Today I decided to do something for myself. I realized that I had been going back and forth between coaching trainings, readings, studies and my family for a long time; I had put myself, my desires and needs aside. I love nature, I come alive when nature comes alive; when trees, flowers, insects, cats and dogs are all over the place, I am filled with life energy. Suddenly I felt like spring hadn’t happened, I had postponed it this year, I had ignored it, I had missed it. I went out, inhaled the jasmines, walked freely, the kittens welcomed me, we loved each other… It felt so good.
“What happened?” I asked myself. Of course, I understood immediately; there were changes in my priorities during this period.
We all have a Priority Area, which is generally determined by opportunities and threats, so that we can give our limited energy. We can include people in the priority area, as well as career, money, success, ideologies, etc. A person shapes his life according to the values in the priority area, motivation comes from here, it is always more possible to reach the goals in our priority area. In addition, the person also takes responsibility for those in the priority area. If there are too many people in this area, this responsibility increases accordingly, the person wants to be fair to all of them, puts himself in the background and gets locked in. The subconscious is disturbed by this situation and the person can react by being passive aggressive towards those who are overly giving.
One of my clients told me that he forgot everything, made plans but couldn’t implement them, and his mind was very scattered. As he spoke, I heard how full his priority area was. He had taken over 200 people into this area and was trying to fulfill every request from these people, whom he couldn’t say no to because they were in his priority area. But my client is a human being, he lives in the same 24-hour day system as us, and it doesn’t seem possible for him to meet all these requests. He told me, “I don’t just forget our meetings with you.” Although I was flattered, the issue had nothing to do with me, of course. In that one hour he met with me, the focus was only on him. He spent an hour in coaching where he could only think about himself, prioritize, and look at himself. We discovered together that this client of mine was not in his priority area, there was room for everyone else but him. However, the center of our priority area should always be ourselves. Like putting the oxygen mask on ourselves before our children on airplanes, it is not possible for us to support others for a long time when we are stuck and can’t breathe.
Thankfully, there is also a waste mechanism in our system. It is very valuable to notice the people, behaviors and habits that we have taken into this area but have started to harm us and to clean them from this area. Doing this cleaning will allow us to find the time and energy we need for the “I” and other important topics that we need to prioritize.
What do you think, now that spring has arrived, wouldn’t a good cleaning be nice?
Esra KARAKAYA
ATC Professional Coach and Team Coach
