How to find your own inner alignment: 5 routes to deeper fulfilment
The Coronavirus pandemic has done some good in places. It’s made the skies clearer, it has recongised the NHS and it’s highlighted what’s really important.
In addition, for some it’s been a wake-up call on how they were living their life, highlighting that it wasn't exactly what they wanted.
Enduring a global pandemic is one way to go about this realisation, but not something we might want to have every other year. Working on some good questions and having someone who is brave enough to challenge you, is another, far less globally devastating way to find alignment for yourself.
Here are some areas to consider if you’re feeling a bit lost for direction or purpose right now...
1) Identify your values, who you are and your boundaries
A few years ago I completed a written exercise to identify my values, and during my Co-Active Coach training, we were taught how to mine them through a coaching process. It’s good to keep revisiting what’s deeply important to you.
I’ve really crystalised mine in the last few years. And I’m also on a journey of becoming more authentic and true to myself - work I’ve done with my coach and therapist.
The important thing with values is to simply consciously be aware of them, know them well, and then you can look at your life and ask where you are, and you are not, honouring them. You bring more awareness to what you like and don’t like, which helps you know your preferences. This in turn will help you form healthy boundaries and become more aligned with who you really are.
2) Challenge your current stories
Everyone loves a good story. Especially when it keeps you safe and stops you from facing a fear or an uncertain situation.
If we’re not careful, we can be stuck in our stories for years. The story about how we aren’t cut out for running, or we don’t ‘do’ social media and know we can’t tolerate much risk.
To kick your stories to the side and see them for stories in the first place, you either need a very honest friend to call you out, or a good coach to help challenge you at every self-sabotaging statement. Whatever you do, don’t let the unhealthy ones go undiscovered.
3) De-shame and bring about more self-compassion
When I coached people to change with sugar years ago, much of the first part of my work was listening to their sugar sins. And I soon realised how important this part of the process was.
If we are holding on to anything we feel shame around, we need to release it to move on. Move on to a place of self-compassion and forgiveness.
Stuffed your face with chocolate purely on an emotional whim? Let it go. Feeling shame at a career decision you made or that you did some things at work, you're not proud of? Tell someone who holds a judgment-free space and process it out of your system. A coach or therapist is amazing for this.
If you try to move forward with shame baggage around your feet, it will hold you back.
4) Tap into your inner allies
We all have different people within us and different identities. We perhaps have an appreciator, a braveheart and a playful child. Or a soaring eagle, an Emma Watson style activist and a free-spirit hippie. At different points in our life, and in different day-to-day situations, these “inner allies” as we might call them, can bring the side of us that we need moment-to-moment.
Todd Herman also refers to it as the Alter-Ego Effect - he encourages you to form a character that helps you when things get hard e.g. you have to pick up the phone and make a sales call.
Identifying these different roles, making them clear in your mind and then understanding when each is best to use is incredibly valuable in staying aligned to the different parts of yourself. Because you create them and cherry-pick the traits you want for the situation at hand. Instead of being forced by a corporate culture into being a certain way, you use your allies to navigate the politics, whilst maintaining the deeper values and moral code you want to have in place.
5) Remove roadblocks with accountability and perspective
Sometimes we know where we need to go and we know who we want to be, but we just feel stuck. We suffer inertia in taking the next step. Nothing happens for weeks, or even months.
Then we start to feel frustrated at ourselves, even resentful.
This is where things like accountability and changing our perspective can help create some initial momentum. The scary business venture simply changes into a fun game. We get out there and run, simply because we want to maintain the promise to the person we promised it to.
Most of us need a helping hand to move forward with behaviour change and action, and so accountability has its place.
You can do all of this yourself or have someone trusted to help
If you’re not sure about working with someone on all this stuff just yet and it feels a bit daunting, you can work through all of these points with a nice pen and journal.
I hope this post provides some guidance for you to become your own coach.
And then when you feel ready, I’d encourage you to find the right person to help you. Of course, I’d be honoured if you wanted to see if that was me :)