Elevating Ourselves
One of the main goals of life coaching is to assist people in elevating themselves in some way…a productive way. Since life coaching can take on so many forms and goals, this could mean elevating our business performance, our leadership, or our relationships. It may be a personal coaching objective to change careers and elevate ourselves in this way or even to further our education and get some coaching on what further education to pursue and how to go about fitting it into our busy lives. There is even grief coaching that may work along someone who has lost a loved ones and needs to work through that loss, thus elevating their mental and emotional well-being. But in the end, coaching is about working to become a better, higher version of ourselves.
This kind of elevation requires thought, dedication, and hard work. It requires a certain level of discipline and consistency that many of us are not willing to commit to for the duration of the process and make the desired changes. I started a personal transformation in 2018 that has led to this point…starting Elite Forge Life Coaching. I had no idea where the transformation would lead but suspected it would end up back here where I started, with coaching. But it was about committing to the process and the long term effort that was necessary to get here. It has been a personal, physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, and financial transformation that has resulted in losing 80 pounds, becoming an actor, becoming a business executive, and pursuing a doctoral degree. So, it has been a long journey with a lot of hard work, mostly on myself.
As I consider this, it may be why we see so much hate and anger in our modern world. People have become used to overnight, next day, streaming, immediate gratification that the consideration of a long, hard journey is just unimaginable. But people still have the inner need and drive to elevate themselves, so it is easier to do that by pushing someone down below us rather than raising ourselves up. What happens then is instead of doing the hard work to make ourselves better, we just find someone we feel is beneath us to elevate ourselves over them. This is done in so many ways. Just think about the sentence, “I might be bad but at least I’m not [blank]” and look at all the ways people fill in that blank. People fill it in with race, sex, sexual orientation, political affiliations, nationality, and a plethora of other non-productive hateful ways. Rather than putting in the work to elevate themselves, they take the easy road and simply demote others. We can all be guilty of it to a certain degree. I mean, at least I don’t drive a minivan. Those people….
If I give all those people the benefit of the doubt and hope that they aren’t doing it out of hate but rather out of a desire to make the world a better place, there is one sure fire way to make the world a better place…to change the world. And that way is to change ourselves. As we take the time and put in the work to make ourselves better, to elevate ourselves, then we change the world around us. The impact may not be global, or look global from your perspective, but maybe doing something as simple as pursuing a degree for yourself, you inspire someone around you to do the same. Then they realize that putting others down didn’t elevate them, but rather actually brought them down. You never know what your example will lead to or how it might impact others. But one thing is for sure, lifting yourself up by putting in the work, trusting the process, investing the time, and realizing that you can change yourself will most definitely change the world. Because the only way to truly change the world is one person at a time, and that change starts with you.
