On being and doing
I’m back from two weeks of summer holidays and have been doing a lot of thinking and journaling around what I want to focus on next. Do I want to do more one-on-one coaching, do I want to see if I can reach out to companies and see if they are interested in my training offer, or do I want to (finally!) open the doors of the Growth Club? I decided that it will be the latter, as it feels right to do it. It will most probably change a bit compared to the founding members round and I will share more details in my newsletter and with the people who are on the waiting list of the Growth Club. So if you aren’t among my newsletter subscribers yet, you can change that here, or you can scroll down on the Growth Club site and sign up for the waiting list.
To kick off the pre-launch phase, I feel like sharing some concepts and tools that build the foundation of personal growth and self-development. If you are curious to find out more about the four self-awareness archetypes (or “four levels of self-development as I like to call it), you can learn more about it in my last blog post, which was originally published on Forbes.
The concept of “being vs doing” is very common and you might have read or heard about it already. My whole coach training and coach certification program were actually based on this very simple concept (“The Co-Active Model”). I invite you to read further to explore this concept and to understand what I did during 200 hours of training, over 100 hours of coaching and why I spent roughly €10 000 on my coach training and certification at the Co-Active Training Institute (short: CTI), also known as the oldest coaching training institute and co-founder of the International Coaching Federation. I promise I will keep it as un-geeky as possible. 🙂
Inside vs outside
Every day, we have thousands of thoughts, including worries, doubts, reminders or memories of pleasant moments and the famous mental to-do list (that might only exist in your mind, but is taking up a lot of space - I very well know what I’m talking about). All of this happens in your mind and nobody will necessarily notice what you think about, what you worry about, or what you feel. It is all an inside job.
Let’s step outside your mind for a second and try to observe yourself from the outside: What are you actually doing? What kind of actions do you take? What are your daily habits, routines, rituals? Without our habits or let’s call them “automated behaviour”, we wouldn't be able to function. Our brain needs routines, our brain likes to know what comes next and if something new appears on the outside, it will first look at the tremendous memory it has to check for what would be a familiar situation so that it can react accordingly.
But what happens if you stop? What happens if you pause for a moment, stop the thinking machine, sit down and just…be. This is where being starts.
The magical and scary place of being
When was the last time that you sat still? Without your phone, without a laptop or any kind of screen in front of you. Just you and the silence. Not even thoughts or any mental chatter. Do you remember that? And please don’t consider this a provocative question. It’s a simple check-in to see when you have last experienced this special state of being.
It’s a place where self-awareness is born, and where you truly connect with who you are once you’ve stripped off all the titles and roles you play in your daily life.
The place of being can be scary as well, as you don’t know what or who you are going to meet once you stop running behind your to dos and obligations. You might discover parts of you who you are not proud of, or emotions you do not want to feel.
Ironically, I am convinced that if we all spent more time in the place of being, we would be better at doing. We would be more focused, clearer with what we want (and what we don’t want) and there would be less clutter as well.
Your choice
This was a little taste of what “being” and “doing” is all about and I also need to tell myself that I don’t have to offer you 4 strategies or 5 steps on how to invite more “being” into your life (“Forbes style”, if you know what I mean), as this is my blog and not an article for a business media.
I know that it’s hard to intentionally take the time to not do anything and one of my solutions for it is to pay for it. Let me explain: I know that after (or ideally during) a stressful period at work, it will do me good to do more yin yoga classes to connect with myself, my body and let everything that comes up, come up. Be it emotions, thoughts,...and so I will make sure to book these classes to be away from screens and outside my house to not find any other excuse why I shouldn’t be doing yin yoga.
And then I also want to encourage you to find your favourite way of being - it can be actually can activity (surprise!) that helps you come back to yourself. For some people it can be swimming, for others it can be a walk or cycling. Journaling can be very helpful as well, or doing weekly reflections (who already knew this was coming?!). So, yes, it is not all about sitting still, meditating and doing nothing. It’s about finding out what works for you and creating a small ritual to invite more “being” into your life.
I haven’t talked too much about “doing”, as I have the feeling that we all know way too well how to do that. :) But who knows, the “doing” part (especially the intentional one) might come up in one of my future blog articles - stay tuned!