Choosing to Be Like Water

What if you had the power to choose anything you want? What would that power mean in your life? What would change? 

I choose a great career. I feel very blessed to have found this work early in my life. I work with people to develop their self awareness so they can make more conscious choices and close the gap between what they have and what they want. 

In order to mentor someone in this process it is essential that I am a living example of the process. It is a true honor for me to live this way and share it with others.

We hired a new employee and her job is to deliver a presentation called, “Does Your Thinking Limit Your Success?” to enroll people in our workshops where we discover the thinking that is in the way of living the life we truly want.  

I am in charge of training and development of new hires. She has been training for six weeks and this week I made the decision that she was ready to lead the presentation for a group of 50 on her own. 

I shadowed her presentation and as she went on I could see that she was losing confidence. People were asking her questions that she couldn’t answer and although she did her best to answer them she lost the conviction necessary to move a room. 

While watching her, I thought, “Oh no, I let her go up too soon. She is going to be pissed. I let her down. I let the company down. I was over confident. This is terrible.” 

I felt dread, sadness and a strong disappointment in myself.

At that moment and overwhelming sense of calm took over my body and I thought, ‘No, this is perfect. This will be wonderful for her development. She will use this experience to become an example of our work. I am thrilled.” 

So as we drove home that night she was pissed. She was disappointed in herself because she thought she blew it. I stayed calm and encouraged her to look at her results and asked her questions about how her thinking limited her success. By the end of our car ride she saw how her unconscious fears and beliefs created her experience and she knew what to do next time she went up to present. 

Three nights later she delivered the same presentation on her own and enrolled 6 people by telling her story and demonstrating that they can experience the same results. 

There is so much to celebrate in this story. What excites me most is that everything happened as it should. There was an event (her presentation) and I had a million choices in the way I could interpret the event and I chose to interpret it as perfect, necessary and exactly what I want to happen to make my vision of people living happier and healthier lives come true. 

Habitually, I would have believed I screwed up and did something wrong because it is very familiar for me to see myself as a disappointment (long story). If I had gone down that line of thinking and interpreting I would have killed her spirit by agreeing that she blew it and that she isn’t ready yet. Thus discouraging her before the presentation she did three days later where she nailed it! 

That is INCREDIBLE! I am in awe of the power of this experience and this is the work that we do with people every day! In a matter of a moment I captured my habituated reaction, thought of what’s important to me which is more people living happier, healthier lives, connected myself to the new belief that everything happens for a reason and re-interpreted the situation to fit the vision of what I want.  From there I acted in a way that brought out the best in her, ultimately aiding her and myself in leading a happy, healthy life.  

Bruce Lee said, "Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind; be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; you put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." 

I can be like water. With practice, I can be formless and shapeless and move with life as it unfolds. Water is powerful. It moves with the land to get where it longs to go. Water doesn’t need the rock to move, water moves around the rock. If I give up the notion that I know how to get where I want to go and focus my energy in the belief that I will get there, extraordinary things unfold before me. 

I can create whatever experience I want regardless of the external circumstances because I have the power to see what is happening in front of me and choose my responce and flow with it like water.