Rethinking my beliefs

I’ve been working with an amazing life coach for about three months now. I’ll tell you more about the whole process later, but this particular post has an agenda:

Beliefs.

In our second month of working together, my coach was noticing that I was having a hard time imagining myself in a more grounded and aligned place—both professionally and personally. She’d ask me to think about my ideal day, and I’d answer her back with a schedule that still had 6 meetings, just maybe a little more time for reading in the morning. She’d ask me to write my “legacy” as though I was 98 years old, and had accomplished everything I wanted to in life. I struggled to find anything to say that wasn’t grounded in my present reality. She asked me to do a meditation where I’d picture my “inner goddess.” The only person I pictured was Bea Arthur. Serious fucking truth.

I was failing at being coached.

The next week, she doubled down, and asked me to do an exercise that I actually do with my brand clients ALL the time. I’m guessing she knew this, since she also used to work in marketing/advertising. Slyyyyy.

The exercise:
Find and articulate your WHY. Begin with writing what you BELIEVE. Anything and everything. Write for 10-15 minutes. Go.

I didn’t think I was going to discover anything new about myself. But you know, life is full of surprises.

Here’s what I wrote:

—

I believe that our beliefs hold us back. We believe we're not good enough, we believe we have to act a certain way to be accepted, or to get promoted, or to achieve what society defines as success. We believe that we need a lot of money and a certain title and a certain body to be happy. I believe that we believe what other people and society tells us, and it corrupts and overrides what we know.

I believe we're afraid of listening to our hearts because they'll probably tell us something different than what everyone else has been telling us all these years.

I believe we spend too much time doing things we “should” do—that society, or culture, or our jobs, or our people-pleasing natures tell us is important—and not enough time doing what we truly want or yearn to do. The things that nurture our souls.

I believe that success is not the same as happiness.

I believe that the way we work today is sucking the joy from our lives. Or at least I believe that to be true for me. I also believe this to be true for many other women, especially.

I believe that we weren't meant to sit at a desk for 8 hours a day and that the productivity culture we've created is draining the real life force and beauty from each of us.

I believe that professional success is often measured in linear progression, which leaves no room for lateral growth and evolution. Workplaces reward doing what you already do, but better--but can't handle when you want to become something different because you no longer fit the mold.

I believe that one of the things that contributes to mental health struggles is the feeling that we need to be a separate self at work. That it's not safe or accepted to be a fully whole and integrated person. That we have to code switch. I believe this affects more women than men.

I believe we experience burnout and mental health issues when the demands of our work no longer align with the needs and knowing of our hearts. We wind up working for someone else’s agenda and against ourselves.

I believe that we need systemic change in our culture to say we've had enough of working against our true nature, but that the systemic shift will only happen with critical mass from individuals.

I believe we spend too much time doing and we become afraid to just spend time being. Productivity has become how we measure our worth.

I believe that we've been told to admire Type A personalities...but that maybe Type As are only this way because it's how we've been conditioned, and it's actually unhealthy, we're hurting ourselves, and we're perpetuating the fear of rest, the fear of accepting from others, the need to be in control, and the cultural norms that productivity = worth. In conforming to this, we're ignoring our inner knowing.

I believe I'm afraid of stopping, and just being, because I won't know who I am without doing. (Although “not doing” for a week at the mountain house was wonderful and now I want more of this…so maybe I don’t actually believe that anymore?)

I believe we've been told and sold a lie about purpose. Purpose is always tied to doing, accomplishing, serving, giving, changing. What if our purpose is just to be? To love? To share? And then in the process of doing that, that’s how we actually show up for ourselves and others?

I’m starting to believe that I can make the space I need to feel OK doing nothing. And to figure out who I am and how I want to show up.

So. Maybe I wasn’t failing at being coached after all. Maybe I just needed to write and read my own words to see how far I’d actually come. How much I’d already started rethinking and unlearning.

I’m not the same person I was 10, 5, even two years ago. I believed a whole lot of toxic shit back then. But that’s where I was in life. I’m positive that my beliefs will be different 2 years from now than they are today. That’s not saying that what I believe now (or believed then) is wrong, it just means that I’m growing. I definitely take comfort in knowing that.