I was recently a guest on the Kelly Covert podcast In Her Voice. We discussed how to find fulfillment, and it brought me back to the first time that I asked for help and realized that I could no longer Lone Ranger life. 

That first step set me on the path to finding fulfillment in life.

There was a time when I was seen as a leader, and from the outside looking in, I looked like I had it all. On the inside, I was hurting, I was lonely, I would always handle things myself, thinking asking for help was a sign of weakness… I was a lone ranger.  

I recall approaching somebody, which was a big deal for me to ask for help because I felt like I had it all together. But I just asked her, “When is it going to be enough? When am I going to be enough?” I had this insatiable, exhausting desire to achieve more, do more, have more. I always set big goals and would reach them, but I just lacked that level of ease and fulfillment in my life. There was no joy, I would achieve something, and then I would say, well, I should have done it quicker. Or you know I should have done this. I never really enjoyed or celebrated my accomplishments and because I was stuck in busy mode, I didn’t have a chance to enjoy connections with people either.

I never took the time to slow down; I was always at the whim of all of these external demands and pulls on my time that I wasn’t even clear about what I wanted. So the first step was noticing, hey, this is a problem, then realizing that I was never going to be enough in my mind unless I learned to change my mind, paradigm, and mental programming.  So taking that pause but continuing and claiming time to gain a sense of clarity on what I wanted. One of the first steps that I took was to ask for the help of a coach. 

As soon as I asked for support, things opened up for me.  I just started studying myself and where some of these feelings came from. The study of self with coaching opened a lot of doors for me, beginning with working on my self-image and how specifically I wanted to feel, defining that, naming it, and finally becoming her; the loving friend, daughter wife, coach, and philanthropist who has an impact the way I was meant to.  Most important is I healed the relationship with myself and loved the person I saw looking back at me in the mirror.

I think for high performers, there’s this feeling that we have to do it all on our own, or it doesn’t count. We’ve been conditioned to think that way!  As a consequence, there are a lot of high performers who are “successful” but their relationships are suffering, their physical health is taking a hit and they’ve lost the passion for life, they once had.  The advice or encouragement that I  have for people who find themselves in that place of doing it all on their own, where they feel like it’s impossible to ask for help might feel like a punch in the gut. 

Here is the advice, When you don’t ask for support and help, you are not living up to your full potential; you are playing small.

Everyone has blind spots. What are you doing to shed light on yours?

However you look at it, whether you look at science or theology, we all are comprised of energy. Whether you believe it’s spirit or energy, it’s a power that’s flowing to and through us. So we have unlimited potential, unlimited capacity. The only thing that holds us back is our thinking. 

Let me be the first person you ask for help on getting clear on what you want because I know how difficult it can be. Schedule your virtual coffee with me and listen to the entire podcast.