CHAPTER 7Step 2: Conscious to Communicated
KEY TASKS FROM THIS CHAPTER:
- Balance self‐reliance and getting help.
- See asking for help as a strength and benefit to others, too.
- Be willing to make and keep reasonable commitments.
- Compare commitment to change to commitment to staying stuck.
- Communicate your problems and commitments to someone else.
- Hold yourself accountable personally and with help from others.
A man stops to visit his friend, and they have a chat on the porch. To their right, a dog is softly whimpering.
“What's wrong with your dog?” asks the visiting friend.
“Oh, he's lying on a rusty nail. Every time I go to fix it, he just lays on it again.”
“Why doesn't he get up?”
“I guess it doesn't hurt enough.”
Have you ever felt as if you had to be everything to everyone? As if you had to be strong or indestructible for the people around you whether at work or in your everyday life? You might feel this obligation to portray strength and success even if something deep down is heavily weighing on you. And sometimes you may question how long you'll be able to keep this up before you break.
Like the dog in this scenario, it's alarmingly easy to become so connected to your processes and habits that you normalize even the most dysfunctional patterns that hurt you. Your ability to adapt even to pain makes the nail in your life go from painful to bearable to normal to “comfortably uncomfortable.”
Being stuck is a constant state of living comfortably uncomfortable. Even when you're ...
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