S1E7: The Secret Sauce Leads to Joy
The Six Frames of A Proactive MettlEdge Mind, Part 7 of 7
I cannot believe we are here already, the final episode on the Six Frames of the MettlEdge Mind Podcast Series. The first of many podcast series for me and MettlEdge.
As I’ve presented, the MettlEdge Mind is a model to equip you with a proactive mindset to help you harness your high-octane brain and shape your strong sense of self, purpose, and belonging.
My name is Jill Williams and I’ve spent years trying to get my arms around the secret sauce of the skills and practice of professional coaching. I am admittedly obsessed with sharing what I’m learning and capturing it in the best model possible, one that is easily understood and compelling for others to personally apply.
The MettlEdge Mind model is today’s version of my understanding. It’s also been genius leadership, bring the rain, and keep climbing into greatness. I’m convinced that each version has been useful for personal and leadership growth, and I’m certain that I’ll want to make changes to the model for the rest of my life. However, I’m also aware that its time to stick to one way of talking about it.
So the Six Frames of the MettlEdge Mind are here to stay.
Allow me to get back on track. As I said, I’ve spent years trying to get my arms around the secret sauce of the skills and practice of professional coaching. If you are wondering this yourself, in a nutshell, I’d say professional coaching is the practice of using conversation to create joy.
This definition of professional coaching seals the deal on the current version of my efforts to pass along the power of professional coaching to people in powerful positions of influence.
Because, The final frame of the MettlEdge Mind is Let There Be Joy. It all makes sense.
As a reminder, the six frames of the MettlEdge Mind are as follows:
Let there be tension
Let there be compassion
Let there be strength
Let there be limits.
Let there be conversation.
And finally, let there be joy. Let’s get into this.
Life is full of peaks and valleys.
Finding joy when disappointment lurks around the corner doesn’t mean ignoring the negativity; it means acknowledging it and choosing to pivot. It means recognizing that one of the presuppositions to conversation may also be one of the presuppositions to life.
German philosopher and prominent thinker in systems theory Niklas Luhmann once said, “One of the most basic presuppositions of communication is that the partners can mutually surprise each other.”
I’d say one of the most basic presuppositions of life is also that the partners can mutually surprise each other.
Who are the partners in this case?
One of them is me. It’s You. It’s a person.
And the other is that person’s daily experience.
So, in this case, what I’m proposing is that one of the most basic presuppositions of life is that a human and his or her experience can mutually surprise one another.
I can be surprised by the circumstances that encompass me. That accompany me. That sometimes seem to want to consume me. And other times seem to support and embolden me.
Those very circumstances can be surprised by how I respond to them.
Focus: What’s going through your head right now?
We often sit in our self-pity parties, distracting ourselves from disappointment, discouragement, and discontent, all the while not realizing others are sitting in their own self-pity parties for the same reasons. We think we are broken when in fact, the culprit is the self-focused party. We don’t hear anyone else talking about their difficulty, so we assume we’re the only ones struggling. This is what Don Norman calls the conspiracy of silence. It invades our insides, steals our joy, and arrests our rest. (Norman, 2013)
I think we can agree that we are better at sizing ourselves up against one another and avoiding hard conversations than we are at being grateful for what we have, especially when what we have falls short of our expectations.
When I was a kid, we had a stuffed teddy bear in our house with a pull string. I liked this bear. I liked pulling the string. Because every time I pulled the string I was told “There is nothing you can’t do.” These words put air in my tires. But did these words speak truth? No. Despite such modern messaging, there are some things each of us cannot do.
Fuel: What do you think about this? How have words like this put air in your tires? What circumstances have surprised you, challenging this viewpoint along the way?
As we have already discussed, humans have limits.
Our natural appetite for comparison as a means of assigning value is swelled by our choice to trust a steady stream of messages like Teddy’s to be true.
Such messages can put air in our tires, but the air they provide doesn’t last.
We must shatter the conspiracy of silence.
It's time to liberate joy from captivity and allow ourselves to feel, undettered of the disappointments that may lie ahead and ready to not only be surprised by our circumstances, but ready to surprise them with our positive response.
Let there be joy.
Fight: How will you fight to let there be joy in your life?
What do you want to do? What’s the first step you can take?
When will you do it?
What do you need to do for yourself to remember to do it?
What difference will it make?
As I already said, this is the last episode our podcast series on proactive mindset formation walking through our model The MettlEdge Mind.
Next week I’ll begin a new series.
In the meantime, please download our podcast on Apple Podcasts and comment on our episodes.
To connect and experience some of the clarity and forward movement of professional coaching, enroll in our coaching memberships and follow our community.
To learn more about our 1:1 coaching memberships, go to our website, mettledge.com and click on enroll now.
To learn more about our 6-month MettlEdge Mind Cohort or to find out how you can bring MettlEdge to your coaches and teams, click on learn more and schedule a call with us! We love connecting with you. That’s why we’re doing the work we are doing.
I’ll say this one final time:
I’m interested in the theory behind proactive mindset formation, but I’m way more interested in making the complex process of forming a proactive mindset accessible, doable, attainable—simple and approachable—even though it will always involve more nuance and incomprehensibility than we may be able to imagine or than we may prefer.
It’s why we all need to do more than talk about having a healthy, proactive mindset. To form our mind we have to think, feel, and take action to build the muscle memory we want to have and break the habits of thinking we no longer find useful in our lives.
MettlEdge gives you a way to do this for yourself in a powerful way. Schedule a call at mettledge.com or message us on Instagram, Mettledge.coaching
I pray this podcast has been a blessing to you! Let’s go!
References:
https://www.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/