Know your value and do what’s impossible

My Journey

I’ve often wondered why I’ve experienced feelings of anxiety and nervousness when someone has asked me to go and complete a challenging task at work that I hadn’t done before. Or, when I wanted to try a different job but couldn’t bring myself around to doing something about it because well, I believed I had limitations that couldn’t be overcome and therefore, I was just not good enough.

For a long time, I’ve thought it was just a confidence thing and maybe the high expectations that I’d placed upon myself, that made me feel uneasy and hesitant about doing anything new. And yet, I’d also noticed on other occasions that when challenged with a similar scenario under conditions where I wasn’t being paid, I’d felt more relaxed about taking on the challenge and my confidence increased as if I had nothing to lose!

It’s almost as if not being paid provided an element of internal psychological safety where, if I made a mistake then it would be ok because ‘it’s not costing anyone anything’ and the expectation of unsatisfactory performance and failure and therefore my potential ‘lack of worth’, disappeared.

So, what this seems to suggest is that I’ve been undervaluing my worth and ability as an individual for a long time (maybe we all have)

To emphasise the point further, I was recently pondering what my next blog would be about when I received a whatsapp call from the young lady who had created my website from the opposite side of the world.

While chatting, I mentioned to her that I may have someone who wants a website created and asked would she be interested? Her answer surprised me when she said, ‘oh great, but I don’t want to charge much to do it as I’m still learning, and I’ll probably make lots of mistakes and I’m not good enough yet’ (despite the stellar job she had done on my website).

I thought to myself, ‘so I’m not the only one to have had this belief’ and here I am, having a discussion with someone who believes that now, and is at the opposite end of the age spectrum.

It made me ask myself, is this perhaps a universal belief that spans across age, demographic and geographic locations, and the answer to that question is obviously yes!

Your Journey

For a great many people, the fear of failure can be a significant hurdle to overcome and move forward from. You’re limiting beliefs such as ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’m not ready’, ‘I need more time’, ‘I need more experience’, ‘I should be better’, and ‘I should have done something else when I had the chance’ and ‘if I had, I wouldn’t be feeling the way I am write now’, are statements that are never far from you’re most ardent critic and that’s often yourself.

The analogy of the plane that never travels in a straight line but eventually reaches its destination, often springs to mind. As you’ve travelled along your journey, countless times you may have said to yourself ‘I’d love to have a go at that’ or ‘I wish I had a job like that’ and then a split second later, you find yourself once again, focusing on the journey in front of you and settle for what you know lies ahead (I know I have many times).

But what if while meandering along you’re journey, you disconnected yourself from mediocrity and reached out for something that really interested you, and set off in a direction that ultimately resulted in a trajectory that was 45⁰ from your original flight destination?

Maybe, choosing the right goals with enough flexibility to manoeuvre yourself towards what it is your wanting to achieve, is the key to your own success and fulfillment.

Self-Fulfillment

Experience has taught me that often, we embark on a journey which usually entails wanting the things that parents, friends and life generally, tells us we need such as a job, a car, a partner, a house, food and if you are lucky, lots of money. Let’s face it, for the vast majority if not all of us, we strive to provide ourselves and our families with what me might refer to as the fundamentals of life as we know it.

As I thought about this for a moment, I realised that what I was thinking about related to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs theory. Those of you who have been to University or had some form of tertiary education may have come across the work of Maslow at some stage. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that maybe some people reach the boundary between ‘Psychological Needs’ and ‘Self-Fulfillment Needs’ sooner than others.

I’d be surprised if any of us have never been asked by someone as to ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’? and how many of you could answer with any certainty that ‘yes, it’s a ‘Train Driver’ and actually went on to achieve just that, and by the way, to those who have, you ought to be congratulated for chasing that dream and making it a reality.

Just as we did when we were children growing up, we seem to base our early decisions on what we dream and perceive as ideal while we gather experience and re-evaluate the progress we make and to a great degree, determine the success of those decisions by how happy and satisfied we are.

