On Our Multitudes

On Containing Multitudes

You may be surprised to know that there are parts of me that are embarrassed to say that I’m a life coach. Depending on the framework you’re using, these could be called parts or thoughts or belief systems or stories. Regardless of what you call them, they are very much alive in me even today as I move forward with this new career. 

Here’s a glimpse:

• The part that takes pride in my attendance at the best business schools in the country, and cringes that my new career doesn’t involve managing hundreds of people or millions of dollars.

• The part of me that hustled, and clawed, and competed to get promoted to Director at Google, and is disappointed by a title that doesn’t signify any status.

• The part that doesn’t want to be a cliche, as one of hundreds of HR executives who become coaches after they leave their corporate roles.

• The creative, ambitious part that is scared that spending my days focused on others will prevent me from making my own, direct impact on the world.

I could go on! As Walt Whitman said in his “Song of Myself, 51,”:

“...Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)...”

I share these inner workings of my mind with you, not (just) for you to have pity on me, but to demonstrate how compelling and varied our thoughts can be. And remember, this was just a subset of my thoughts on one topic; imagine how many thoughts / stories we all have rattling around in our brains at any given time! It’s a miracle we ever get anything done. 

This is where the magic of coaching comes in. I like to visualize our every day jumble of thoughts as a big, knotted-up ball of yarn. Coaching is the process of untangling the ball, one yarn (i.e., thought) at a time. 

1. The first step is to identify the thought. You’d be surprised how often people are not aware of regular thoughts and beliefs rolling around their own mind. “I’m a bad mom because…” or “I’m a failure because…” or “I’ll never be attractive because…”

2. Then, work on investigating the thought: Where did it come from? Is it true today? Was it true at some point? Sometimes simply saying the thought out loud and seeing it through someone else’s eyes is enough to make you realize that it’s not true. Sometimes it takes some more work to separate ourselves from the thought.

3. Finally, observe yourself in real life having the thought, and instead of automatically believing it, pause and question whether it is true. With this space comes the chance to make a choice about how you move forward. 

In my example above, my belief from bschool that success equals running large organizations is not true for me today. It’s an old belief I learned when I was in college, and it is not how I think of success anymore. So now when I think it (which I still do at times!), I am able to separate myself from the thought, and it doesn’t drive my career decisions in the way it used to.

It’s truly life changing to be free from the tyranny of your own, unexamined thoughts. 

I’d like to make a disclaimer here that coaching is by no means the only way to achieve this freedom. I have found that other mindfulness practices work just as well: walking, yoga, meditation, journaling, talking to a good friend, etc. And I do all of these things myself, except for meditation which is still so hard for me! The reason I’m partial to coaching is because I believe that we are meant to learn things in community with others, and I love the process of making sense of things in partnership with others.

Ok, I think my parts are satisfied… at least for now. Until next time, friends!

If you’re interested in excavating your own thoughts on a topic with me as your coach/guide, please do reach out: hema.k.mehra@gmail.com.