Treasures of the Heart
The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be and end up being.
Matthew 6:21, The Message
I like the lesson from this Bible verse as it reminds me that whatever I focus my attention and desires on, that’s where I’ll eventually end up. For believers of the Christian faith, this verse teaches us to focus on our heavenly treasures and not on worldly treasures. It serves as a reminder for us not to fall away from our faith and to keep our eyes focused on God. Your heart’s desire is like a homing device. Whether consciously or subconsciously, we will gravitate towards what we have placed in our hearts. This applies to everyone, irrespective of beliefs.
I had an interesting conversation with my friend and peer coach, Annick about how our interest on a particular topic is magnified when we have a relationship or connection with that topic. We met virtually through a coaching program we were both enrolled in back in July 2020. She lives in New York and I live in Singapore. We have been meeting virtually on a weekly basis together with several other peer coaches for support and encouragement in our respective coaching journeys. She said that ever since she met me and Preeti, an executive coach who also lives in Singapore, she has developed a keen eye to look out for news relating to events in Singapore. Her husband and friends are pleasantly surprised by how knowledgeable she is of happenings in a country thousands of miles away from where she lives.
(By the way, check out Annick’s Facebook private group, Access Your Power Daily where she shares her wisdom and insights to help you create the change you desire in your lives! I’m an avid follower of hers!)
As we are already halfway into January 2021, what is catching your attention? What are you having a strong connection to? What is your heart telling you? Are you hopeful that your plans will fall into place? Do you focus on achieving your goals or is your mind clouded by the obstacles that lie ahead? How do you move forward with clarity and purpose even when there are naysayers in your life?
Photo by Scandinavian Backlash on Unsplash
Know your mission
What comes to mind when you think of a mission? You may relate to war movies where the troop is tasked with a mission to invade enemy territory and weaken their stronghold. The soldiers were able to stay focused and move ahead through danger and uncertainty because they were certain of their mission objectives. They focused on the end result - to win the war.
It can also mean a calling. It’s what you believe you are meant to do in your life. If you are a teacher or an educator, you may believe that your calling is to empower your students to reach their highest potential. If you are a parent, you may consider your calling is to instil the right values in your children and nurture them with love. You are passionate about your calling. You feel energised and inspired when you live out your calling. Do you know what your calling is?
Know your strategy
If you know your mission but you are not living it out now, do you have a strategy that will help you get there? What is your heart telling you to do? You may regard yourself as a level headed, rational person and “heart matters” are for those who are easily swayed by their emotions. That’s not true. Each of us have a calling. When we are not living out our calling, we feel restless. We feel that something is missing in our lives. We may suppress it, telling ourselves it’s silly to live out our dreams. It’s too late. We have responsibilities and obligations. But hold on…let’s play with this thought. What if it is not too late to pursue your dreams? What if who you are meant to be is just around the corner and all you needed to do is take that first step of faith?
As with any military mission, there is a plan, a tactical strategy to leverage on the troop’s strengths and advantages of the circumstances. When it comes to living out your calling, how well do you know yourself? What are your strengths? What can you do to harness your strengths and leverage on them to achieve your goals? Can you identify the voices in your mind that are holding you back? We all have them - the judge in us who tells us that we are not good enough, that it’s ridiculous to pursue your dreams, that you will end up losing too much - don’t rock the boat. These voices are so loud at times that you believe that they are telling the truth. The reality is that the true voice, your true self, comes from a place of empathy and wise and calm discernment without harsh judgment. It ignites your spirit of curiosity, innovation and propels you into purposeful action.
I recommend these two free assessments to help you get started to discover your core values and signature strengths as well as identify your saboteurs, those voices in your head which you think are helping you and keeping you safe but in reality, they are making life so much more difficult and challenging for you.
The VIA (Values in Action) Character Strengths Survey at https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register
The Positive Intelligence Saboteurs Assessment at https://www.positiveintelligence.com/assessments/
Once you know who you truly are with your unique values and strengths as well as knowing your saboteurs, you will be able to plan and strategize a clear course towards your calling.