On reflection, there may have been jobs that you have had along the way that have been satisfying and rewarding and others at the opposite end of the spectrum. You may have had periods in your life where you’ve been happy and contented, saddened, and depressed, challenged, and confident, threatened, and scared including times where you had everything you needed but still you weren’t happy or content.

Maybe you just hadn’t reached your point of self-fulfillment, until now!

So, the question is how do you know which direction you should be travelling in? and at what point in your journey do you switch the auto pilot off and reset your course to 45⁰ in a different direction and stride towards your ‘self-actualisation’ and full potential?

Your Value Proposition

I guess part of the answer to that question is when you really know what it is that you want to do, and that is often driven by feelings of passion and commitment towards an end objective and being surrounded by other people of a similar disposition who inspire and invigorate you towards success.

One thing is for sure, when you’ve worked it out then the next step is, ‘to go for it’, and lock in the new course and leave auto pilot ‘OFF’.

When you’ve made that decision, its often a great place to assess and acknowledge what has got you to this momentous point in your life.

Reflecting on the past in an objective way can and does allow you to examine your successes and mistakes and how they have ‘positively’ impacted your development resulting from those experiences.

Assessing where you are in the present, helps you optimally appraise what makes your current position the ‘strongest it’s ever been’ and why you are ‘ready’ for the next step in your journey.

Knowing your current status, and whether you desire ‘self-actualisation’, will ensure that your direction and what you want to achieve are relevant, challenging, achievable and rewarding.

Acknowledging who you are and what you have become, and the value proposition you bring to the table, allows you to move forward with confidence and excitement to take on the challenges and rewards that lie ahead of you.

What’s Motivating you?

I was driving to work the other day and was wondering why I don’t seem to be truly motivated towards setting goals to achieve things that I found interesting. I thought to myself, maybe I’m not a goal driven person or maybe I’m just lazy and yet there are things that I do keep chipping away at!

A few days later, I was on the same journey to work listening to the BBC World News, and there was a discussion going on that touched on happiness at work. It was about a Pest Control guy in the US who absolutely loved his job because he understood that what he did, (no matter how unpleasant it sometimes was), helped other people who were helpless to help themselves in dealing with pests such as cockroaches, bed bugs, rats etc, etc, etc.

This person had the motivation to set goals that enabled him to increase the value he gave to his customers, which spurred him on to improve his service to those who were in trouble and needed him. It made me think about the goals I’d been trying to establish without any great success I have to say, but maybe that’s because I’d been setting goals that I wasn’t passionate about!

As an acquaintance recently mentioned, there’s not much point in climbing the ladder to success if it’s propping up the wrong wall! So, I guess knowing your direction and the purpose behind what truly motivates you to keep on chipping away at the task ahead, determines the most appropriate goals you set for yourself.

Your Solution

So where am I going with this I hear you ask, well from a coaching perspective, the ‘Five Key Differentiators’ model (Gribben, 2016), is a coaching tool designed for coaching in circumstances where a person can identify objectively, what they bring to the table now in preparation for the next step forward in their journey and to do so, with greater confidence and purpose.

The model illustrates how you can objectively assess your current
Experience; Expertise; Knowledge; Ability; Qualification and therefore, the real value proposition that you bring to the table.

By assessing each independently and then as a collective, it becomes a powerful way for you to understand how you are in the strongest position you have ever been, as you prepare to turn off the auto pilot and take a divergent path towards what you genuinely want to do, that goes beyond your own personal and subjective beliefs, with confidence in your own abilities.

My coaching process and the use of the five key differentiators model, will help you identify and weigh up the many reasons why now is the right time for you to move forward to realise what you want to achieve, and ‘just do it’ (maybe there is some tangible meaning behind the Nike slogan after all)!

My coaching support will provide you with a new approach to pursuing the Opportunity instead of avoiding the Danger and moving back into your Comfort Zone to soon.

If you have any questions on the use of the five key differentiators model and how my coaching service may be the right support for you, then please take the first step, dip your toe in the water.

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