It’s Time to Make Reality Your Friend

You’ve Got to Get Really Real About Your Life…

‘Reality is your friend!’ is a phrase I started using with clients a while back and after diving into how we create our own reality over the last few weeks, I wanted to bring it together and talk about taking a new attitude toward our lives.

I encourage you to look at your life as a laboratory.

With a very wild and powerful scientist in charge.

You.

Maybe it’s the Chemical Engineer and Biologist in me that sees systems and causality everywhere…

… yeah, it’s probably that. 😉

But it’s the way I’m wired. I see flows. I see how when I do ‘x’ and then ‘y’ happens on a consistent and repeated basis that if I tweak ‘x’, and change it into ‘x1’, if you will, then my ‘y’ will change as well, becoming ‘y1’.

So, I can look at my life and see where any given x is leading to y and then I can mess with x and create x1 and then see how that x1 leads to y1.

If I change my action, I can get a new outcome.

As a scientist, that means that I can keep fiddling with ‘x’ until I get the ‘y’ that I want. 

(hopefully you haven’t fallen asleep yet) 

By Changing My Action, I Can Get a New Result

It might sound kind of clinical or too mathy – ahhh, algebra, you sexy beast! – but it’s actually really exciting because here’s what it means:

If I want to create a certain result, for instance…

• releasing unwanted weight
• being happier
• improving my marriage
• making more money in my business
• getting a promotion at work
• getting along with my kids
• resolving a client issue

… or anything else that my heart desires, then all I have to do is look at where I am now, figure out what my current ‘x’ and ‘y’ are, decide which new ‘y1’ I want, and then create an ‘x1’ that will get me there.

I don’t like how my employees are behaving?

Well, that’s my current ‘y’.

Now, I have to figure out what ‘x’ has got me to this point. Then I can brainstorm a whole tonne of possible x1’s, choose one, act on it, and then see what new y1 I get.

I’ll keep doing this until I get the y1 that I desire.

Tolerations Are a Huge Form of Self-Sabotage

And this is where we have to get really real with our reality because it is far too easy to kid ourselves into thinking that it ‘isn’t that bad’ or that ‘I can handle it’ or that ‘it doesn’t bother me too much’.

I call bullsh*t!

We aren’t meant to tolerate our lives. 

We are meant to exult in our lives.

We are meant to have joy and peace and contentment and excitement and growth and passion and Mission and Purpose and love and ALL OF THE THINGS.

But we’ll never get there until we’re willing to get real with reality.

In Body Clutter, Leanne Ely says this about facing reality, “It seems to me that our excuses insulate us from the facts. In other words, if we can rally behind the rationalizations, we are home free – or so we think. We don’t have to face the music then. Our clothing size continues to get larger and, consequently, health problems continue to mount.” (p42, emphasis mine)

Reality Is Your Tough, Kickass Friend

That’s why I encourage my clients to see reality as their friend.

Reality is showing you what is true for you right now.

It is showing you what your current meta-programs, values, beliefs, thoughts, and action are creating.

It is your mirror.

It’s doing you a favour. Even, and especially, when you don’t like it.

So, reality is your friend but it’s not your ‘nicey nice’ friend. Y’know the one who will kiss your cheeks and meet you for cocktails or give you hugs at church but who will never tell you that you have spinach in your teeth or confront you with truth when you desperately need to hear it.

Not that friend.

Reality is the friend who will take a deep breath, look you in the eyes with love, and tell you that you are heading down the wrong path, or that, yes, in fact, your head has been so far up your butt that it’s no wonder the world has seemed so dark lately.

Then they will laugh and cry with you and work with you to make it better.

That kind of friend.

Have an “I Do Not Want to Kid Myself” Day

Jim Rohn said that every now and then we have to have an ‘I do not want to kid myself day’. I can hear his voice in my head saying, ‘sometimes you’ve just gotta count!’ And money is easy to count. So start there.

How’s your money?

How’s your love life?

How’s your spiritual alignment and connection?

How deeply in relationship are you with the Divine?

How passionate are you about your life, right now?

What is happening around you?

Once you get really real with reality, you can make a chart of your current y’s – list them all down.

(getting them on paper is so important here!)

And then you can start to get really real about your current x’s.

What are you doing or not doing to create what you are seeing in your reality? 

And then, and this is where we get to have so much fun in coaching and where I believe that people truly need a coach, we get to come up with options and possibilities and what if’s that are truly extraordinary.

Then, when my clients start living out their new x1’s, we get to evaluate what new results (y1’s) they are getting. If we like it, we go with it. If we don’t, we simply go to x2.

Y’see? It’s all about trial and error and staying aware of your life. In your life.

Instead of Numbing Out, Lean In

And that’s where having a coach is so valuable, because our instinct is to numb out and go blind to what is happening around us. We choose sugar, TV, sex, chemicals, busy-ness, and all sorts of creative excuses to not get still and not see. A coach gives us the opportunity to breathe, get still, and really see what is going on.

It can be scary, which is why it’s nice to have company on that journey.

And, if you want to have any sort of fulfillment in this life, it’s absolutely essential.

There are always solutions. There are always options.

Don’t make it harder than it has to be by banging your head against the wall and trying to do it all alone.

Your dreams are waiting.

Vanessa Long

Vanessa Long is creator of the Seasons of Success and author of Discovering Your Passionate Purpose. Focused on providing straight-forward, no b.s. solutions, strategies, and support to move you from where you are to where you yearn to be. It’s time to tap into your purpose and build a life that expresses all of who you were designed to be.