I was immediately struck by the sense of how solid Lisa’s energy was. Interwoven with that (I experience it three-dimensionally) was her natural gift for understanding the building blocks of a process. These were both part of her Uniquely Compelling Quality (‘UCQ’).
If you hit turbulence this is exactly who you’d want to help you scoop up the pieces and make sense of it all.
Before becoming a coach Lisa helped build a school. She loved it.
Leaving in 2018 was a big wrench and one that hadn’t been planned. The reaction was natural enough, henceforth she wanted to be in control of her creative vision. Her priority was to avoid being in the position of investing all her energy into a project where she could be replaced on a whim by somebody else.
But the question was, “How?”.
The “How?” is, of course, a key factor but it’s not as important as the “Why?”. To find out both she started exploring different options.
Lisa tells the story of how she attended presentation events, where startups practice their pitch to venture capitalists, in search of funding. “They were there practising and I would offer feedback. It was also a networking event” she explained, “I'd been there about six weeks and one day this woman came up to me and said, “Lisa, what you're doing is really spot on, but there's more to you than what you're showing.”
They had coffee and followed that up with a two-day experience, where a future vision was mapped out of who Lisa could become. This was both useful and inspiring but there was one problem.
It was all very nebulous.
Nebulous is the enemy of the creative process. The more clarity we have of the three stages: our current reality, the desired outcome and the action steps required to get there, the more likely we are to be successful. The converse is true.
Our dreams have value but a better starting point is the gifts we have because if we align them with our goals it’s going to make it a whole lot easier to achieve them, more pleasurable, and more impactful. But knowing our gifts is just part of the puzzle, even if we align them with our chosen destination.
And then…
A little voice within the echo chamber of her heart whispered the big question: “What if she was right?” And that spurred her into action.
She began building her mission one step at a time.
When COVID locked us all down it gave Lisa time to think. A call on ‘Clubhouse’ had her listening in to a talk and the question was posed, “Who’s filter are you living your life through?”
It was an AHA moment. A life-changing inflexion point that started the process of observation and introspection of the stories she, like all of us, had told herself.
“I'm a business owner, a daughter, I'm a sister. I'm all of that. But what parts did the world tell me who I needed to be and how I had to act that didn't feel right to me?”
“Okay. So there's something called eldest daughter syndrome, right? I'm the oldest of three girls. And I think a lot of firstborn females face this. They’re given responsibility early to help watch the other children, the chores and things like that.”
She realised this had created a map that she had mechanically followed.
So she kept going back through her life, revisiting the stories where she did what the good girl did.
With each story revealed, brought into conscious awareness, came the opportunity to keep it or cast it aside for something more valuable, desirable or aspirational.
Reverting to the creative process, it’s vital that our urge to create is born of a pure desire, to do it for the joy and satisfaction of it, not because we want to be a ‘good person’ or whatever other agenda we want to set ourselves. Who, after all, wants to do something because it’s ‘good’ or to prove something, other than because of an underlying often hidden belief that the opposite is true? To have that in the mixing pot is to contaminate the best recipe we have, creative tension, with an ingredient that doesn’t belong there and is in conflict with our goal.
Casting aside the stories that didn’t serve her and playing to the strengths of her UCQ, Lisa has achieved what many don’t: aligning her life with her natural gifts and being all the more impactful for it.
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