How Our Greatest Power Lies in Our Vulnerability
Photo by @lanche86 on Unsplash
Today someone asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks.
"How can you perceive so much about someone's personality and internal wiring in such a short conversation?"
It was valuable validation of the journey I have been on. It also made me realise that my transformational journey might be worth sharing, not to impress, but to inspire others to invest time in better understanding themselves.
Because here's what I've learned: the more deeply you know yourself, the more powerfully you can show up for others.
The impatient coach in training
When I was training to be a coach, the biggest thing I had to work on was slowing down. And yet, I wasn't about to wait ten years to clock up enough hours to have a deep impact on my clients. That was my impatience manifesting itself!
Today, I'm grateful for that impatience. It led me on a journey of self-discovery that transformed my life for the better and now enables me to support others in transforming theirs.
But it didn't start with grand ambitions. It started with a simple observation and a frustrating realisation.
What I noticed about Master Coaches
During my training, I noticed something striking: when a Master trainer coached me, they helped me reflect in a much deeper space than my fellow trainee coaches could. They knew exactly what to ask to make me reflect on what really mattered in relation to solving my problem.
Having always been a top performer and A player in my Tech Sales career, I wanted to know: how can I enable such a deep impact for my clients as quickly as possible?
When I told my coach that I wasn't going to wait 10 years to be highly effective at coaching, she offered me another path: to go deep in understanding myself.
She explained: by understanding my own personality structure, limiting beliefs, strengths, weaknesses, and sabotaging patterns, it would be easier to recognise them in other people and support them in having meaningful breakthroughs.
So that's what I did. And she was right.
What self-awareness actually means
Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was one of the first books I read to help me be better at selling when I started out in Tech Sales in 2005. He describes self-awareness as our capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, and our habits and tendencies.
This is what I'm referring to as self-knowing.
Our capacity to reflect on ourselves is what differentiates us from the animal world. That's how we can take learning to a different level than basic trial and error. Yet this is hard to do when we're swamped in our day-to-day grind.
This is why Bill Gates said: "Everybody needs a coach."
Coaching creates a safe space for reflection without being polluted by our day-to-day thoughts, filters, worries, and biases, the lens we usually perceive reality through. This is how we access new insights that can change the way we think, how we tackle situations differently, and how we show up for ourselves and others.
My four-year deep dive
After years of being coached, individual therapy, group therapy, numerous coaching certifications, mindfulness retreats, yoga retreats, meditation courses, and energy healing, I have a heightened sense of self-awareness about myself.
I've learnt about my personality structure and how I'm wired. I also understand why I am as I am: the good side and the darker side.
Investing in developing my self-awareness has led me to learn how to leverage my talents and take ownership and responsibility for my shadow, so I stop sabotaging my own happiness and reduce its impact on others.
There is no light without darkness
While my professional life hadn't been a cause for concern, my personal life was a different story.
Poor health. Internal conflicts. Anxiety. Grief. Unhealthy relationships. Divorce.
These were polluting my capacity to find peace and happiness. Eventually, this started impacting my work when I began suffering from exhaustion.
We only have one mind, one heart, one body. It's the same at home and at work. So finding peace within can only benefit both our performance and wellbeing.
I'm now on the continuous journey of learning to embrace and accept all those parts of me. It is when we accept ourselves as we truly are that we can find peace within. Others refer to this as self-care or self-love.
Our greatest power lies in our vulnerability
We all have talents. We all have a shadow. There is no good without bad, no light without dark, no highs without lows.
In a world where we're all praised for being strong and resilient, where we're told we can achieve anything we want, it can be easy to forget that we're all human.
We don't talk about the harder stuff. And yet we all find our own way to deal with it.
The question is: is your way of dealing with difficulty actually serving you?
We create our own reality
Here's what I've discovered: in many cases, the way we deal with difficult things may have been useful at one time, but then it becomes no longer needed and causes us a disservice.
This is what I refer to as getting in our own way.
Coping mechanisms that once protected us can become prison walls. Strengths overused become weaknesses. The resilience that helped us survive can prevent us from thriving if we never learn when to soften.
We have the power to change anything we want. It's simply a matter of motivation and investing time and energy in seeking the right people and resources to support us in the transition.
The transformation process
Having gone through this transformation process myself, it's a real privilege to support others who want to make a change and invest in themselves. This is why I do what I love and love what I do.
Our self-awareness is our strongest ally to create the life we want for ourselves.
As Stephen Covey said: "Your power to choose the direction of your life allows you to reinvent yourself, to change your future and to powerfully influence the rest of your creation."
Why this matters now
We're all having to adapt to realities we didn't choose for ourselves. Things that worked before in our old routines may no longer work for us now.
And that's completely normal.
The invitation isn't to have it all figured out. The invitation is to get curious about what's actually working for you right now and what isn't.
Your Self-Reflection
How is the way you're dealing with difficult things serving you?
How is the way you're dealing with difficult things NOT serving you?
What worked for you before but no longer works now?
It's by sharing that we realise we're not the only ones. All this unease is very normal and solvable.
Ready to invest in understanding yourself?
If this article resonates with you and you're ready to develop the self-awareness that transforms how you lead and live, I invite you to: Follow me on LinkedIn, and visit The Self-Science Lab for more info.
Written by: Lauren Cartigny, Leadership Trainer, Executive Coach and Mindfulness Practitioner
Following a successful international corporate career in Sales for leading Tech firms, Lauren faced an unexpected burnout, life and health crisis. After re-building her life, transforming her career, and healing her body, heart and mind, Lauren has created transformative coaching and training programs to teach High-Performance from a place of Well-Being to prevent burnout, and employee churn in organisations.