I believe that being your true self, your authentic self, can take Courage. And pursuing your dreams, in alignment with that self can be terrifying (well at least that’s what I have experienced!)
Courage is the willingness to take action in spite of fear. Acting in alignment with your inner self, your authentic core, can be daunting. Particularly if you fear judgement, recrimination, isolation etc. will be the result of being authentic and chasing your dreams.
To counter this difficulty, I remind myself every day of my core values of Courage, Love, Passion, Joy & Grace and I focus deliberately on acting in alignment with these values. Mostly it works and I make progress but then something happens… and then DOUBT settles in, then DELAY and DIVISION.
Brendon Burchard in his “Motivation Manifesto” refers to these as the ‘three-headed demon’. These are the challenges that show up, diminish our courage and stop us from reaching our dreams.
There have been numerous occasions that I have fought these demons myself and what it has made me realise is that the need to be equipped at all times to slay these demons is imperative.
How many times have you been gung ho about a goal, firing on all cylinders, ready to go after it, or have even started and then the seed of doubt is planted? It may be a comment from a well meaning friend (or relative), it may be a post on social media, it may be a knock-back from a potential client; whatever form it takes the seed of doubt takes root.
For me, there was a point very early on in my corporate career when I declared to a friend of mine that I was going to be the CIO of the company I was working for. I’ll never forget the look she gave me. And this was a very good friend, one I had known for years! (And I knew her intentions were honourable – we’re still friends 😉
But she looked at me with a look of skepticism and said “Really? Why on earth would you want to do that for? And do you really think you can be bothered?” To this day I’ll never forget how that felt. I had been so certain. Happy that I had chosen (and declared) my career goal and expecting support. Now, the seed of DOUBT was planted.
This seed of doubt took time to overcome…and that time meant DELAY. The doubts of “well maybe I’m not ready”, “perhaps I don’t have the experience”, “I still have so much to learn” diminished the confidence I had in myself about achieving the goal. As a result, I started to look at all the ways I could put off the goal (of course not that I thought of it that way) and get the experience, learning and what I now recognise was the return of confidence to keep going.
So I worked. I worked on my development plan. I took twists and turns in my career that perhaps I may not have if I wasn’t doubting and delaying. And all the while I kept the goal to myself. I no longer spoke about it to anyone else. I kept my aspirations a secret. And the isolation was palpable. The DIVISION from others, the separateness, made the journey harder than it needed to be.
In the end I got there and with hindsight am happy about the path that I took. However, I wonder if I hadn’t given in to the DOUBT, DELAY and DIVISION could I have achieved this particular goal faster? If I had shored up my confidence by focusing on my competencies, if I had taken more decisive action quickly and asked for help, could I have realised this dream earlier?
Having had other experiences with this three-headed demon, I know the answer is yes. I have learned that in order to slay the demon I need to have my shield of confidence, action and connection in place. And courageously continue to work on that shield in alignment with my best self.
Have you ever come head to head with the three-headed demon? Have you experienced the effects of doubt, delay and division on your journey? Do you need to connect with someone to help you work on your shield?
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