achievement – Emily Downward

The Fear and Thrill of Trying Something New

August 6, 2015August 6, 2015emilydownward

I’m often encouraging my clients to do things that are a bit scary or out of their comfort zone, in order to help them achieve the goal or feeling they want to create. We all get stuck in ruts, doing things and thinking the same way day after day until something causes us to change. Sometimes we initiate the change because we realize the way we’ve been doing things is no longer working for us. And other times we choose to do something different just to shake things up a bit!

As a Martha Beck certified master life coach, I strive to work and live in accordance with the core values from Martha. The first one is “Live it to give it.” To me, this means using the tools and methods I recommend to my clients on my own challenges and areas I want to improve.

I recently did a big shake up, doing something I’ve never done before: stand-up comedy. A friend of mine provided the opportunity and encouragement, renting a club for an evening and inviting me to do a sketch. I knew I had some funny material from some really bad dates (which I find make great stories!), but I had never done stand-up. I’m not one for tons of research, but I watched some videos of my favorite comedians and noticed how they put things together. The set up, the timing, the punch line, and of course, the delivery, are each critical. I wrote out my ideas, and I read through them to three different friends, making adjustments each time after I saw where the stories lagged or where people laughed or didn’t.

I was SO NERVOUS! I did what I could to make it easier on myself: In addition to my research and practice, I had written out a couple of note cards with key phrases to remind me of each story and joke, so I didn’t put the extra pressure of memorizing it on myself. I wore a black top purposefully, in case I sweated profusely due to nerves. And I invited a couple of friends for support.

As with most things, I comfort myself in what might seem like a strange way. I imagine the worst that could happen, and get my brain thinking through how I would survive or cope with that. For this particular scenario, I imagined 1) they might not laugh, 2) I could get booed off the stage, 3) I could offend someone who doesn’t like my style of humor, 4) I would embarrass myself. Actually thinking through these makes it seem less scary to me. It’s something about putting words to the fear that makes it seem less daunting or all-consuming. I decided I could live through any of these worst-case scenarios – just a bit of a bruised ego to risk – and with all the preparation behind me, the only thing left to do was leap.

Last Saturday, it was show time.

I’m thrilled to say it went well. (You can watch it here. Note: Does include some profanity, so not for children.) And as I left the stage to applause and laughter, I experienced a massive adrenalin rush. It was incredible, and although my hands were shaking more than I’ve ever seen, it felt better than any rollercoaster or other thrill ride I’ve experienced.

There’s something about trying something new, pushing yourself to the edge, risking a bit, that has incredible rewards. Regardless of the outcome, you learn something from the experience.

What has life been tempting you to do differently? What small, or large, risk can you take today towards living the life you want?

“I’ll Be Happy When…”

February 20, 2013emilydownward

I have spent so much time looking ahead, looking forward to my next achievement. “I’ll be happy when I have ________” is what runs through my head. There are two problems with this way of thinking. One, I’m not in the present moment, grateful for and happy with what I have now (and all we have is Now). And two, when I get my fill-in-the-blank, I often find I’m not as happy as I thought I’d be.

At least I’m on to myself. I know I tend to do this future focusing. When I catch myself, I bring myself back to the present by breathing and focusing on my body. Then I find as many things as possible in my current reality that I’m grateful for. Sometimes, when you’re in a really sucky place, this could be a simple thing like the fact you’re still breathing or that the sun is shining. Anything that shifts you into a state of gratitude works!

The only reason we want things (or to achieve things) is because we want how we think it will make us feel. Ask yourself, “What will I feel when I get __________?”

As I work on growing my business, I’m in a pattern of trying and failing, trying and failing, trying and nearly succeeding, etc. There have been some successes (more things to be grateful for!), and I’m learning TONS along the way. I am still dedicated to my vision. I know in my heart I’m in the right job to best use my talents. Still, the failures and near misses are currently more prevalent than the successes. When I get discouraged, I remember the value in going back to the basics: What do I want, and what will I feel when I get that?

When I’ve identified what I want, I can go about breaking that goal into smaller steps and then taking those steps to get closer to the achievement. Equally important for me is the feeling state. When I know what feeling I’m looking to achieve, I can find ways to achieve that now, while I’m still taking steps towards my goal.

For example, one of the things I want to include in my coaching is to work with companies to help teams have more passion and joy in what they do, creating teams that work well together, and creating more success and efficiency for both the individual and the company. I have a clear vision of what it looks like, what type of people would hire me, and what kind of coaching tools I would use to help them learn more about themselves and connect with their passion and joy. When I ask what I will feel when I’m doing this, the answers include joy, fun, pride in my work, and a sense of fulfillment in helping others. How can I feel these things now? I get all of this out of coaching people, but I also can tap into those feeling states by reading the testimonials my clients have written about me or volunteering. I try to regularly tap into joy and fun, whether it’s sharing laughter with a friend (like the kind of laughter my youngest niece had when she recently told her sister, “You laughed a toot right out of me!”) or watching a cute video online.

Goals are important, and I believe in having a strong vision for where you want to go. But equally important is enjoying your Now. Find ways to be thankful for where you are and what you have in the present moment, and find ways to feel what you want to feel then now, because there’s no time like the present to start feeling better.

Goals, Achievement and Failure

May 23, 2012emilydownward

triathlon finish — Finishing my 6th triathlon, and beating my personal best time. Achieving your goals feels great, but what about when you don’t achieve them?

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
~ Zig Ziglar

Do you set goals for yourself? Do you write them down or just know them in your mind or in your heart? Studies have shown it’s actually beneficial to write them down, and while I do that for my professional goals, I definitely have some that are just so intrinsically bound to who I believe I am that they are always within me.

It’s my birthday week, and it’s a big one. A decade milestone. I have mixed feelings about this, but it’s coming, whether I like it or not. So in true coach-y form, I’ve been delving into my feelings and the thoughts behind them.

On the one hand, I am happy to celebrate. First of all, I think it’s always fun to have a day to celebrate YOU just for being you. I always make it a point of telling the people I love and care about how much they mean to me on their birthdays. I like the idea of a celebration just because. Not because of any accomplishment or achievement, just for being alive. And while I’m not THAT old yet, I have outlived some of my friends. Thinking of their too-short lives makes me grateful for each of my years.

BUT…then there’s the other thoughts. The not-so-excited-to-be-FORTY thoughts. As a coach who trained in a class of amazing coaches, I’ve been self-coaching and been a practice client for my colleagues on many of these thoughts. These thoughts are dirty pain — as opposed to clean pain like grief, dirty pain is the thoughts about it that you have like “it’s my fault he left” or “I will never find another job/partner/friend like him again.” Dirty pain thoughts are nasty, and definitely painful, but they can be dismantled.

The biggest resistance I have about turning FORTY (it’s big…it deserves all caps) is that I haven’t achieved some of my personal goals that I thought I would have by now. I could explain this in two ways: 1) it’s out of my control, there are circumstances and others involved and there’s nothing I can do about it, or…2) I have made choices, for good reasons, that have led me to this point, and even though it’s not where I want to be, I honor and value the choices I have made. The first explanation puts me in the role of the victim or the martyr, and that doesn’t feel good to me. The second explanation puts me back in the driver’s seat of my own life, and I like that more. While I have yet to reach my desired destination, I do feel good about the journey.

If you have goals for yourself, and you don’t meet them (for whatever reasons), I invite you to explore what you’re telling yourself about not achieving the goal. You get to craft the story in your head, so make it a good one! Use goals as motivators to keep striving towards, but don’t use the goals as sticks to beat yourself up with.