Are you doing enough to uplift and support others?

Challenging individual’s beliefs about themselves and their role in the world is a daily activity in my professional and personal life. Noticing the language that is used when discussing goals, motivations and challenges is part of my coaching tool-kit and helps to unpick the values that influence the decisions that my clients make. The messages from the people that influence us are drip-fed into our unconscious every day. Each conversation, interaction and observation become unconscious reactions that can uplift or restrict; not just ourselves, but others around us.  Are you doing enough to uplift and support others?

Recently  I have been looking inwards and reflecting, with no shame, on the stories that I have been told over my life. To understand where they may come from and to challenge them.  The beliefs we hold about ourselves and each other do not develop in isolation from the rest of our world. They are taught. So, when they are damaging, they can be untrained. When they are healthy and positive, they can be amplified.

I exist in a world of personal development – challenging my clients to understand why they do what they do, and to create habits and thought processes that are positive and constructive. However, to do that we need to be comfortable with the discomfort that this process will cause.

Holding a mirror up to yourself is hard. But the benefit of the journey is clear when you pay attention to your behaviour, interactions and thought processes.  It’s harder when you are turning that mirror to the world and you don’t like what you see.  Listening to people that agree with you is easy; to stay in a bubble of opinion (even if those attitudes damage you and the ones you care for) is safer than change. As I have written about before, any type of change feels difficult; the human brain craves predictability to help it feel safe.

But sometimes the status quo is damaging.

Inaction is still a choice.

The way to uplift and support others is through understanding your own barriers and self-limiting beliefs; but this won’t happen just by wishing and hoping. Any type of change needs conscious effort.

It starts with reflection, turning the mirror on yourself and unpicking WHY? Why do you feel the way you do? Which messages have you been given that makes you feel this way?  To build our critical thinking skills.

Secondly, it’s education; learn from the people that, whilst they have the same values as you, maybe think differently. Engage with people that are further on in a process than you are, have lived experience of an issue. Diversify where you get your information from.

Next, in this cycle is discussion. Talk about what you are learning, the insight you are gaining, the things you do not understand and don’t be afraid to talk about things that others are telling you is taboo, or inappropriate. The most important part through, which is the hardest for most, is LISTEN. Don’t just engage to prove your point, listen to understand, and, at the moments where it’s the hardest, stop and start the process again:  Reflection, Education and Discussion.

This is something that will and cannot stop. You will never be finished. It’s a lifelong process to move away from the beliefs and bias that hold us a part from each other.  So, I ask you to challenge yourself and consider “Am I doing enough to uplift and support others?”

I promise to keep doing this with my clients, my friends, and my family ,and to sit with the discomfort that change requires. Will you join me?