#1 Skip the "Describing mode"!

I work with a (too) smart and promising client who hired me to help her build a career she would be proud of, after having raised a beautiful and strong family.

After several sessions, I noticed a pattern: No matter what questions I posed, she used the first 15 minutes to relate the hurdles and difficulties her country and community were navigating. Civil war has torn her country apart for 40 years and it is economically, politically, and now “pandemically“ devastated. As everything is collapsing around her, her feeling of helplessness naturally increases day after day.

We all experience this feeling of everything falling apart sooner or later: unsatisfying situations in our jobs, in our relationships, in our lives.
Yet, even amid the chaos, we still have some power. And this is exactly when we are compelled to use it.

Her country needs her full energy and engagement to manage its rebirth. She knows that she has to be a part of the solution.
Unfortunately it is simply impossible to access our power when we are in “the describing mode". This is what I call that state of mind or being, when we are mainly focused on naming, explaining, and analyzing our problems.

Whether we discuss it with friends, or keep the monologue silent in our mind, the damage is still there.

What can we do from such a place of concern and discontent? Not very much!

I know, this is tricky.
My client’s circumstances are horrific and what she describes is undoubtedly true! 
Nonetheless, this is simply not the point. The validity of her statements does not protect her from being negatively emotionally impacted by those same statements. Worse still, anchoring her own self-reflection and ability to motivate in this “describing mode” overtly disempowers her. Over time, by continually focusing on analyzing her current reality, she is wasting her energy, polluting her mood and definitely losing the (infinite) power of her mind.

How, then, do we reconnect to our power?

First, do away with all kinds of disempowering descriptions of your unsatisfying reality the same way you use the “skip intro” button when watching your favorite serie on Netflix.
Think about it, why are you glad to use that button? Because you already know that intro, there is nothing new there – you go directly to the core of what matters!  
It is time to get out of your “describing mode” when things don’t turn out the way you want, and put yourself in the active mode. The sooner the better!

Here are some tips to get in the active mode in less than a minute:
You must switch
- From describing to projecting
- From present to future
- From reality to ideally
- From exploring the problem to exploring the solution
- From replacing TO HAVE with TO BE. Envision and become who you need TO BE in order to do what you’ll have to do. From that place only can you be part of the solution. Your current broken reality needs you at your best to fix it.

In other words: Take a step sideways.
Start today, pay attention to you narrative and get yourself in the active mode.
Practice, practice, and practice. It will inspire you and the people around you, and most importantly it will put you in control - a required foundation for feeling empowered in any circumstances and eventually impacting THAT reality.