As busy professionals, loving parents, supportive spouses, sensible siblings… whatever our roles are in life, we as humans are always looking to expand and improve our current situation. It’s human nature.
Business owners and managers are looking to increase profits. Parents endeavor to raise happy, healthy, and well functioning children. Spouses seek more intimacy in their connubial agreements. We are all looking to increase our sense of well being, whatever we believe that to be. For some, it could be becoming more physically fit. For others, it may mean having more in financial reserves. While for many, it is having a more harmonious relationship with the key people in our lives.
Notice we get what we want by passing through situations and circumstances. We always have and always will receive what we want via those conditions. Here’s the news flash… those conditions most often involve people.
As we all know, but may want to ignore, people are not always predictable. They may not behave in accordance with our wishes. Go figure. However, know that we can ALWAYS trust people. That’s right. We can trust a person to do what they feel is in their best interest at the time. I don’t mean to sound cynical here. I just want to point out it can be highly frustrating to expect others to behave as we hallucinate we would behave given the same circumstances. It’s not their job to behave as we would. Their job is to behave as they would. Our job is to then accept that behavior as best we can.
When a situation shows up in life most people are confused and overwhelmed from the focusing on the crappy wrapping within which the gift or opportunity shows up. Often our desire of what we want for ourselves is cleverly hidden by the offensive wrap job and we go right on focusing on the wrapping we don’t want whether it’s not enough customers, poor health or the trappings of a dysfunctional relationship. We thereby miss the opportunity to expand and improve our circumstances.
When I am asked to come in and help companies become more efficient, effective and productive people start off indicating what they don’t want versus what they want. They say they want things to be easier. First off, they are focused on what they don’t want or like.
Guess what…when you focus on what don’t want, you get more of it. If you focus on what you don’t have , you have nothing; when you focus on what you do have, you have everything. Learn to direct your focus. As for people’s desire for things to be easier… after a little digging, what people really come to realize is they want more capacity to handle adverse situations.
We think we want more confidence when in fact we want to be more courageous. By the way, courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is experiencing the fear and continuing to move forward in the direction of what you want for yourself. The absence of fear is some kind of brain damage last time I checked. A lot of people may think they want more harmony in their relationships when in fact they really want an amplified ability to successfully engage, interact, support and feel supported by others.
Therefore, stop looking outside for life and work to get easier. Start looking inside yourself to expand your ability to handle the situations and circumstances wherein you find yourself.
When a situation shows up and you feel or believe it’s not what you want, learn to look beyond the wrapping and notice what you are wanting to become more of in the face of the adversity. Until you become aware of your inner desire, life has a way of repeating the perceived difficult conditions until you get “it.”
So, next time you feel you are up against a hard-hitting situation remember to SHIFT. Imagine yourself past the situation and notice how the Situation Has Influenced a Favorable Transformation (SHIFT) in you. Bring back that imagined transformation to the current situation and you will have expanded your capacity to now handle the situation more effectively.
Your Shift begets your Shift.