Can Rose Get Off the Never-Enough Hamster Wheel? (Part 1)
Photo by Ricky Kharawala
Reading time: 3 minutes
If you spend any time in personal growth circles on the World.Wide.Insta.Face.Com, you’ve probably come across the term “transformational.” Many coaches (and others) out there promise to not only help you achieve your goals, but instill long-term shifts in ways of being, thinking, and living. What does this mean exactly? Who’s got the transformation? Who doesn’t? Is it just more sales talk? Does any of it work?
As a transformational coach myself—and someone who has worked with them—here’s my take: yes, it works! Annnnd… it also doesn’t work in the magic pill way folks want it to.
Let me explain by introducing you to Rose, a fictional composite of coaching clients I’ve worked with over the past fifteen years, along with a little bit of myself, a little bit of you, and a little bit of every other human on the planet.
Rose: Age 37
Rose is successful according to every societal definition— degrees from the best schools, a well-paying job in a career she spent years killing herself to build, a nice apartment in the best part of the city, a boyfriend, and money to buy and do what she wants (for the most part), but Rose is miserable and often riddled with anxiety. She has All-The-Things she once believed would make her happy, including finally making partner at her consulting firm, but you know what they say about the pie-eating contest that never ends. Long hours at work have translated into fewer hours put into relationships, and fun, which has made her connection with Hal, the boyfriend, rocky at best. (She isn’t in love with Hal, btw, but she’s terrified of letting him go and ending up as the 37 year-old cougar back on Tinder.) Rose can’t remember the last time, if ever, she took time to genuinely reflect on the kinds of things that bring her joy. To make matters worse, our girl gained twenty pounds during the pandemic when she swapped the gym with Chardonnay and blocks of Machego cheese.
What can be done here?
From a transformational perspective, for Rose to get from Point A (regular cry breaks in the office bathroom) to Point B (enjoying her life), she will need to start questioning her conception of reality. Put straight: changing her life in any kind of sustainable way is going to take more than swapping her current externals for new ones because that’s what got her into this pickle in the first place. Other jobs, career moves, life situations, body sizes, and relationships had already been traded in for the ones she has now. Seeing as she’s clocking 10/10 on the misery meter, clearly this strategy hasn’t worked. Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same things over and over but expecting different results.
The only move left for Rose, transformationally speaking, is to Get Very Honest (GVH) with herself. She’s going to need to start telling the truth about: 1) how she really feels; 2) what’s really going on inside her head; 3) what she really wants (not what her parents want or society or her ego, which all get bound up together in a very compelling narrative, and can be very difficult to parse out without Getting Very Honest). Let’s break this down a bit.
Step #1: What She Really Feels
Like many of us in the modern west, Rose has been so busy doping herself up on work and wine and shows and Insta and posting smiling photos of herself on Facebook—and whatever else she can get her hands on to numb and distract herself from her suffering—that she isn’t actually in touch with her suffering. She isn’t aware of just how discontent she is, how deep it actually goes. But, recently, one of her favorite uncles died, stirring up long-abandoned emotions and reminding her how short life is. For the first time in a long time, Rose started reflecting: When I’m on my death bed, will I look back on this exact life I’m living right now and be glad? Is this who I want to be?
Though we wish it weren’t so, here at the Planet Earth Academy, it often takes crisis, adversity, and/or brushes with mortality to wake us up. I, for one, would likely still be fast asleep were it not for the cosmic cattleprods I’ve received.
