Happy Sunday Everyone:
I noticed a very interesting correlation the last two weeks. The more I use my amazing experiences as a business coach to educate my family on how to live life, the fewer family members I find in the room when I’m done. The more I relax and don’t preach/suggest/advise on every aspect of life, the more family members I find in the room, and communicating w/me vs. being talked to by me. As much as I’m trying to be a little funny, its 100% true. I noticed on two occasions I literally cleared the family room, including Kim. I’ll come back to this at the bottom.
Throughout the years of sending these out, I very purposefully avoid all politics and religion, it’s just not the point of these and I’d like for them to be inclusive vs. exclusive to all folks reading without having any hairs stand on the back of their necks around those two subjects. With that said, I had two books sent to me recently by two different coaching students. One book is called “Unoffendable”, the other book is called “It’s Easier Than You Think”. One book has a Christian base to it, the other, Buddhist. Both were sent to me based on the underlying message, not a call for my faith considerations. The take aways were fairly mind boggling for me at this stage of my life and I thought worth sharing.
1. “Unoffendable”. If you work to not judge others it is exponentially more difficult to be offended by them. If you can minimize acting as the judge, your life will be lighter. Personally for me, when I’m worried about being judged, which absolutely paralyzes any positive movement, I realize that fear is coming from my own judgements of others. I like to think I actually have a very good sixth sense as far as understanding how others are feeling. The further I get down the road (of life) the more I realize I’m often wrong. Don’t judge. Call yourself out. If you’re judging, talking crap, minimizing someone, shooting someone down for the sake of shooting them down, recognize you have no place in life to do that. Can you imagine the freedom of not being offended by others? It comes from not judging them first.
2. “It’s Easier Than You Think”. Be happy, choose to be happy. There is a difference between pain and suffering. Pain is temporary, suffering is the crap we put ourselves through for reasons I’m still trying to figure out, but to be on a path of enlightenment is something worth focusing on. Similar, although different from Unoffendable, the “suffering” includes to a large degree, judgement, self-talk, chaos in your head. A quote that hit me like a hammer was about a lady dying of cancer and working through broken relationships, making them all right before she died…she said in the end, “Growing is not that great, living is better”.
Things/situations/books etc…come into our lives at different times and for various reasons. Reading “Unoffendable” was less of a reminder to me of how not to be offended by others but simply that it’s not my place to judge. My judgement of the actions of my own family members is what causes the constant preaching of how to live life. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a significant role in my family, but that role doesn’t require 24/7 development of myself or my family. “It’s Easier Than You Think” and the simple comment of “growing is not that great, living is better”, sits in my head to chill out on my perpetual need for growth. Many things in our lives are not just good enough, they are in fact, great! When I focus too much on growth, I miss all the greatness that already exists. Actually realizing as I type this the more I focus on growth the more I minimize the greatness already taking place as what is vs. what I think it should be.
My focus is shifting from concentrating on growth while living life along the way to living life first and knowing the growth will still happen along the way.
Have a great week ahead.