Know your troop
Now that you have a clear mission and know your strategy to complete the mission, do you know your troop? Who can support you and cheer you on when you face challenges and adversity? Who has gone ahead of you and will be able to advise and mentor you? Do you have an accountability partner? Do you have people in your life who share your passion and calling? Look out for people who can bring out the best in you and keep them close. You will be inspired and encouraged to stay on track.
Consider having a coach as a member of your troop. A coach will support you through your self-discovery journey with empathy and objectivity, always fostering a non-judgmental environment for learning, growth and forward action. Read my Testimonials page to find out how my coaching have benefited many!
Hop on over to my Appointments page to schedule a complimentary 30-minutes discovery call to learn how we can work together. Let’s get started on your mission!
P.S. My complimentary 30-minutes coaching session which is my Christmas gift to each of you is still available until 30 January 2021.
“Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention.”
Carry Your Own Weather
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.”
Photo by Dimitri de Vries on Unsplash
Imagine you have an important appointment to go to. You are dressed to the nines and you feel great! Suddenly, the overcast sky opens up and it starts to rain heavily. What do you do? Do you curse and bemoan your luck? You feel frustrated and anxious as you know it is very difficult to call for a taxi during bad weather and you don’t want to be late for your appointment. You start to feel pity for yourself, recalling the many times that things don’t go your way. You feel the universe is out to get you.
Or is this you? You take a deep breath and look at your watch. You tell yourself that you still have time and you can catch a bus to your appointment. You change into an old pair of comfy shoes, keep your nice ones in a shoe bag and head out with your favourite tunes playing in your earphones. You appreciate the coolness of the rainy day and are thankful that the bus arrived within 5 minutes of you waiting at the bus stop. There is an empty seat in the bus - what luck! You arrived at your destination with 15 minutes to spare.
Which of the two scenarios do you relate to the most? I admit that for most of us, it’s the first situation. We tend to react negatively to external circumstances beyond our control. We spiral downwards in our negativity, often making the situation worse than it actually is. It takes a lot of mental discipline and strong self-awareness to be able to stop yourself from reacting and consciously making choices as to how you want to react.
Dr. Stephen R. Covey wrote about the habit of being proactive in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. To be proactive means taking responsibility for your life. Reactive people are often affected by their external circumstances and physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behaviour. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn't, it affects their attitude and performance, and they blame the weather.
Proactive people, on the other hand, recognize that they are "response-able." They don't blame genetics, circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behaviour. They know that they can choose their behaviour. They “carry their own weather”. Taking this outlook liberates you from being trapped in your circumstances.
"It is our choices ... that show what we truly are far more than our abilities."
-Albus Dumbledore (J.K. Rowling)
What can we do to start shifting from being reactive to proactive? We start by the words we use.
Reactive people believe they are not responsible for what they say and do--they think that they do not have a choice. Therefore, they use words like “I can’t”, “I have to” and “If only…”. A proactive person uses proactive language such as “I can”, “I will” and “I prefer”.
Instead of worrying about conditions over which they have little or no control, proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control. The problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas--Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence.
Everything that you are concerned about in your life, whether it is within your control or not lies in your Circle of Concern. Your Circle of Influence comprises of the things that you are concerned about that you can actually do something about. This is the circle that proactive people spend their time in.
When you think of the Covid-19 pandemic, what aspects of it are within your Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence. The following diagram, designed by Brian Pennie, provides a good illustration of these two Circles. The outer circle in blue is your Circle of Concern. You can’t expedite the making of the vaccine for the virus but you can take proper hygiene care of yourself. You can’t control how everyone else is reacting but you can choose the programs you watch and the articles that you read.
Similarly, in the example at the start of this post, the rain and the unavailability of taxis fall within your Circle of Concern but your decision either to lament your faith or proactively choose an alternative mode of transport is clearly within your Circle of Influence.
The key thing to remember is that you always have a choice. Once you make up your mind that you don’t have a choice, your power as an individual will be diminished. Take your power back by starting to see that in every situation, you have a choice and start making those choices.
If you are looking for support to move from being reactive to become more proactive in your life, please reach out to me here for a free 30 minutes discovery call on how I can help you as your coach.
