Who Are You Meant to Be? (42 page)

To be a leader of consciousness and guide people to become who they are meant to be by speaking to audiences all over the world.

What does it look like?
Using the present tense, describe exactly what it would look like—what would exist and what would not, and what you would be experiencing—so that you know when you achieve your goal.

• Keynote speaking at least 2x/week, and teaching at least 1 day/week
  
• Traveling every other week to new cities to speak to new groups
  
• Packed houses (sold out) and standing ovations, laughter
  
• Letters from people about how it’s impacted their lives
  

What does it feel like
? Using the present tense, describe how it will feel—all of the emotions you will and will not experience—when you achieve your goal.

• Excitement and thrill
  
• Compassion and hope
  
• Strong, confident, and powerful
  
• Joy, love, and passion
  
• Won’t feel scared, hesitant, or like I am not entitled
  

Goal for my future.
Define what you would like to achieve in your future state in all areas of your life. Your goal may be a behavior you want to be demonstrating, experiences you want to be having or accomplishments you want to achieve.

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What does it look like?
Using the present tense, describe exactly what it would look like—what would exist and what would not, and what you would be experiencing—so that you know when you achieve your goal.

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4.

What does it feel like
? Using the present tense, describe how it will feel—all of the emotions you will and will not experience—when you achieve your goal.

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Remember that it’s okay to dream big during the brainstorming portion of the Roadmap. When setting your goals, it’s important for you to be realistic. Don’t get caught up in thinking that you can become something that won’t satisfy your Predominant Style or is not realistic given your physical reality. For example, you may love horses, spend hours around them, and feel a burning desire to be a professional jockey. That would be a fantastic goal if you weren’t 5'10" and weighed 210 pounds. Realistically, you might consider training jockeys or finding a clubs where members race. Otherwise, you set yourself up for disappointment. Like the old joke:

Patient: Doctor, will I be able to be a concert pianist after the operation?

Doctor: Yes, of course.

Patient: Fantastic. I never could before.

Planner Section 2: Face Your Fears and Underlying Beliefs

What fears do I need to face?
What underlying beliefs do I need to challenge?

In this section, you need to use your right emotional brain to uncover any fears that could be potential barriers and to acknowledge any underlying beliefs that will limit your thinking and get in the way of becoming who you are meant to be. You’ll also need to figure out in advance what will help when you’re experiencing these fears and beliefs so that you’ll be prepared to tackle them when they threaten to hijack you in your developmental process.

Tips for Completing This Section Based on Your Predominant Style

Leader or Intellectual:
This may be the most uncomfortable exercise for you, but don’t dismiss your fears or deny that you have any. As difficult as it is for you to experience the feeling of fear, building tolerance for it is critical to your development as it anchors you in your body. Start by focusing on fears involving your predominant need, including loss of power, isolation, others attempting to have power over you, feeling vulnerable, feeling incompetent, and so on.

Performer or Visionary:
Your natural optimism and idealism may make you want to avoid exploring fears, preferring to believe you don’t have any. All this does is disconnect you from your experiential brain. Think about your predominant need and look for things that relate to loss of approval of others, not coming in first or being ahead of others, being told you can’t do something, how you might be perceived by others, or how your ideas may be received by others.

Socializer or Artist:
Although you can think you know what your fears are, you might have one you tell yourself about that is more tolerable than the real fear. For example, you fear and believe that you aren’t loveable and have a self-protective pattern of behavior that has you always taking care of others. Like the Canadian comic Red Green used to say, “If they don’t find you handsome, they find you handy.” You believe you focus on and do things for others to be loved. The actual fear is to be yourself and independent. Make sure you scratch below the surface to emerge your real fear.

Stabilizer or Adventurer:
Don’t get stuck catastrophizing. Thinking about what you are afraid of can make you feel like it is actually happening. Also, it’s one thing to feel afraid, but admitting it by putting it on paper can feel embarrassing, triggering the belief that you shouldn’t be afraid. It can be helpful to think about what beliefs you might have about trying new things, making changes, or attempting to pursue your life goals.

