, if anything, life was harder.

I didn’t know what good friends alcohol and cannabis had been for me. They both helped me numb the dull ache of existence, the undefined sorrow, the rage and anger, and the fear. Nothing was too much to handle when I knew relief was only a few beers or tokes away. But now that I was sober, I felt no relief.

I was 32 years old, married with two kids, going to recovery meetings, holding down a full-time job, and staying sober. Instead of sitting in front of the TV or shooting pool at the bar with the guys and drinking beer, I was sitting in meetings drinking coffee.

That’s about all that had changed. Sobriety was something new and it was uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Getting sober didn’t make life better. My wife and I still weren’t connecting. My impatience with the kids was just as bad if not worse. The challenges at work still landed as they always had. By not engaging in my addiction, I felt increasingly overwhelmed by life with no end in sight.

Why hadn’t life gotten better? Was this all that life had to offer?

This persisted for about 20 years until finally, I found a path to more. Although there was little to no evidence that life had any more to offer than what I was accustomed to, I always believed there was a way to get far more out of life. I never gave up.

Looking back, I realize that those 20 years, although full of pain, suffering, and sometimes despair, formed the foundation to build my life on. Simply staying sober while attempting to apply the principles of the recovery program put me in a position to recognize the opportunity for personal development. That opportunity presented itself when I learned about The Work of Byron Katie (TheWork.com).

For as long as I could remember, I believed there was something wrong with me. But, The Work showed me that there was something wrong with my thinking – and that I could correct my thinking simply by evaluating it. This made an immediate and permanent difference in my level of suffering and capacity for change.

My first wife died of a brain tumor, and I remarried 2 years later. The second marriage was unbearable, so we divorced. My ex-wife provided the emotional triggers and exposed the thoughts that were the source of my suffering. Eventually, I changed her name in my phone to “The Gift” because I knew every time we interacted, I was going to be upset. And when I was upset, there was an opportunity to examine my thinking and replace my suffering with clarity and peace.

Before finding The Work, I believed my moods, attitudes, and feelings were determined by the circumstances of my life. Gradually, as I formed the new habit of self-inquiry, I realized that how I feel is determined by what I believe and think about the circumstances of my life.

This was a life changing realization. Abstinence put me in a position to recognize the need for more work. I just didn’t know what work there was to do. Byron Katie helped me begin my healing journey. It had been so difficult to hang on to any hope that life could be better. Once I found a modality that worked for me, I sensed that I had moved from the waiting room of apathetic abstinence to an invigorating sense of progress and awareness.

It didn’t seem like others suffered and struggled as I did with money, jobs, and relationships. I saw myself as broken and expended great amounts of energy trying to find a fix while simultaneously hiding my brokenness from others.

Because I thought I was broken, self-improvement seemed to be what was called for. But eventually I learned that I was never broken and that there was nothing wrong with me. What was broken was my programming. My beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and responses to life resulted in dysfunction and chronic suffering.

With an ACE score of 7 (indicating a high level of early childhood trauma), I realized the past was directly affecting my perspective and my responses to life. If you would like to learn more about the ACE Quiz, click on this link.

Over time, I saw that personal discovery and self-awareness were the keys to breaking out of a life to be endured. By applying what I learned from Byron Katie, I began a journey of self-discovery and was eventually introduced to the Internal Family Systems model (IFS-Institute.com).

As I become more self-aware, I learn more about:

• Who I am and who I am not
• What is true and what is not
• How to access my personal power and choice

How exciting to learn that I am not at the mercy of externally imposed limitations!

My personal development journey spans four decades. I mark the beginning of that journey as my first day of sobriety which was on November 15, 1982. I sometimes still wonder if this is all there is, and when I am willing to do the work of healing the past, I find that the answer is always “No, this is not all there is.” The question itself is an invitation to go inside and get curious about the part of me that is asking the question.

My coaching clients believe that the gnawing sense there must be more deserves their attention. They recognize that they don’t voluntarily think these thoughts or generate the discomfort. They simply notice the thoughts as questions or complaints and experience the discomfort of the unanswered question or the unresolved complaint.

The sense that something is missing is a form of suffering which ranges from unsettling to excruciating. We enter and exit jobs and relationships attempting to ease the suffering. We shop, eat, drink, use, lie, cheat, steal, and hide attempting to manage it.

I believe there is a correlation between this state of malcontent and our level of self-trust. We suffer when we allow others to direct our lives and fail to take responsibility for the choice to do so.

Why would we allow others to make our decisions for us? Ultimately, when we do so, we are choosing to let someone else direct our lives. We believe that the values and logic provided by someone else is more valid than our own because we don’t trust ourselves.

And we don’t trust ourselves because we don’t know ourselves.

One of the things I heard in a meeting several years ago was that we compare our insides to everyone else’s outsides and come up short. How true this is.

