Comments on: A message from our founder http://www.lifecoach.co.uk/life-coaching/a-message-from-our-founder/ News & views from the home of Unitive™ life coaching Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:20:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: andyt http://www.lifecoach.co.uk/life-coaching/a-message-from-our-founder/comment-page-1/#comment-14 andyt Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:06:43 +0000 http://www.lifecoach.co.uk/?p=248#comment-14 It seems to me that it is easy to be seduced into setting new goals that inevitably are about arriving somewhere, having something or doing something in the future - presumably in order to feel a certain way about ourselves and our lives. Yet when we get "there" we are then further seduced into setting some more goals! So we never arrive or "make it", we just get to waypoints which are triggers for new goal-setting. So we are always future-focussed and never living in the present and enjoying that. If we do feel that we have "arrived", this feeling may not last long anyway, in part because we are not used to living in the here and now. Even worse we may come to realise that the long route we went on in order to "arrive" wasn't worth the price, because it came at the expense of our authentic self. We have arrived at a destination that is further away from ourselves than when we started. This may be because when we were setting our compass at the start of the journey we got influenced by interference and static from outside - eg from the expectations of others; from parents, peers, colleagues and society in general. It seems to me that ultimately it is in being more ourselves - our authentic selves - that we will live a life of fulfilment, rather than living the life that others would have us live, even though their advice is well-meaning. It seems to me that it is easy to be seduced into setting new goals that inevitably are about arriving somewhere, having something or doing something in the future – presumably in order to feel a certain way about ourselves and our lives. Yet when we get “there” we are then further seduced into setting some more goals! So we never arrive or “make it”, we just get to waypoints which are triggers for new goal-setting. So we are always future-focussed and never living in the present and enjoying that.

If we do feel that we have “arrived”, this feeling may not last long anyway, in part because we are not used to living in the here and now. Even worse we may come to realise that the long route we went on in order to “arrive” wasn’t worth the price, because it came at the expense of our authentic self.

We have arrived at a destination that is further away from ourselves than when we started. This may be because when we were setting our compass at the start of the journey we got influenced by interference and static from outside – eg from the expectations of others; from parents, peers, colleagues and society in general.

It seems to me that ultimately it is in being more ourselves – our authentic selves – that we will live a life of fulfilment, rather than living the life that others would have us live, even though their advice is well-meaning.

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