Fears You Have to Face

There is nothing to fear but fear itself.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt

This quote sums up the biggest barrier that we have to living our life in the fulfillment of our potential and letting our fear define us and our experiences. We’ve heard this so many times over the years as we have offered people solutions to their problems. “I won’t do that because it’s too scary.” People stop themselves from moving beyond their limitations and experiencing the pleasure of achievement because they don’t want to feel discomfort. This is why emotions continue to be so dominant in our lives. We fear being out of control, abandoned, confined, or insecure. Whatever our dominant fear, we can either live with it or live for it. Living with it, we notice it’s there and keep right on forging ahead. Living for it, we make our lives smaller and more limited, never putting ourselves in situations that take us out of our comfort zone. Saying yes to our fear before exploring why we are afraid, or knowing the consequences of not doing something because of the fear, is actually saying no to life and to our own potential.

Anne has always been afraid of talking in front of an audience, yet she has repeatedly said yes throughout her life to any opportunity to speak. The first time she spoke was to a group of five hundred teenagers on the emerging topic of stress in 1978. Over the years, she has appeared many times on television and radio, and frequently lectures and gives workshops. Each time she does, at the beginning of the talk her mind is calm and her body shakes like a leaf in the wind. Because she pays no attention to it, it passes.

Facing our fears is critical to the process of becoming who we are meant to be. If we put our energy into avoiding people, situations, and events that make us feel afraid, we continue to live in a self-protective fashion, missing out on our potential. By knowing the predominant fear of your Striving Style, you can face it head-on. Although you may be aware of having more than one fear, as many of us do, you will readily see that you have a cluster of fears that are associated with your predominant need and therefore more easily activated.

The following table shows the predominant fears for each Striving Style. As you complete this section of the Planner, consider these fears as well as any other fears that might be triggered through this development process.

List all the fears that will get triggered and why, as you move toward your desired future state. Consider the key fears of your Predominant Style as well as any others you are likely to experience. You can try imagining yourself living in your desired future state and then write down any fears that surface. Or, think about how others might think about you living in this fashion and notice your reaction. Consider what will help when you experience these fears so you can be prepared to act when they are triggered.

Beliefs You Have to Change

Whether you believe you can do a thing or believe you can’t, you are right.

—Henry Ford

It can be challenging for us to unearth the beliefs and assumptions that are running the dysfunctional patterns of our lives, for they are often buried in our emotional memory along with the feelings we experienced that led to the belief. If we believe we can’t change, are lazy, are stupid, or will never amount to anything, well, then those things will come true. But if we become aware that our beliefs limit our day-to-day behavior and what we allow ourselves to feel and experience, as well as what we teach our children, it encourages us to dig below the surface to see what is actually at the root of our beliefs. Most of the time, beliefs about ourselves come out of our childhood and are the conclusions that our young brain drew about our experience. You need to exterminate any negative beliefs that cause you to stay in your SP System, especially when they aren’t true.

A young girl is watching her mother prepare a ham for Thanksgiving. Before the mother puts the ham into the pan, she cuts about six inches off of the end of it and throws that piece away. The daughter asks the mother why she cuts the end off the ham. The mother replies, “I’m not sure, but that’s how my mother did it.”

So, knowing that all the family is gathered in one place, the young girl approaches her grandmother. She asks her grandmother why she cut the end off the ham before preparing it. Her grandmother replies, “I’m not sure, but that was how my mother did it.”

In one final attempt, the young girl approaches her great-grandmother. She asks why she cut the end of the ham before cooking it. Her great-grandmother replies, “We only had one pan to cook with in our day. I had to cut the ham so it would fit in the only pan we had.”

This story illustrates what happens when we don’t question our beliefs, assumptions, and the stories we tell ourselves about why we can’t achieve what we want to. However, we have the choice to use self-limiting beliefs to keep us safe or to go after our potential by facing our fears and challenging our beliefs.

List all the underlying beliefs that will get triggered and why as you move toward your desired future state. These include any assumptions you hold about yourself or your world, as well as the stories you tell yourself that keep you in your SP System. Consider what will help when you experience these underlying beliefs so you can be prepared when they are triggered.

Recognizing the Impact of Fears and Underlying Beliefs

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

—William James

While you completed section 1 of the Planner, envisioning your desired future state, your fears and underlying beliefs could have been triggered. Before you move on to the next section, make sure that they did not have a negative or limiting impact on what you wrote down for your desired future. This next activity gives you an opportunity to strengthen your SA System by building self-awareness and practicing reflection.

List all the fears and underlying beliefs that surfaced as you created your desired future state. Consider things you were saying to yourself or any fear-based emotions you experienced. Identify the impact these fears and underlying beliefs had on the picture of your desired future state, for example, “was not completely honest,” “told myself it will never happen so aimed lower.”