Boosting Your Happiness: Part 1
Welcome back to Rich Aste Executive Coaching and my March inspiration, Boosting Your Happiness: Part 1. Earlier this year, Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz released their highly anticipated book, The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. After following two generations of individuals over eighty years, their colleagues at the Harvard Study of Adult Development confirmed what few already knew: “Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.” According to the data, investing in cultivating warm relationships yields a happy, good life filled with meaning and purpose. Plain and simple.
But my relationships were not all good or simple; in fact, one of my most important relationships—that with my mother—was complicated. The joke, “If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother,” often applied to us. When I would speak with my mother, I would notice a drop in my energy, as well as hers, by the end of the conversation. I was reminded of a former coach’s tool for personal energy conservation. Imagine you have a gallon of water at the start of the day. After every exchange with an energy depleter, you pour some water out. But after every exchange with an energizer, you pour some back in. After speaking with my mother, I would always pour a bit out—sometimes as much as a quart—leaving me with little to get through the day. I tried shifting our calls to the mornings, when I had more energy to give or, rather, lose. But when that didn’t address my energy deficit, I started scheduling our calls less frequently. Then, one day my husband noticed in my mother a silly, jokey side, possibly an inner child wanting to come out and play. I wondered what it would be like to engage with that version of herself.
With help from coaching, I realized that we always have a choice in our relationships: connect from saboteur to saboteur (where criticizing voices are honored and energy drops) or from leader within to leader within (where each person brings the best version of themselves to the exchanges and energy boosts ensue). According to my coaching training primer, Co-Active Coaching: The Proven Framework for Transformative Conversations at Work and in Life, our saboteurs keep us from getting what we want, but our leaders within are wise, values-driven versions of ourselves that honor our values, life purpose, and intuition; they know what to do. In my rapport with my mother, my saboteur (“I’m not good enough”) was triggering hers (“I need to control the situation or I will fail”) and vice versa. Meanwhile, my leader within (the playful, joyful, curious version of myself—at age 1) was nowhere to be found and neither was hers (a fun-loving, fun-seeking version of herself—also about age 1).
So, on one of our regularly scheduled, energy-zapping calls, I introduced her to my leader within, sharing a photo of myself at age 1 in my birthplace of Lima, Peru. And I asked her to introduce me to hers. She accepted the invitation and found a picture of herself at age 1, too. (I include the two pictures below.) “That’s who I want to have a relationship with—a good relationship with—because I deserve a happy, healthy, good life. You do, too,” I declared. She agreed.
A year later, my mother occasionally slips and honors her saboteur during our calls; I slip, too. But we’re both now aware of when they show up, and we do our best to reconnect with the laughing, joy-loving versions of ourselves instead. As the authors of Co-Active Coaching wisely note, “The saboteur loses its power over us when we can identify it for what it is, notice our options in the situation, and then consciously choose the action we really want at that time.” Thanks to this powerful coaching tool, my mother and I end our calls happier and more energized than when we started.
What are the good, energizing relationships in your life? Keep investing in them. What are the not-so-good ones? What would it be like to redesign those relationships and connect leader within to leader within rather than saboteur to saboteur? As your coach, I will help you really see your relationships, make you aware of what you’re listening to in them, and give you the tools to choose the voice that will lead you to a happy, good life. Get in touch to get started.
