Masterful Mindsets

“You can’t move on to your next destination if you don’t get unstuck from where you are.”

I was speaking with a fellow coach recently who’d asked me what I’d been up to. I told her we’d gotten our youngest daughter off to college and then filled her in on all the details of what’d been going on in business and how busy we’d been. Then I said, “But I’ve been super tired lately and feeling like I’m stuck on some projects that I just can’t get clarity or motivation on.” With which she proceeded to ask me, “Have you given yourself permission to grieve?”

My initial reaction was, to wonder what she was getting at and what that could possibly have to do with my stuckness. I thought, “I shouldn’t be grieving. I don’t have any reason to grieve.” After all, isn’t grief about death and loss? Sure, maybe not always a loss of life; if you’ve ever heard me speak on “The Death of a Dream” then you know that we can also grieve the loss or letting go of an unfulfilled dream for the future, a los...

“Being able to selectively forget about the things in your life that don’t serve you might just be the most freeing feeling in the world.”

I was recently coaching a client through a session on defining her ideal identity and it reminded me of an old show I watched years ago. It was about a woman who had amnesia and was trying to figure out who she really was. As she began to rediscover herself, what she found was that she didn’t really like who she had been. So, she decided that if she was going to have to relearn who she was, she might as well learn to be who she really wanted to be. She chose to redefine herself, create new beliefs and make some changes that of course, lead to her becoming a better, happier and more successful person then she had ever been.    

I still remember thinking, as I sat there watching the show, that in a way she was kind of lucky. Don’t get me wrong, there would be many downfalls to having amnesia, like not knowing any of your friends or family. But woul...