Wednesday, September 1, 2010

How's Your Stuff?

"He had somehow lost that human touch, and he gradually dried up. What he had done in his life had perhaps haunted him."

From Quantum of Solace by Ian Fleming


Executives with whom I’ve had the privilege to coach for performance often comment that the initial work we do on “completing their past” is key to the extraordinary results they create later in the relationship.

What a friend refers to as the “normally neurotic” person …. in other words, you and me …. tend to carry with us the unnecessary burdens of past blame, shame, regret, guilt and even success. We attempt to launch ourselves into a future freely chosen; yet we’re weighted down with all that – time for a technical term here – “stuff.”

Our past hopefully includes experiences that provide great memories and lead to greater wisdom. Anything else—especially that “stuff”—should be looked at as just that, the past, and just let it go.

Please share your stories of “stuff let go” and what it meant to creating a better future by commenting below.

With love and respect,

Robert

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There are great wisdom and courage in accepting that what we did in the past was done the best we could with what we had at the time. Nothing more, nothing less. To wallow in guilt is to lose the present moment and to waste consciousness, and that is the crime we commit against the present moment, and against growing today. What takes real courage is accepting that all that we have done has brought us to this point of wisdom and perspective, and from this jumping off point we may make even better decisions, and be grateful that we made such decisions in the past so that we don't repeat them. Gratitude is a sacred state, and to be gracious for our lessons learned is wisdom indeed. Our stuff is what allows us to grow, if we let it. Otherwise it's just the miasma that we use as an excuse to beat ourselves up about how awful we are, ruining the perfection of now and the opportunity to make this day, this moment, the one we choose to be made anew.