Do you have any idea what drives you to action? What is it that fires you up and causes you to move? For some people, it’s the pressure of a looming deadline. For others it’s the pursuit of excellence in everything they do. Still others strive mightily to be number one, and make everything a competition, even if they are only competing with themselves.
For a long time, I thought I moved in response to a combination of all of the above. Sometimes I waited until a day or so before a deadline, after having ruminated on the subject for weeks, allowing ideas to marinate and mature before getting into action. On production projects, I love the art of piecing all the components together, systematically and thoroughly, until the final event is a symphony of all of its individual instruments. But being in a coaching relationship has revealed to me a much deeper and more sinister driver spurring me on.
When it comes to tasks I am reluctant to do, I am pursued by the fear of being scolded. Now scolded is a word with its roots in childhood, right? I mean, only children get scolded when they are naughty. Well, there is something in completing a task I am loathe or afraid to do that emotionally boomerangs me right back into childhood, eyes cast down, hands clasped in front of me, chin quivering.
My father was a taskmaster. He wanted things done a certain way and was far from patient when they were not. He would ratchet up the volume, and had a way of banging his hand on the table so that the sound of his heavy ring hitting the wood would reverberate into my bones. When the weeping inevitably commenced (mine), he would offer to “give me something to cry for.” He scared me.
My dad worked on ships throughout my childhood. His later runs were on luxury liners which brought him home twice a month for two days before he shipped out again. When he was at sea, all was calm in the household. My mother, grandmother and I had our rhythm down pat, with little chaos or confusion. We were easy together, reading in our favorite chairs, playing music or sitting in front of the television in the den at the side of the house. Mom watched baseball and the evening news religiously, Granny needed a 12-step program for the daytime soaps. I was a movie, sitcom and cartoon devotee, and together we gathered for the Jackie Gleason Show (how sweet it is!), Lawrence Welk (loved those Lennon Sisters) and Perry Mason who never, ever lost a case.
Then, the day or two before Dad docked, I’d get a knot in my stomach, frantically trying to recall what it was he’d asked me to do before he left. The house felt rife with mounting tension, at least to me. I was on pins and needles during his furlough. In hindsight I guess he might have been too, trying to fit intermittently into a home that ran perfectly well without him. He was actually a very good man, who kept his word to his family, gave generously to his friends, and worked hard to provide the best life he could for us.
But I discovered, long after I’d left home, that I continued to move to that expectation of disapproval. So when I did not complete a homework assignment for my coach, I waited for the explosion that never came. I expected her to be like Dad, the disappointed authority figure. But that was not who showed up. My coach was patient and accepting of whatever I offer, and treated everything as a learning experience.
Frankly I didn’t trust it, until I realized that this coaching relationship was really my experience with me. How fast or how slow I went was up to me. What worked even better in getting me into action was when she reminded me of why I was in coaching in the first place.
It’s not the fear of being yelled at that moves me now; it’s remembering the life I’ve envisioned for myself. When she gently re-acquainted me with my own desires, the knot eased and I was flooded with a feeling of well being. Even when I think of it now I am returned firmly to the driver’s seat of my own life, because it’s the end result that I so desperately and deeply want that is the fuel that rockets me into the future of my dreams.