We can see our own weaknesses, vulnerabilities, fears, and shame. But we work hard to make sure no one else sees that version of ourselves. To some extent, everyone else is doing exactly the same thing.

We assign authority to spouses, bosses, counselors, coaches, ministers, authors, parents, actors, politicians, law makers, siblings, friends, corporations, advertisers, social media gurus, and more. We trust them more than we trust themselves.

Consciously or not, we defer to the opinions of others who are not burdened by the consequences of their advice. We follow their formulas, embrace their beliefs and values, work hard to meet their expectations, and try to please them.

And then we are surprised that our lives don’t work.

For some of us, even while being so unfulfilled in our lives, we give advice to others, imposing our second and third hand rules, values, and expectations on them.

Before I continue, I want you to know that you don’t have to spend 40 years suffering to learn what I did. You are cordially invited to exit the waiting room.

In some areas of life, we sense there is something missing. This sensation can cause chronic suffering. At the core of the problem is a lack of trust in ourselves to make our own decisions or to live by our own values and beliefs. Consciously or not, we defer to the opinions, beliefs, preferences, and values of others. We spend our lives conforming to the expectations, perceived or real, of those who we have assigned authority to.

There is a good reason for that distrust. At some level, we believe we are incompetent to decide for ourselves. Over time, our deference has become automatic.

What we have done in the past to resolve this sense of lack and incompleteness hasn’t worked because most of look outside of ourselves for the solution. We upgrade or rearrange the external circumstances of our lives, believing that happiness and contentment happen from the outside in.

This is the key for how to resolve our suffering. By looking inside, we can find the source of our dissatisfaction as well as the resources needed to address it. But very few of us know how to do that. Rare is the individual who knows what to look for once the gaze has moved from outside to in. What is needed is a curriculum for how to live from the inside out.

I offer what I have learned about how to live from the inside out in the form of just such a curriculum. I call it the Self-Led Project and I offer it for your consideration.

The Self-Led Project is not just another set of values and beliefs. It is also not a formula for how to live a happy life. I have learned that we come with an innate ability to live an inspired and rewarding life. The most joyous moments of my life were those when I was able to be fully present to those moments, no matter the circumstances.

The Self-Led Project is a curriculum that is designed to help you access your unique qualities and resources. As you learn to access the Self that possesses these qualities and resources, your inspired and fulfilling life will reveal itself and unfold.

Don’t believe for a moment that the life that has you asking, “Is this all there is?” is the life you must settle for. Find a path to discover what blocks you from living from the true and highest version of yourself. Whether you become a student and practitioner of The Work of Byron Katie, Internal Family Systems, The Self-Led Project, or another modality or curriculum, embrace a path that takes you inside so you can learn to trust your own wisdom to choose what is best for you.

Conscious and Unconscious Personal Development

Photo by Luis Quintero from Pexels

 Personal development happens – either consciously or unconsciously. The unconscious life is characterized by reactions to a life unchosen. The conscious life requires some work but provides access to personal power and choice.

Unconscious personal development occurs naturally and begins as a matter of survival. If we didn’t develop as persons, we would remain dependent for our entire lives. But most of us do develop over time.

Our belief systems are developed according to the meanings we have attached to the experiences of our lives. Initially, we are not aware of this developmental process.

Our bodies develop according to the natural maturation process partnered with our beliefs about food and physical activity and are influenced by who we associate with in our lives. Out of concerns for fitting in and avoiding rejection or criticism, this is one of the first developmental areas many consciously attempt to influence.

We develop habits and patterns associated with the emotions we feel. We suppress them, freely express them, or use them persuasively. This too, at least at first, is an unconscious developmental process.

We develop our minds through education and influence, initially consuming information until we begin to judge that information as right or wrong, important, or not.

We develop spiritually as we accept the answers to the unsolved mysteries of existence provided by our families and society. Gradually we may reject these ideas or consciously pursue them more deeply.

You may not be aware of the process, but you are involved in some form of personal development.

Conscious personal development occurs when we realize we can have a say in how we develop.

At the core of most of our development lie our beliefs – thoughts that we embrace as true. If we don’t question our beliefs, they rarely change. Conscious personal development begins with an awareness of how one has unconsciously developed.

A common beginning for conscious personal development is marked by some sort of a breakdown. That can look like a financial or career crisis. It can look like a failed relationship, consequences of addiction, or disappointment, discouragement, or failure in any area of life.

The breakdown gets your attention and naturally, you attempt to identify the cause. At first, many assume that the cause of the breakdown is outside of their control or responsibility. They may try to get control of the external circumstance that seems to be source of the breakdown. They might get a new job, put themselves on a budget, threaten to leave their spouse or partner if they don’t change, find a new relationship, move to a different state, etc.

