My coach at the Achieve Institute made a statement that transformed my life. He said “Most people don’t have a future, they have an extension of their past experiences.”
That statement floored me.
It’s so true.
I was living a life where I was going through the motions and letting PAST experiences, failures, successes and circumstances drive my FUTURE possibilities.
I was not consciously aware enough in my day to day to step back in the moment and determine behaviors that would change the outcome. I continuously exhibited behaviors that gave me back what I had in my past.
For instance, I had a boss who constantly tried to make me look incompetent in meetings. She would ask me rapid fire questions back to back never giving me the opportunity to answer one question.
Have you ever had that happen to you?
So with me never completing a sentence, the reality she was creating for the room seemed to be a fair assessment.
Before each meeting I’d get a queasy stomach, rehearse in my head how bad the meeting would be and claim all the ways she was going to interrupt, interject and twist my words.
Basically, I was allowing past experiences to negatively impact every experience with her.
I had to come to terms with the fact that although I couldn’t control her behavior, what I could control was my response.
That’s the power of CHOICE. I get to CHOOSE whether or not I wanted to continue being a character in HER REALITY CIRCLE or take the pen and become the lead actor in the script I was writing for my own life.
That’s what I call the Design Create Live Circle (DCL Circle). In that space you are designing (envisioning) how you want your future to look. You then create (map out) what that will look like each day. Lastly you live (act it out) within that space everyday.
I call that Designing the Promise of Your Future.
With that, instead of dreading every meeting, I started envisioning myself articulating clearly, remaining calm, pausing, answering one question at a time and most importantly, determining what I wanted to accomplish with each meeting and staying true to that goal.
Prior to each meeting, I determined my goal and/or intended outcome and mapped out my talking points.
Did it change her behavior, absolutely not.
However, what did change was my response.
I no longer became flustered. I took deep breaths and kept my breathing calm and redirected questioning back to the goal at hand to allow me to push toward the desired goal and/or outcome.
Understanding how your energy flows during times of change and how you solve problems in a crisis will also help you develop skills to have more resilient responses.
Check out this quick clip on Resilience.
Good evening Tracey,
This is everything that I’ve been feeling for a while now. I’m happy to know that it can change.