The Big 3

Being a coach, you know that most of your time with your client is going to be spent on the big three of career (money), relationships and health.  Coaches allow clients to make their own decisions and find their own way, but they help by introducing new ways of thinking, facilitating ways to deal with blocks, and keeping their clients in forward action with homework.  Offering direct advice is something we generally avoid unless we are also consultants.  However, when I am writing, I am allowed to be more direct in my observations.

One thing I have noticed and write about in my book, From Survival to Thrival is how people can have a tendency to think in terms of career versus relationship, instead of career and relationship. Unconsciously there are many people out there who use their obsession and pursuit of career to avoid an intimate relationship. And, there are the others that use relationships to avoid creating more fulfilling career pursuits.

 

Often in these people’s thinking is the idea that you have to have one “done,” whatever done means, before moving onto the other.  Or, they use one to be the excuse why they can’t put any time or sacrifices into the other.  Throw into the mix the other big one, health, and it seems like three is a crowd that can’t fit into our lives all at once.  What we are talking about here is balance, or lack of it. But whether our lives are in balance or out of it, it starts in our thinking.

 

The thinking I am talking about is what I call mythology thinking.  What I mean is the personal mythologies a person has created about life and their life that they cling to. Often they are not even aware they are operating under their own personal myths.  Such mythologies include:

 

 -  What we think of the idea of “love” or “true love”

 -  What we think of as success and how it is achieved

 -  What we think it means to be healthy

There are many others that can be identified, from concepts like “soul mates” to “wanting money is greedy.”  The point is, that the mythologies that we hold, wherever they came from, often unconsciously hold us back. We cannot see that there needs to be a balance in our thinking before there is balance in our life.  Once these myths are examined, and put in the conscious mind, breakthroughs happen.