It may take years to recognize that you are the common denominator in repeating patterns. “Why do I keep getting these crappy jobs?” “Apparently all the good men/women are taken.” “The politics in this state are stupid.” These are all thoughts of someone who has not yet realized that rearranging external circumstances puts the cart before the horse.

When, finally, we see that we have the power and the responsibility to make changes, we begin our conscious journey of personal development.

The old saying is that if you keep doing what you have always done, you will keep getting what you have always gotten.

I agree. Do something different and you will probably get something different.

Trying and failing to change is a painful experience that can erode self-confidence and could lead to believing change isn’t possible. But it is possible to do something different if you understand why you do what you have always done and are willing and able to go through the discomfort of change.

What do you want your life to look like? How would someone with a life like that believe, think, feel, react, and act?

What would it take to learn how to believe, think, feel, react, and act in that way?

I have experienced all I have described here. I was about 45 years old before I began to effectively influence my personal development. I found a method that helped me to question my thinking and change my beliefs. Then I found a way to heal my past emotional wounds.

I didn’t exactly find power over the circumstances of my life. While I am happy with my life circumstances, they don’t determine my happiness.

But I did recognize that I have the power to honestly look at what makes me tick. I have the power to look at myself and I have the power to choose healing and repair and reinvention.

Conscious personal development can answer the important questions in life:

• Who am I and who am I not?

• What makes me think, feel, and act as I do?

• How can I change the thoughts, feelings, and actions that aren’t working for me?

• what do I really want in life?

• How can I start living the life I want?

For years I developed unconsciously. It wasn’t until I took responsibility for my personal development that my life reflected an updated version of my personal values and preferences. I know who I am, I understand what makes me think, feel, and act as I do, I know how to change thoughts, feelings and actions that aren’t working for me, I know what I want in life, and I know how to live that life.

You can know these things too if you are willing to consciously take responsibility for your personal development.

What is Recovery?

 

I’ve been coaching individuals and groups since 2011. Prior to becoming a personal development coach, I considered myself a recovered alcoholic. I don’t see it that way anymore. I still don’t drink. But I’m no longer comfortable with labels like alcoholism.

 

I do like the idea of recovery. You don’t have to be an alcoholic, addict, or even someone who is chemically dependent to be in recovery.

 

When I became a coach, I had been clean and sober for 28 years – meaning that I had abstained completely from drinking alcohol and from using any mind-altering chemicals. And according to some of the literature I was familiar with in the self-help group that supported my sobriety, I was recovered. If I was someone who liked tattoos, I probably would have had the word, RECOVERED inked somewhere on my body.

 

But as I look back, I realize I wasn’t fully recovered. What was I recovering from? I only drank for about 9 years. I drank a lot and did a lot of dumb and even wrong things while under the influence of alcohol and other drugs during that time. Was I recovering from drinking a lot for 9 years? I thought so for the longest time.

 

Any damage I’d done was or at least could have been restored, repaired, or recovered after just a few months of abstinence.  I worked hard to clean up as many messes as I was aware of for those first few years, but I certainly didn’t feel recovered.

 

I felt like a mess!

 

Recovery can mean getting over something and it can also mean getting something back that has been lost.

 

What had I lost? I had lost the trust of my wife and the people closest to me. I’d lost trust in myself. I’d lost my moral compass and the ability to tell the truth. I’d lost clarity and the ability to tell the difference between reality and what I thought of it. I had lost connection to myself and others and so much more.

 

I couldn’t consider myself recovered until I stopped doing things that burnt the bridge of trust between myself and everyone in my life. Until I trusted myself again and started telling the truth, I couldn’t consider myself recovered no matter how long I had been sober.

 

What was I getting over? I was over 20 years sober before I realized that what I was getting over was what had been limiting me for my entire life: false beliefs. I’ve read, and it makes sense to me that by the time we are 8 years old, we are about 80% programmed. What we decided was true to explain all that happened in our first 8 years got cooked into our unconscious and has been running our lives ever since then. That is, unless we recover from that bad programming.

 

And that, in my opinion and in my experience is the real work of recovery. Sure, I will take a medal for my length of sobriety. But honestly, how long someone has been clean and sober only reflects recovery if it is accompanied by the inner work that it takes to develop personal responsibility. That means challenging what we have always held as truth. It means letting go of our sacred cows and becoming mentally and emotionally aligned with reality.

 

There are many stages on the journey to recovery and many stages from recovery to recovered.

 

Do you have or have you had habitual (automatic and repeating) behaviors intended to ease the discomfort of your existence?

 

Take a look at the accompanying graphics I created to describe the stages of recovery. Are you somewhere in the following list of stages of recovery? Reading through the list, what is missing in this description for you?

 

I work with people who are in the Advanced Recovery Stage, helping them to move out of survival and into the mainstream of life, empowered to live a purposeful and fulfilling life.