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I want you to take a moment to consider a what-if scenario. It’s not meant to be fear inducing. It’s really more of a realignment or a tune-up so that we can continue to move forward in connection with our values, our purpose and ourselves.
So often we go through life just getting by, going through the motions, without even realizing it. Sometimes we mistake comfort for happiness and stop asking questions, being lulled into believing that no news is good news, or is it so? I have a thought exercise for you today that helps to facilitate understanding what might be holding you back and what you might be holding on to that isn’t helping you grow and where you might have some blind spots in your life. I’m going to ask you again to consider what if tomorrow, for whatever reason, something that you take for granted today has changed. Maybe in this hypothetical scenario, you lose your job or your health, or you can’t live where you’re living anymore, or you lose your partner or they break up with you. What would you do?
I know it’s not something we like to think about, but I promise you there is great value in this. When we draw awareness around what things we are unknowingly depending on or attached to, we can begin to be more conscious about the choices we make and our way of being. We had a real dose of this with the pandemic, didn’t we? It actually offered us a chance to recalibrate and reassess what we were doing in our lives, and many of us really believed we were doing exactly what we wanted to do, seeing who we wanted to see, spending time in the places that we were. Maybe it was the fear of actually catching the virus that put us into that.
Perspective. But you don’t have to wait for one of these things to occur to check in with where you are and how your current lifestyle is contributing to who you want to be in this lifetime. So what would you do differently if any of these kinds of things happened? I mean, obviously you’d take the time to feel the appropriate feelings and move into survival mode as necessary. We’re hardwired for that. But I don’t want you to think about what you do so much as what you do differently. That’s what’s interesting. When we play these what if?
Scenarios out, they can be quite revealing. Think about it If you were to lose your job or your partner or your home tomorrow, would you look for another job in the same field? Or maybe there’s an entrepreneurial idea you’ve wanted to start but never had the time because you were so busy managing your current life. Maybe you always wanted to go back to school, but it never seemed to be the right time. If you lost your home, would you look for a house in the same neighborhood, or would you travel and explore, or maybe you’d move in with a friend or a family member.
Listen, there’s no judgment here. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, and I don’t mean to imply that there is something better on the other side, although I do believe that there is a gift and opportunity in everything, and the only thing worse than being stuck is not recognizing that you’re stuck. This exercise may actually reveal some areas that you’ve left undeveloped because you’ve settled.
It doesn’t mean you have to move on although that is always available to you but rather it shines a light on how you might enrich your current way of being by incorporating more of your passions, your potential and your purpose into your day-to-day lives. After all, it isn’t really about losing anything tomorrow. It’s about discovering where you might have lost yourself today.
Published in Collaboration with:
Lisa is an ICF Certified Professional Life Coach and Energy Leadership Master Practitioner at Wide Open Stages. She specializes in partnering with highly successful creative people who want to be challenged and inspired to become artists in all areas of their lives. A passionate creative professional herself, Lisa has over 25 years experience working in the performing arts industry as a director/choreographer, producer, writer and dance educator in NYC, nationally and internationally. She is dance faculty at Pace University NYC in the Commercial Dance and Musical Theater BFA programs, and is co-founder of New York Stage Originals, an internationally recognized theatrical production company. Lisa hosts the popular podcast STOPTIME: Live in the Moment and is founder of Wide Open Stages, where she coaches high-performing creatives in the performing arts industry.
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