I discovered this YouTube channel, The Diary of a CEO. I have watched several interviews and I am now a big fan.
I want to share this interview with life coach Marie Forleo.
I want to keep this post short as I am writing this late at night after dealing with household chores and looking after Brandon all day.
There are many key lessons in this interview but I want to share two lessons in particular. They are relevant to what I am going through in my life and remind me much of the conversation I had with my coach, Jenna.
1. Choose engagement over thoughts. Trial and error is the only way to discover your true path.
For those who feel stuck and want to get out, but not knowing where they should be headed to (or not know what they want to pursue), Marie says the answer does not come from thoughts. She says the answer comes from engagement. Pay attention to what your inner voice says and take the next step to try something new. Marie tried several different jobs and quit each one until she landed on life coaching career.
This is what I have been doing in the past year and I recognize the value of the engagement. You learn something each time you try something. You learn something new about the new career, or about yourself and each attempt helps you fine-tune your radar to identify what clicks with you.
Also, this requires you to be open to quitting frequently. Not quitting due to lack of discipline, but because that was part of your initial plan in case the new job does not meet your fulfillment criteria.
2. Scaling back your work ambition helps you achieve even bigger success.
Marie talks about her days when she had unhealthy amount of drive for success and was workaholic for many years due to her emotional trauma early in her life. She recognizes this came at the cost of ruining her relationships. She eventually decided to change her course and invested her time and energy to live in more balance and to be more present. This change in her approach to work surprisingly led to even greater success than she would have had she maintained her laser focus on working extra hours.
I wouldn’t describe I was ever as workaholic as Marie was but I do share similar attachment to the value of hard work. I thought I have to always work hard and be hard on myself. I lacked self-compassion. I think it has a lot to do with growing up with immigrant parents who had to work so hard everyday. I always felt I have to work as hard as they did at minimum for all the sacrifices they made for me.
It was my coach, Jenna, who led me to discover the above thinking pattern. By digging into where that pattern comes from and identifying every time the pattern appears during our conversation, she helped me correct my perspective and become more compassionate towards myself. Marie’s point was a fresh reminder of the conversations I had with Jenna.
Unhealthy level of attachment to hard work presents several issues.
- You equate time spent not working (spending time with people, taking breaks, meditating, etc.) with you lacking discipline, not making progress and therefore develop self-deprecating attitude for the inevitable parts of the day/week you are not productive.
- You don’t zoom out to see/evaluate whether you are headed in the right direction
- You develop a belief that success must come to you because you work really hard. You are not open or willing to accept that things might not work out.
One recurring theme from my coaching period was I need to be able to love myself for both the moments of success and failure. What do you get out from beating yourself for not getting up at 6am this morning? Love yourself. You discovered a new weakness in you? Great, let’s try to love that part of who you are too.
I have learned in my 20s and early 30s that hard work != success. I am going to write a separate post on this but one thing not stressed enough in media is that choosing the right direction is far more important than hard work. Hard work is necessary but it is not a determining factor for success.
If your strong attachment to hard work leads to lack of self-compassion and can prevent you from realizing you are possibly on a wrong path, how are you going to be able to get back up when things fall apart? Failures in life are inevitable no matter how hard you always work and the key to being able to bounce back is developing a strong sense of self compassion.
There are many more interesting lessons in the above interview. I loved how she is so articulate. It says a lot about how much she has thought through the topics being discussed over her decades of career as a life coach. It’s just awesome we get to hear from these people for free.
