It started by just typing a response to one of our students in the Life + Leadership Coach Training program about “being ready for the work.” Then throughout my day whether it was in coaching or chatting with friends, I found the same topic coming to the surface–awareness of what we want and then rushing to the finish line, tying to skip “doing the work.”
I thought, we all must be feeling the same thing, this is a bigger message to be shared with all of you, so here it is:
Being ready for the work.
Truth is–we’re not always ready to do the work that will help us to breakthrough where we are right now to where we want to be. And when we do step into the awareness that things need to change, we often want to bypass the lessons and the “hard stuff,” and just get right to the finish line of being in our new life/relationship/career/etc.
It’s like trying to skip Act 2 and head straight to the end of the movie–where the problem is solved…the earth is saved…everyone falls madly in love and lives happily ever after. Even though it’s hard, why do we forget that in order to have the resolution, we have to go through peril to learn the lessons that bring us to our destination.
As with most movies and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, most of life goes something like this:
ACT 1 – Limited awareness/normal life….and then the problem is presented
ACT 2 – Accepting the call to action…slaying dragons, navigating treacherous terrain…ultimately learning the lessons/teachers/and figuring things out
ACT 3 – Resolution/Happily ever after…this is the main character (YOU) stepping into your new “normal”
P.S. Act 2 is pretty much the bulk of most stories, movies, and life.
And you know what? It’s the thing we all try to skip out on. Why? Because it’s the hardest. Act 2 is where we learn the lessons that we need to take us to our next level. Act 2 is where we grow, meet challenges, find solutions, and create who we are becoming. It’s the hardest AND it’s often the longest Act of the whole movie/book/life experience.
HOW IT WORKS…
Think about it–all books + movies start with “normal life” and then the problem is presented. This is all happening in Act 1, it’s the very beginning and relatively short because then we slip into Act 2–it’s the majority of the story. This is the same with life, the majority of life is in the figuring it out. We experience a problem/challenge/or goal and we step into the journey of figuring it out (that’s Act 2).
Struggle is necessary for growth.
From all that we learn in Act 2 is where we come to the resolution that is Act 3–the finish line AKA the “happily ever after.” NOTE: It’s also one of the shortest parts of the book or movie. Rarely do we come to the resolution in the middle of the movie and the rest of the movie is all about how great it is to live in the “new normal.”
TRUTH–same deal with life. We go from AWARENESS (Act 1) into the journey of FIGURING IT OUT (Act 2) and then into the resolution, the development of our new normal (Act 3).
Make sense?The reason that we call it our new normal is because you can’t “un-know” all that you have learned in the journey of figuring it out. We take this new learning and discoveries into our next level–who we are becoming.I know, it’s pretty logical AND pretty esoteric but the truth is, this is how life works, we have ups and downs, cycles and periods of light and dark–only truly understand gratitude and joy because we also know the contrast of when life is challenging.
QUESTION
Where are you in this journey? Are you feeling at the very beginning, resonating with a new awareness that something needs to change or a new goal you want to achieve? OR are you square in Act 2, struggling, trying to figure it out, experiencing some wins AND some WTF’s?
In the COMMENTS below, I’d love to know where you are in this journey of life….
Sending love, always….
B.
P.S. You can be in Act 1, 2 AND 3 in different areas of your life–yup, being a human can be that complicated, haha
P.P.S. I’m full on in ACT 2….can’t wait to share with you what I’ve been cooking up (and what I’ve been learning in the WTF lessons)