Step #2: What’s Really Going on Inside Her Head
Now that Rose isn’t lying to herself about her emotions and actually feels them, she wants out of them. (E-motion, from the Latin = to move.) Something has to give. At this point, the road forks. Either Rose doubles down on more work hours, more numbing and distraction agents—more hits on the denial pipe—choosing to stay in this same painful loop for the rest of her life like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up the hill. OR she starts caring about herself enough to listen to what her suffering is trying to show her and get honest about the psychological, cultural, and religious tapes playing on repeat in her head. Here’s a small sample of Rose’s greatest hits (she’s not 100% aware of these yet):
#1: If I don’t work extra hard, put in long hours, and do everything perfectly, I will be seen as a failure, get fired, and end up homeless
#2: If I leave this career or take a job I enjoy more, but pays less, I will be seen as a failure and eventually end up homeless
#3: If I break up with Hal, I will be seen as a failure and end up homeless
#4: If I don’t have a successful career and a wedding ring soon, I will not only end up homeless, but an abandoned loser who won’t be loved by anyone, ever; I will die alone and, after all that, go to Hell as punishment for failing the humanity experiment
The super belief at the heart of all of these = I’m not good enough, not lovable enough, exactly as I am. (We all have limiting beliefs just like Rose’s and, yes, you have them, too. If you think you don’t, I invite you to Get Very Honest.)
What’s driving these limiting beliefs is usually a very simple common denominator: fear. The problem is not so much that the fear and related head stories exist—that’s normal and comes with being human. Ultimately, fear and its cronies mean well and are here to protect us. The issue is that Rose has reached the point where not only are her current fear stories no longer serving her, but they are creating more suffering. The longer she lets old narratives run her central command center like a bunch of drunk monkeys, the more she will suffer, and feel like she’s living a life that’s not her own.
Step #3: What She Really Wants
Rose needs to start making the connection between her internal playlist, her suffering, and her external life. It’s simple math (or quantum, if you prefer). I’ll spare you the vibration stuff and metaphysics but suffice it to say: like attracts like. Reality, as seen through Rose’s currently not-so-rosy lens of limiting beliefs, fears, and self-sabotaging messages, gets refracted down into a very small, very limited universe. As long as Rose views Reality through this filter, she won’t be able to feel into the possibilities and what she really wants for her life, no less be equipped to follow her heart enough to make her dreams happen. As long as she believes the things her mind is telling her are true, her perception remains clogged, and she misses the potentialities, and the freedom, that’s available to her now (not if/when certain conditions are met). Imagine what your house would look like it you never took out the trash. It’s time for Rose to take out the mind trash; otherwise, she runs the risk of unconsciously running from one accomplishment to the next, one situation to the next, one experience to the next, one relationship to the next—accumulating more and more and more—yet never actually finding what she’s looking for.
(And, while she’s at it, Rose might want to consider cleaning up her diet, getting her body moving, and getting out into nature, all of which would help to regulate the nervous system and pull her out of the limbic brain/survival/anxiety mode. But, hey, one step at a time.)
Which Path Does Rose Take?
Rose saw a therapist for a while which, eventually, led her to coaching. Once she started to see her fears and mental narratives for what they were (fictions), Rose was able to unhook from them just enough to be able to reflect objectively on what she really wanted out of life, to know that she deserved to have it, and to crash through the imaginary prison she had created for herself. Through commitment and a series of small daily steps and practices, Rose was able to rewrite her conception of reality and, therefore, her life. It’s never easy rising above lifetimes, generations, of fears and mental programming. Sometimes it was downright grueling for Rose and, often, she didn’t have the patience for it. But she persisted.
Within a few years, give or take, Rose’s life was unrecognizable. She broke up with Hal and left her consulting firm for a job in a nonprofit that she was passionate about. The salary was lower so she had to move to smaller apartment in a different neighborhood, but she loved her cozy new home. Moving gave her a fresh start, a way to start over as a new self. With better work hours and the option to work from home two days a week, she had more free time for other things. She got into yoga, made a few new friends, rekindled her passion for reading, met a new guy named Rushil, and fell in love. These two eventually moved in together and are talking about the future…
Whew, Rose thought, I made it. Rose knew life wasn’t a bed of roses and that “transformation” was a lifelong journey. She knew she’d need to be vigilant about continuing to take out the mind trash so she didn’t fall back into old patterns. But, overall, Rose felt like she was finally living life as her most authentic self, which was all that mattered to her now…
The End
What? What do you mean The End? What happens to Rose 5, 10, 15 years down the line? Find out in Part 2 of Rose Does Planet Earth.
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