Truth - The Gateway To Personal Growth

Personal growth challenges our identity. When we accept this challenge we make room for personal growth and change to happen.

“Speaking honestly, the long and short of it is you decided to listen to your body and the discomfort in your toe and gave up didn’t you?”

~ Chief Instructor, Shodukan Black Belt Academy

Ouch!

Well, that was a bit direct.

My brain searched for a response.

I looked down at the mat and… I came up short.

He was right.

I’d given up.

Though the culprit wasn’t my toe, it was my lungs.

I had gassed out after a sharp, sweaty warm-up at a pace that I hadn’t experienced recently.

I thought I was fit enough to cope, but my lungs and brain conspired together and had other ideas.

When I had experienced this before, my brain thought I was in danger and signals I needed to stop (even if my body is capable of much more).

Busted!

My inner story wasn’t true.

It was a deep truth delivered compassionately by my Chief Instructor to help me grow.

It made me think.

How much did I truly want to earn my 2nd-degree black belt in Aikido?

• Enough to train differently?

• Enough to drop 5-10 KG (20 lbs) in weight

• Enough to run 5K twice a week

• Enough to change my work pattern to put more intention and purpose into my training sessions?

All of the above and enough not to have regrets about not being able to accomplish it as a key goal in my lifetime.

The story I told myself - my old identity - was I was physically strong and fit for a 60-year-old.

The truth was, my new, desired identity of being lighter, fitter, more flexible, and stronger to earn a second-degree black belt was a stretch I needed to take.

It was a stretch that included a new identity that I wasn’t sure how to create and, at the time, that scared me a little, scared enough to keep me stuck.

But, I knew I had to change.

The threat of experiencing personal regret and the perceived lack of congruence not ‘walking my talk’ for my coaching work created enough internal pressure to create an internal shift and to grow.

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So What?

Truth is powerful medicine.

Transformative change is a shift that involves a change from one identity - high power, high status and high rewards - to another identity, one that is very different to your current identity.

You hold your current identity cognitively, within your body and in the stories you tell yourself and others.

It can’t be suppressed.

It can’t be denied

Letting go and adapting it isn’t as easy as we think it should be. After all, we’re accomplished, strong people aren’t we?

And yet, you hear it when clients who’ve just made the shift introduce themselves with expressions such as:

‘Hi, I’m Kristen and I’m an ex-management consultant’ or their LinkedIn profile headline points to their past corporate life such as “Coach | Author | ex McKinsey and Goldman Sachs”

It’s very human to do this.

Our old identity is familiar. We know others accept and, if we’re honest, can be impressed by our old identity.

It keeps us safe. We feel accepted. We feel we belong.

Yet this old identity creates a double bind which often contributes to keeping us stuck and prevents the shift to our new identity where we’ve made the leap to choose work that lights us up.

So, how do you break the double bind?

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~ Anaïs Nin.

Photo by Rui Xu on Unsplash

We need someone to walk beside us and help us explore the truths in the narratives we tell ourselves about our past and when they interfere with our desired outcomes.

The more truth we’re willing to accept, the more room we create for our own growth.

When we find ourselves on the cusp of transformative change, the earlier we acknowledge our double bind(s) and explore the truth(s) they reveal, the easier it is to plan the shift from our old identity to our new identity.

So, two simple questions for you as an accomplished senior leader, someone who has already achieved immense success (however you choose to define it):

• What is the truth about yourself that you are currently not willing to accept?

• What will become possible for you when you do?

• Who do you need support from to help you accept this truth?

“Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks--we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.”
~ Parker Palmer

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