How did you get to where you are today?

Where have you come from, and who were you 5 or 10 or even 20 years ago?

An odd question to start with, you observe. So let me explain where I am in my thinking. Over the course of this past week, I have had several conversations with people who find themselves now, today, in a different place, and – more excitingly – as different people to where and who they were five years ago. Common themes that were identified in bringing about such change include –

Different attitudes to themselves and others, with greater understanding.

Negative self talk has been identified and is being addressed.

A willingness to look under the surface of what is going on to the root emotion, and seek to learn and change.

A growing acceptance of strengths, skills, and life experience that now enables them to be who they are now and do what they now do.

Now I imagine for each of them, had I described to them 5 or 10 years ago the person that they would now be, and what their lives would now look like, I suspect that might have been too much of a world-change for them. It would seem too big, too unlikely, too unrealistic.

And of course, herein lies the point.

None of these precious folk have got to where they are in one, dramatic step. I can confirm that none of them woke up one morning to find their lives utterly transformed. Sometimes we fantasise about this very thing – short-cutting the hard stuff, leaping past the problems, frustrations and challenges and simply waking to a brand new shiny us, content, fulfilled and living a purpose-full life.

But in so doing, we would miss all the character development and growth that occurs in and because of the hard, challenging and frustrating stuff. And we would of course miss the joy in the celebrations, and the more routine life events in the middle.

The wonderful Sarah Pascoe was asked very recently at the Hay Festival what she would say to her 14 year old self about her success now. How did she get to where she is now, and what would she say to a younger version of herself about that success?

The question made her cry

…along with I suspect most of the audience including me (and I was just watching the video).

Sarah answered with such honesty, courage and emotional awareness of what the young question asker needed. She equipped her listeners with tools to deal with their own challenges in life. She was talking about learning from hard experiences, and gaining that resilience that only comes from surviving something hard and being able to look back on it. Talking about the first time you get your heart broken, she observes how devastating it is because you have never experienced anything like this before. You have no frame of reference, no idea what lies beyond the heartbreak, no tools to help you deal with it.

And then she says this:

When you get your heart broken a second time it might be just as bad, just as painful but it’s painful in the knowledge that you recovered once and that life went on and you laughed again, and enjoyed music again.”

Astonishing wisdom, so well put. Well worth watching the whole clip, here on Instagram.

How did you get to where you are today?

You did not do so in one fell swoop. Stopping, noticing, paying attention, learning, and changing how we see ourselves and our world is a gradual process. We learn from past experiences, especially painful ones. We take stock of where we are and where we want to get to, and what the gap is between those two points.

But we always remember that the key is to take one step at a time.

When we try to change too many things at once, we end up changing nothing.

There is a great coaching principle called the One Degree Principle. Itwhich simply means that making one small change daily consistently over time takes you to a completely different outcome. You can read more on this here in relation to changing negative mindsets, and here where I muse on changing habits and making new habits stick.

Sarah Pascoe did not get to where she is today, or learn all the lessons that she now embodies overnight.