On our bridge call with coaches last night, I was asked to describe how I have managed to climb out of my recent period of “funk” and re-establish my enthusiasm for life.
I shared a number of actions, including:
Writing authentically in my ezines – this brings 80% appreciation and support from readers plus 20% complaint, unsubscription and offers of help from well-intentioned, obsessive-compulsive helpers.
Having “good conversations” with family, friends and colleagues about the situation and my feelings about the situation. About what has to happen for my needs to be met.
Getting out into the fresh air.
And revisiting one of my favourite books of all time – “Lifelaunch – a passionate guide to the rest of your life” from www.hudsoninstitute.com.
In the book, authors Hudson and Maclean describe 4 distinct phases in a never-ending circular path of personal evolution:
Phase 1
— “Go For It,” is the positive part of a life chapter, when you seek to live your dream and reach a sustainable plateau of success and well-being. You are on Purpose, and life, for the most part, is working.
Phase 2
— “The Doldrums,” is a down time, a protracted sense of decline, when you’re not happy with your life chapter, but you don’t think you can do much about it. The Doldrums are meant to serve as a wake-up call, an invitation to restructure or reinvent your life so that it works for you once more.
Phase 3
— “Cocooning,” is a detachment from the chapter that was’t working, a beginning of a major life transition. In Cocooning, you take an emotional “time out” to heal, reflect, and discover new directions for your life, eventually leading to renewal and revitalization. Cocooning nurtures and nourishes the soul, giving birth to a new script and a beginning of a new “story” for the next chapter of your life.
Phase 4
— “Getting Ready,” is a time for experimenting, training, and networking, resulting in a launching of your next chapter. You test the possible paths ahead that will allow you to live your purpose and values. At that point, you write the script for the next chapter of your life and plunge into it. You have arrived in Phase I again.
And this liberates me/us from feeling guilty about being in the doldrums periodically – it is just a natural cycle.
I’m somewhere between “cocooning” and “getting ready” at the moment – and that’s OK.
And this isn’t the book I mentioned in my last blog – that is still to come.