Here are a few expressions that you probably already know and that you perhaps tell your own children now. “Life is hard”, “nothing comes easily”, “money does not grow on trees”, “people with money must have been stepping on others”, “we don’t always do what we want in life”...
Parents did not tell us that because they did not want us to be happy but because they wanted to prevent us from being hurt. Because they believed that life is hard, they did their best to protect us from false ideas and useless hopes. They wanted to make us understand that being realistic is the best way to insure the minimum in life. This is the result of fear. Parents don’t want their children to suffer and better to teach them as early as possible what the reality of the world is.
A tiny minority of people have been raised in the idea that we can achieve anything we want and that we can decide what we want to do with our own life. As a Therapist, the number one problem that I encounter is lack of confidence and self-esteem. Is it a coincidence? Of course not: It is the result of an education that for our own good made us believe that we should be happy to have a job, whatever it is.
The minimalist concept goes to all aspects of life including of course relationships. How many people stay in destructive or unhappy relationships?
I have good news. There is a possibility for each of us to change our lives and to contribute to change the entire world. Do we expect change to come from our government, our boss or more generally others? Do we believe that we can change? Do we believe that we should change? Perhaps are you reading these lines thinking that you are perfectly happy in life, with a perfect job, a lovely loving family and that you would not change anything? If it is the case, please be grateful and realise that you are part of a small minority. If these lines make sense, perhaps should you read further?
As a person, we are part of many systems: we are part of a family, a group of friends, a team at work, a nation, and a world. In each of these systems, we have a role and an impact depending on our actions, decisions and behaviours.
The concept of the right position tells us that we can find our true spot in order to express our true nature, our true self. Why should we do this? We should do this because we would be happier: it is as simple as this. If life is not about happiness, what is it about?
I know a person who was passionate about cooking and he wanted to be a chef. His family has been a family of doctors for generations. His brothers and sisters all became doctors and if possible specialists. He gave up under the pressure and became a doctor. He is not a bad doctor but an average generalist doctor. He could have been a happy chef but he is an average doctor. He did not find the energy to fight the outside world in order to express his true passion.
Have you ever felt that you were not fitting in your family, that you were feeling different and that perhaps your parents were not your real parents? It happened to so many kids. In fact, we should not question our origins but our true nature. We are all different and we should not try to be all the same. In our body, do you think that all cells are the same? Do you think that a lever cell is like a brain cell? Absolutely not: if you are a brain cell and that you accept to go to be a cell in the lever, guess what is going to happen? Some big health problems are going to appear in this body.
Imagine now that you are a fern and that because your family always have been geraniums, you are in full sun with them. You are probably going to survive but you are going to be so unhappy. You need shade and moist and you are living in the sun, south orientated and you suffer. What kind of plant are you? Are you trying to be something you are not? How close are you from your true nature?
The big difference between us and nature is that a fern would never naturally grow in full sun. It would not even grow in full sun. When it happens in nature, most of the time the plant dies.
What is true for nature should generally be true for us too. Only Human kind can have the arrogance and the foolishness to decide to be a fern when they are a geranium. If you think about it, are at the right place, with the right people, doing the right things? Are you a fern in full sun, are you a geranium in the shade or are you just not really in the right environment. Nothing on earth should make us feel inadequate. We should feel happy to be what and who we are and blossom as such. I can hear you already thinking: “that’s an idealistic view and you can’t just change and decide to be yourself suddenly and move somewhere else, change job...”
It is John Demartini who said “when your inner voice is stronger and louder than the voices on the outside world, you mastered your life”. You are the only person on this planet to know exactly how you feel, who you are and what you want so why would you give the power to others to decide what you should do with your life. Why should you believe the world when you feel different and when it does not feel right.
The concept of the True Position is about the big puzzle. We all represent one piece of the puzzle. What happens if most of the pieces are not at the right place? There is friction between the pieces which are not designed to be side by side naturally: there are tensions, conflicts, misunderstanding but first of all, it does not make any sense. The Puzzle’s image is a big chaos and does not represent anything. If you are not at the right place, it can be because the right spot is not available because the person is not at the right place or because you accepted to be at the wrong place. Do you realise that you perhaps prevent the right person to find the right place because you took it? When I was talking earlier about your opportunity to contribute to change the all world, that is exactly what I meant. If you search for your right spot, if this spot is available, you can give the opportunity to someone else to find his/her own spot. If you move, you can initiate a massive domino effect where one by one a succession of people would readjust by finding their available spot. Being you is encouraging others to do the same. Imagine that suddenly, the big puzzle starts to rearrange itself and one by one the pieces are moving to the right spot. Slowly but surely, the big picture starts to emerge: the frictions slow down, the conflicts disappear and all together, the world becomes more harmonious.
One of my friends is a Museum Director in Switzerland and she told me the story of a staff member which has been a problem for many years. Each department was trying to get rid of her because she was a sort of dead weight and nobody wanted to have her as part of their team. She was always grumpy and was taking lots of sick days. One day, during an Executive meeting, my friend had an idea saying that perhaps they were not employing this person at the right position. The lady was very good with numbers and with chasing the missing receipts and stuff. They moved her to the account department and gave her exactly this task. Guess what happened next. She became a very valuable member of the account department.
The domino effect can be initiated from many different points. Your own responsibility is to find the right spot for you but organisations can as well contribute to this movement.
For an organisation, it cost a lot of money to have the wrong person in the wrong spot. It means sick days, poor productivity, bad spirit and probably conflicts within the department. Make the choice to move people around will cost in terms of training and sometime of adaptation where the performance will still be questionable: but ultimately, the organisation will benefit immensely from this move. Motivation is the core of performance and if we can raise this level to the best, everyone wins: the person feels good and enjoys the day and the quality of the work is so better. We all are customers. Imagine when you go shopping or to a restaurant to be served by people who enjoy their job. Everybody does not want to be an engineer, a Doctor or a pop star. That is the beauty of life. We all are unique and we all want things slightly different. It means that there is a spot for each of us at the condition that we find it. The system today is a big chaos where so many people are away from their own stream, their own spot.
There is one puzzle for each system, whether there are few pieces or millions. One for the system of your family, one for you work environment, one for your city, for your country and of course the biggest picture of all is the world. Each little system is a piece of the bigger one and the more harmony we can bring to the system, the more harmonious the big puzzle will become.
How can you know what is the True Position for you? There is only one way to know for sure: the inner way. The truth about who you are and where you should be is inside and the only way to rich it is to work on yourself, make a deeper connection with your inner self. You know when you are happy, when you feel right and when you really are yourself.
If you feel happy and fulfilled, there are big chances for you to be at your true position. If on the contrary, you are doubtful, unhappy and unsatisfied, you need to work out what it is that you really want. Our feelings are our barometer to know if we are in the right. Our feelings are usually unstable and in one single day, we can go from very happy to very depressed. Saying that, there is a dominant, a state we are in most of the time. So ask yourself the question again. Most of the time, are you happy? Do you have the feeling that you achieve what you are designed to achieve?
©GBlifecoaching 2011 Denis Gorce-Bourge
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