Let’s Go On A Journey Together
Our journey together will be unique. And there are some guideposts.
Stage 2 - Embrace : The second phase is to embrace as true what you’ve discovered. The theme is integration. Some of what you have discovered will be easy to integrate. But more often than not there’s resistance to embracing what you are learning. This is where the critic shows up and works hard to talk you out of what you are learning in order to keep you safe and not actually change. It sounds like, “That’s weird. I don’t get it.” Or “that’s too big, too much. I can’t accept that about myself.” You might even fear of how powerful you are. This stage can be vulnerable and we take the time needed to move through what needs to be transformed in order for you to to fully embrace what’s true about you.
Stage 3 - Express: In the third stage you begin to consciously express what you’ve discovered and embraced. The theme is experimentation. You will experiment with making conscious what you’ve often done unconsciously up to this point in time. You’ll experiment with wielding your gifts and power with more awareness and control. During this stage, together we create experiments in service of greater ownership and conscious impact.
Stage 4 - Master: Mastery is all about commitment. In this stage you will make commitments that support you in mastering who you are naturally. Commitments can be large or small and may include changing your diet, getting more exercise, getting a teacher or mentor, embarking on a new field of study and even making a career change. Whatever commitments you make here are guided by the previous three stages and move you more into alignment with who you are. They appear as the most obvious next thing.
Now, as you can imagine, as we get going, you will be in several stages with different discoveries at the same time. It’s exciting. It’s enlivening. It can put you on new edges to navigate. The journey is also relieving, affirming and gratifying. As the journey unfolds you start to see yourself in new ways that open new doors and pathways to a more authentic, satisfying and impactful life.
If you’re here you already know that personal growth is the key to your leadership, impact, success and fulfillment. You’re also probably here because you need something different than what you’ve done in the past. You’re not looking for incremental change. You're looking for transformation. You’re wanting to know yourself in a new way that opens up new possibilities and opportunities. You’re wanting to develop a type of confidence that comes from knowing yourself intimately and this becomes the foundation for you to live, lead and create authentically.
The process I’ve designed maps naturally to how we relate to our personal development. By making the journey explicit we can more consciously engage and accelerate your growth and capacity development.
There are four stages to the journey. See if they resonate with you.
Stage 1 - Discover: The first stage is all about discovering yourself. The theme is curiosity. We keep an open mind to learning new things about you. You’ll gather data. You’ll look within. Together, we’ll look through a series of lenses that allow us to see aspects of yourself that are often unclear or invisible. We’ll reflect on the data and see where it leads us. Common responses to this stage are, “That really resonates. How relieving to know that it’s true.” or “I don’t get that. It’s new and I’m not sure what to do with it.” and, “Holy shit! That’s me!? Awesome!
“To become nobody but your true self and to struggle against the tide of sameness and the false security of simply fitting in is a fight worth having. To become oneself by contributing one’s native gifts and talents to this troubled world: that is the job to keep applying for and a work worth spending an entire life doing.”
- Michael Mead, The Genius Myth