When I think about my next development goal, I am torn between choosing ‘Resilience’ (my anxieties at this stage of the pandemic are not about death, but rather about job losses and poverty – my family after all were Jewish war refugees) and ‘Influential’ (can I use this time to find my influencer voice?).
Choosing Resilience is driven by a desire to understand and change the anxiety inside myself about money, because I know it is not based on fact.
Choosing Influential is for the future, an opportunity to add something specific to my repertoire, to project my voice outward.
I realised as I was out for a walk at the weekend (walking works really well for me as a way of getting perspective) that this choice reflects something I’ve been writing about and working with my coaching clients: what is the source of our impulse to want to develop? Does it come from within or from without?
Arabella Ellis
Founder & CCO, Jyre
Snippet, Reflect, Fix
Snippet
We can think of our development goals as falling into 2 categories:
a) learning to thrive in a changing environment (new job, new role, new boss, new city, new relationship etc). These are all external change factors, things that happen to us that require a change of us or present us with an opportunity to change.
b) a desire to change myself because I am not thriving, whether it’s in my life, my work or my relationships. These are internally driven changes based on noticing personal discomfort or having this pointed out by someone else, even when it’s hard to hear.
Reflect
What information do you pay attention to that indicates you need to change? What signs do you miss or avoid? How open are you to the idea that change is an opportunity?
Fix
Learn to identify goals from both categories. Pick a goal that you’ve already set yourself or one that you’d like to set. Identify whether it’s driven from the inside or the outside. Now choose an additional goal that is driven by the opposite. Which goal are you more likely to achieve?