Hi peeps,
It has been a busy month, as you may have guessed from the shortage of blog posts. However, fortunately, busy can be good. A lot of people are initiating new coaching contracts which has been keeping me hopping (special thanks to the new clients of Coaching Ottawa).
However, over the course of the last month I have notices a theme that has been repeating itself over and over; people defining themselves. It is for that reason I thought I would do a post on self-definition. If I am seeing a lot of it in my business, I thought you may be interested in the topic.
We all define ourselves. I do it and so does everybody I have ever met. For example; I am a Canadian, I am a husband, I am a Life Coach, etc. and these are not inherently bad definitions, as long as I can appreciate them for what they are...labels. Unfortunately, we tend to want to attribute characteristics to any label, allowing us to stereotype anything that has the same label. It is a life long challenge to remind ourselves that we should not make assumptions based on labels.
I hope that the majority of us see our inclination to stereotype, but the news is full of examples of people who discriminate against others due characteristics they attribute to a given label. Sometimes it is a racial label, a gender label, a religious label, a label of sexual orientation, political beliefs, eating habits or any other host of labels. In the end, people attribute characteristics to other individuals because of a label, and that is both wrong and irresponsible.
However, it is not just others we discriminate against, we also discriminate against ourselves. We label ourselves and then set limitations for ourselves based on those labels. Even worse, we justify our actions based on those labels. Some of those labels are pretty damning and can really mess with how we see ourselves:
- I am fat
- I am a procrastinator
- I am cynical
- I am lazy
- I am messy
- I am selfish
- I am shy
- I am pessimistic... and the list goes on.
So are those things true? No! You may have acted that way in the past... You may even have an inclination to act in a certain way because that is what you have always done... but what you have done or what you are doing is not who you are.
Let's try looking at the labels above and reword them so as to describe what they are, a series descriptions of past activities..
- In the past I have not had a very healthy eating and exercising regime, resulting in weight gain.
- In the past I have not been proactive, often delaying action until it was absolutely necessary.
- In the past I have chosen to expect the worst from life and people.
- In the past I have not acted very ambitiously.
- In the past I have not kept my things very organized and/or tidy.
- In the past I have not shown much empathy towards others.
- In the past I have not been very comfortable meeting people.
- In the past I have not chosen to be optimistic.
So, what is the difference? Well, the difference is that the first list is a description of who a person is, the second list is what they have done. People believe they cannot change who they are, but they can change their choices. For example, if I am a fat person, I might as well eat the cheesecake, it isn't going to matter anyways. However, if I have made bad eating choices in the past and I want to do better, I should avoid that cheesecake. The same can be said for every item on the list... try going back through the lists and adding the phrase "but tomorrow I will do better". It becomes obvious very quickly that when we label ourselves it is harder to move forward than when we label our actions.
So, we are not perfect, that makes us human... but we can do better than we have done in the past. That is why we must try to avoid creating labels for ourselves (or anyone else). Labels only serve to limit people, and as I point out on a regular basis on the Coaching Ottawa Twitter account the sky is not the limit.
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| Don't see limits, see opportunities for growth! |
If you need help with this, or any other obstacles you are facing, there are lots of coaches out there willing to help...
Have a great week everybody,
Dave
