Do You Want To Be Right, Or Aligned?
Voltaire said, “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” So instead of Googling or trying to figure out answers on how to succeed in your resolutions, goals, etc., you can ask three questions…
“I know I’m right,” said my client. “We don’t have the resources to participate in the campaign my partner wants to engage in and he won’t let it go. So what do I do?”
“What’s your intention,” I asked. He told me that they are trying to grow the business. The campaign made sense, but the resources to do it simply weren’t available. So, in one sense, he was right. Unfortunately, he was also misaligned.The client had desired results of growth. Growing is a function of expansion, openness, abundance, or at least, "enoughness". However, his mindset was in a place of scarcity and restriction – what “can’t be done”/what they “can’t do”/”don’t have.”
Unlocking the door to your goals is a lot like, well, unlocking a door. In a door lock, the tumblers need to be aligned perfectly so that the knob can turn and the door can open. The key aligns the tumblers in such a way. Your mind is no different.
In order to achieve your goals, your beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and actions all need to be aligned with the intended outcomes. In this case, the mindset of scarcity was diametrically opposed to the outcome of growth. And you can’t grow your business from scarcity thinking any more than you can lose weight by eating cake.
So the opportunity for the client was to realign his mindset with his goals. “What DO you have,” I asked. “How can you leverage that and/or other resources?” By asking these and other questions, we started to shift his thinking from what wasn’t possible to what might be possible.This is an example of realignment. Good and bad, right and wrong, true and false are all subjective and constructs of our thinking. If I make a statement that agrees with your experience, you’ll say that the statement is true. However, if it disagrees with your experience, you’ll say that it’s false. Imagine someone who has lived their entire life only being outside at night. Would they agree with you that the sky is blue?
Unlikely. And what about a court case where one person wins and the other loses. The winner will say the outcome was good and the loser will suggest otherwise. The circumstances don’t change. The ways people perceive them do.If we set aside the thinking and ego constructs to release the notions of good/bad, right/wrong, true/false, we can look through the lens of “aligned” or “misaligned.” As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet (Act 2, Scene 2) “…for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”Belief systems, thoughts, feelings, actions, and goals – the proverbial tumblers – must be aligned in order for them to give you the best chance of the intended outcome coming to fruition. If something is out of alignment, goal attainment becomes far more difficult.
Take a look at your current business and/or your life scene. Where might you be out of alignment and how so? What might be a way for you to realign with your intended outcomes? Where are you clinging to being “right,” or something being “good,” or “true?” Are you willing to let go of being right in service to achieving your goals? Share your ideas/suggestions on Facebook! And for inspirational messages (or random goofy stuff) follow me on Twitter, and get more “behind the scenes” stuff on Instagram.
Go from status quo to Status Flow.
