Journeys and Lessons
Coaching Tip #16
News (and there is a lot of it these days!) fills our electronic devices. At the push or click of a button, we can catch up on the latest stories, stats, worries, and anxieties.
Like many others, I am turning to the movies and shows that are streamed on Netflix, Apple TV or Disney. Last night we watched Seven Years in Tibet. The story is based on the 1952 book of the same name written by Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer on his experiences in Tibet between 1944 and 1951 (during World War II, the post-war period, and the Chinese People's Liberation Army's invasion of Tibet in 1950).
When a good story is told well, it really makes you think. While there are many plots to this story, and the scenery through the Himalayas is spectacular, for me there was an underlying message.
The journey we travel reveals both our strengths and our weaknesses, and in that process we discover that no one is perfect, that we all have flaws.
These lessons are not always revealed in the moment. They may only make themselves evident years later, as was the case with Heinrich.
As you know, I have spent the last several years studying high-performance transition: what happens when you reach a pinnacle career peak and need to find your next version of meaning. When you face a significant life event – an injury, illness, or the death of a loved one – that alters how you look at the world, and how the world looks at you.
These big events force us to look at our reality. But, there are also lessons available in our day-to-day activities.
We are all on our own journey and all have our own lessons. In interviewing the 103 people who had weaved their way through that messy middle, I began to embrace the thought that success does not have a finish line. The trophies on the shelf, the degrees on the wall, or the money in your bank account are just tokens of our journey.
My coaching tip for today is a quote from one of my interviewees when asked what message they would like to give the readers.
“Sometimes you have all these disappointing experiences and you don’t quite understand yet why they’re happening, why this is going there, or why at this time. It’s at times like these that you need to keep the whole picture in mind. If you look at the underside of a woven mat, you won’t see a picture. You’ll see a big mess of string, and there’s no pattern or rhyme or reason to it. But, if you flip it over, on the other side, you see it’s a beautiful rug with a beautiful print on it.”
Be well,
Melinda