Mar 30 2008
Using The Wrong Maps - Frustration, Anger, Emptiness, Boredom, And The List Goes On
If you were given a pen and paper and asked to write your general experience of life, what would you write? If you really search your deepest feelings, how do you feel? Do you feel frustrated or passionate? Have you given up? Are you satisfied or do you still want to move mountains? If you haven’t noticed yet, life is a journey and every journey has a destination and a map. It is exactly these two things that determine your experience through life. In the long run it is really the map that makes the difference. You can have the best destination ever, but if you have the wrong map, your journey will be quite miserable.
Imagine you know exactly where you want to be. You put in all the effort. You study more. You work harder. You are more prioritized. Everything needed to get there. Until one day you realize that everything you have done is useless because you have been doing the wrong things. In other words you have been using the wrong map… Most of the times this is what causes the frustration in life.
By knowing what maps you use, you will be able to get to the root cause of your frustration. You have numerous maps that guide you through life and it can be divided in one of two groups:
1) Those maps that have been established by tradition. Everybody uses them but don’t know why. They are not questioned and they put people in comfort zones. Maps like “hard work equals financial satisfaction”, “I don’t have enough money“, “I cannot do it” etc.
2) The second map is those maps that are based on universal principles. They are timeless and they never change. They guide you towards a balanced lifestyle and help you to know when a decision needs to be based on justice, truth or grace.
One of the most important, and also sometimes one of the most challenging things to do, is to know what wrong maps you are using. If people are not aware of the faulty maps they use, very little progress will be made towards the ultimate destination. Therefore the first step towards identifying these faulty maps, is to become self aware. Self awareness comes through asking yourself powerful questions that really challenges your current way of thinking, but then also to answer these questions very honestly and then to act on them. Once you do this you really coach yourself. Unfortunately, just like an athlete without a coach, people tend to be much more lenient on them without someone asking them the right questions.
What’s the profit in it for you to procrastinate? What’s in it for you to do things yourself? How much responsibility are you taking to make things happen? Who decided that what you believe is true? What if you do know? What if some of these questions will give you a paradigm shift and guide you towards fulfillment?
It’s easy to answer these questions. Everyone can do it, including a 6 year old child. But it’s not the first and most obvious answer that makes the difference. It is the answer that has been suppressed by years of conformity and tradition that revolutionize our lives. These answers don’t come very easily. Many times they only come when we go through really difficult times or when someone asks the right question at the right time. Should you really wait for things to get really bad before you get the right answers?
Are you asking yourself the right questions and if not, who should?
This article is a follow up on a previous published article. I would strongly advice you to read “Live the Life you were Meant to Live: Man’s Greatest Fear” before you start with this one.
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Steyn Viljoen
Professional Certified Coach
Cog Coaching
http://www.cogcoaching.com
Tags: Destination, Journey, Map, Principles, Question, Revolutionize, frustration
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