As a Purpose and Clarity coach, one of the main models I use in my coaching sessions is offering distinctions to my clients.
Working with 150–200 clients in the past 6 months, I have realized how empowering distinctions can be to bring clarity in your life decisions.
Credits for this concept goes to Rich Litvin, who even inspired me to pursue this path of becoming a life coach.
He talks about having a distinctionary (distinction + dictionary) for your clients.
Asking the right questions can offer life-changing moments for someone. And that’s where the distinctionary helps us, as a coach.
Here are the 3 distinctions that will help you get clarity in life.
Freedom From v/s Freedom To
When I ask them about their core values and dreams, a lot of my clients tell me they want “Freedom”.
“Hmmm, okay. Care to elaborate?”
“I want freedom from my boss. I want freedom from my full-time job. I want freedom from parental pressure.”
“I see. So you’re telling me you want freedom from XYZ and ABC. Fill this sentence for me. You want the freedom to ____?”
And then they go silent for a minute.
Over and over again, this question has ignited mindset shifts.
Ask yourself… “I want freedom from ___ and I want the freedom to ____”
Issues v/s Characteristics
For a long time, I have considered my “detachment” as an issue.
Every time I enter a serious relationship, I would declare that I have detachment issues and I am working on it.
This went on for a while, up until my mentor asked me, “Dipanshu, for how long will you keep treating your characteristic as your issue?”
And that changed everything for me.
That’s when I realized detachment is actually a quality. Just like my overthinking.
Ask yourself… Are you treating your characteristics as your issues?
Human Being v/s Human Doing
This feels like a total anti-Gary vee type statement.
We are now being conditioned to hustle 15 hours a day, and that’s driving us away from being a human.
I won’t be surprised if all of this ends up giving this generation high-performance anxiety, the same defense mechanism where you hustle and overwork yourself to distract yourself from your insecurities.
I know this because I have been there.
People with high-functioning anxiety are often able to accomplish tasks and appear to function well in social situations. But internally they are feeling all the same symptoms of anxiety disorder, including intense feelings of impending doom, fear, anxiety, rapid heart rate, and gastrointestinal distress.
Two major symptoms of high-performance anxiety are:
- Workaholism, or a need to keep moving or doing even when at home.
- Perfectionism and feelings of constant dissatisfaction with the performance.
You are a human ‘be’ing. You are here to be.
Ask yourself… Am I too involved in doing that I am forgetting to be?
Summary
Ask yourself these 3 questions to get immediate life clarity:
- I want freedom from ___ and I want the freedom to ____?
- Are you treating your characteristics as your issues?
- Am I too involved in doing that I am forgetting to be?
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