I’m running a Group Coaching session to help you Create Your Unique Resilience Plan on 27 November 2020, 8:30 p.m. Singapore Time (8:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time). You will explore your inner resources which have helped you cope with past challenges and leverage and build upon these resources to face future challenges. If you feel that this is something that can help you right now, please click here to reserve your place.
Coping Mechanisms
“For me, writing is a kind of coping mechanism.”
About a month ago, my 10-year-old daughter came down with high fever. When we took her to see the doctor, the advice given was for her to do a Covid-19 swab test. As she was under 12 years old, it was up to us as her parents to decide for her. It wasn’t an easy decision for us to make as we knew how uncomfortable it would be for her. We eventually agreed for her to do the test because it would eventually give us a definitive answer.
The waiting began. We were told that her test results would be made known to us within a day. I’m thankful that the waiting time was short. However, it was still 24 hours of uncertainty. Deep down in my heart, I knew that the likelihood of her contracting the Covid-19 virus was low but as a mother, I was worried.
This incident made me think about how each of us coped with the news. The two men in my family - my husband and my son - regarded the news from a practical and rational angle. It wasn’t Covid-19 because as far as we knew, she didn’t come into close contact with any Covid-19 patients. The only place she went to was school. There were no suspected cases in her school. Their deduction - it was just another viral infection and will go away within a few days of rest and medication.
My youngest daughter, the 8-year-old, thought differently. She was devastated. She dreaded going to school without her elder sister. They always walked to school together. She was also upset because she felt that it wasn’t fair that she had to go to school while her sister rested at home. She wanted to be by her sister’s side. When she returned home from school, she was disappointed that her sister was not well enough to play with her. She also felt left out because I spent more time looking after her sister than with her. The uncertainty of the situation caused her to be insecure and she didn’t know how to cope with all the emotions that were coming up for her.
What about me? What was my reaction? In short, it was all of the above! I had jumbled up feelings, seeing my daughter ill and not knowing if she had contracted the Covid-19 virus. I thought the same rational thoughts as my husband and son and at the same time, felt worried, upset and unsettled just like my youngest daughter. For fleeting moments, I imagined worst case scenarios but stopped myself as I realised that this was not doing myself or my daughter any good. I was at home with her the whole day and if I was so negative and restless, it would have been apparent to her, making her feel worse than she had already felt.
So, what were my coping mechanisms in this situation? The quote above really resonated with me. Yes, I wrote. I penned my thoughts and emotions in my journal. Seeing my words on paper was liberating. They provided a release to my anxiety and worry. I prayed. I stayed quiet and reflected on God’s goodness in our lives. I contacted my parents and parents-in-law and asked them to jointly pray for her. I reached out to close friends for support and comfort. The thought I held on to was that this was not going to last forever - it too shall come to pass.
When you reflect on your coping mechanisms during challenges, what were they? What kept you going, believing that things will work out in the end? Are you still in the midst of challenges? What are you doing to stay hopeful?
Are you like the men in my family? The first thing you will do is evaluate the available information and make a rational assessment. Then, you will move on to problem-solving mode.
Are you like me? You have ways to recognise and manage your emotions and a strong support network to reach out for help and encouragement. Despite difficult circumstances, you know you are not alone. This lightens your burdens and your grief, having another share it with you in your journey.
Do you feel helpless, devastated and overwhelmed like my youngest daughter? You feel that you still have to put up a brave front because you have so many responsibilities on your shoulders. You cannot afford others to see that you are suffering on the inside. This is not what resilience is about. It’s not about avoiding your emotions and shouldering on without healing. It’s about being able to pick yourself up and look at your circumstances with hope, taking forward-looking steps with resolve and determination.
I’m running a Group Coaching session to help you Create Your Unique Resilience Plan on 25 September 2020, 8:30 p.m. Singapore Time (8:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time). You will explore your inner resources which have helped you cope with past challenges and leverage and build upon these resources to face future challenges. This session will be conducted in a safe, non-judgmental space with me as your coach. If you feel that this is something that can help you right now, please click here to reserve your place.
You do not have to walk this path alone.
P.S. My daughter’s test result came back negative and she recovered within a few days.