Yes. I'm very hopeful and relaxed. Why do you ask?
You know the most wonderful thing about coaching work? Watching someone transform before my very eyes. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Nothing is more exhilarating. I've come to believe it's why we're here on this planet.
It's the birthing of the feeling of hope. But I think the word hope is a slippery little bugger. I didn't feel hope for years. I struggled as a teen with severe depression. I felt there was no point in dreaming of a better future. It felt futile and vacant. What I didn't know was that I had a choice on how I could feel. Even at my darkest hour, I could have found a way to feel better.
It's easy to write this now since I've transformed, but to tell someone who is suffering that they have a choice to simply feel better is the kind of comment that might result in one getting slapped across the face.
When we're in great pain, it's nearly impossible to see the light beyond the dark clouds. It's so far away and so unavailable. So how do we do that? How do we endure the dark times and not become swallowed up by them?
By devoting our lives to keeping our faith and belief raging when we're in a good place. When we do that, then we have an emotional touchstone we can return to when the walls feel as if they're caving in.
It's the Golden Key we're all searching for, I do believe.
But we doubt it. We squash it and we become tough and resilient. We become cynical and catty and bitchy, but when we slow down or see something which moves us, something dislodges deep inside and that's the true light within us seeking attention.
If we spent our best days milking the good feelings, then when the dark times come we can see they're reminders that we have a choice.
Hope. It's a beautiful word, but it's loaded with all sorts of obligations. Obligations that things have to be just so for us to feel that soaring sense of belief and endless possibilities. Of course, that's where faith and belief come in, terms that drive scientists buggy. "Proof! We need proof!" they logically cry. But how do we prove faith? How do we prove feelings?
We prove them by feeling them, and there is no better answer that I can think of for that. You might have a better one. If you do, please let me know.
In many spiritual circles, there is this idea we're hardwired to feel hope. It's such a nice idea it's hard to debunk it without sounding like a total ass. I'm not sure when it happened, but nice and kind is now equated with indecisiveness and ineffectiveness. We don't trust it.
Use the ideas of intuition and inner guidance in business and you might just as well take a job in the mail room. The idea of emotional guidance is entirely distrusted in business. It's too soft, it lacks bite. But see, that's what I find intriguing. Working from that place is, without a doubt, the healthiest choice, but it's not the most admired, for when people sense it they become vehemently angry and threatened, for they know it's how they need to act but feel too vulnerable to do so. It can piss them off to no end.
It's why all this talk about not caring what anyone thinks anymore is so prevalent. I don't think it's that we have be more callous in terms of doing whatever the hell we want, but I do think the idea of basing our reactions on what our emotional guidance system is telling us, versus what some business course of book says, is the most authentic and radical way of being I know of.
I have a sneaking suspicion it's the future and I'm sure it's freaking a lot of people out.
What I find startling is I think we used to be more like that. I'm not being nostalgic. I'm too young to be nostalgic for the "good old days," and I'm much too keen on today's culture and what's ahead, but the distrust of emotional logic is now the subject of degree programs at reputable universities in this world. That means something. In the past, it was simply understood it was how the majority of us functioned. Today we don't trust it. We want it tougher. Faster.
I suppose you could call me sentimental, but I long for a massive reboot of work that is about devotion to a sense of wonder and awe. Might be a hard sell at a midtown law firm in Manhattan, but everywhere else I can see the value of it. You can't convince me wonder and awe aren't our natural states. I'm sure when it comes to designing a life, most of us would say remembering the wonder we felt as children is best suited for a fantasy film and not real life.
I beg to differ. I think it's entirely the other way around.
I'm rather obsessed with this idea or rectifying childhood dreams with our daily reality. How's it possible? How can we live in that state of wonder, while being fully present in today?
Not sure. I mean, I am a bit sure, as is evident from the work I do coaching people all day long. Everyone is so tired sloughing along to the finish line. There's so much more. Isn't there? There is, I do very much believe.
Designing our life. It's a great idea. I think we should all take it up. Or, better yet, let's call it Dreams By Design. Ah, that does sound like a new store in Soho with windmills and those rather obvious positivity sayings.
I really don't believe any of us were meant to live small. We weren't designed to sacrifice anything for our happiness. I do believe we were born to be visionaries when everyone around us is wearing sunglasses. To see the future when others can barely see in front of them is, I believe (there is that pesky word again), why we're here. I tired that other way of thinking for years and dear Lord, it depressed the hell out of me and made me so boring.
Dreams By Design. Oh, I rather like that. Probably should trademark it sooner than later. Or start designing chimes.