Your Pathway
Welcome to the third part of finding your script.
Your pathway is how you are bridging the gap between your current experience and your desired experience.
By this point you have already determined what your current and desired experience (and outcome) are. Now lets dive in to find your pathway.
Your pathway are all the specific actions, decisions, and choices you are making in real-time to create the experience you want.
The only way you can get clear on your pathway is by objectively examining your real-time actions, your focus, your intentions, and your choices and effort.
To find your pathway simply look at what you actually did in real-time, not what you wanted to do, not what you think you were doing, but what you actually physically did.
Thinking about your situation and your desired outcome (answer these, think of more if you can):
What did you actually do?
What decisions did you make about how to best achieve this outcome?
What actions and non-actions did you not take or not take?
How were you being in real-time?
Were you open or closed off?
Did you express yourself freely or did you measure your expressions?
Did you speak honestly or did you embellish your stories?
Did your outer expression match your inner sensations?
Where you focused on the present moment or lost in your head?
Where you focused on how you could give 100% effort in real-time or where you doing just enough to get through?
Where you trying to get something from other people or where you focused on making the moment as enjoyable for yourself as possible?
Did you envision others as obstacles or as fellow allies on your way to your desired outcome?
Based on the actions you have identified, what do your ACTIONS say your pathway is?
For instance, lets say your current experience of life may be loneliness.
Your desired experience is to feel the sensations that come from experiencing connection with others. And lets say the outcome you were seeking to achieve this was to have others like you. Ok, fair enough.
After an objective look at the actions you actually take to achieve this outcome when you interact with others, you have determined that:
you hold back the real you
you are lost in your head about what others are thinking about you and not in the moment
you are focused on finding out what people like and what is trendy so you can be like other people
you are attempting to manipulate their impressions of you
you embellish stories to seem more exciting
you do not listen to others deeply because you are not fully attentive and present to them but are instead lost in your effort to make impression and say the right things
you worry about their judgement of you
So let’s take all of this and organize it a bit.
Looking over the actions you have noticed when answering all the questions above, I want you to group them under “focus,” “actions,” “ways of being.”
Under focus goes all the the ways you allowed your attention to drift into your head.
For instance: were you more aware of your inner feelings of awkwardness than how others were feeling? Were you focused on saying whatever came to mind or were you lost in your head trying to find the right things to say?
Under actions goes all the sheerly physical things you did or did not do.
For instance: did you just sit/stand there? Did you remained quiet? Did you walk away or avoid public spaces? Did you not make eye-contact? Did speak softly? etc…
Under ways of being goes all the ways you related to the world around you.
For instance: Were you 100% effort-filled? Were you poised or uncertain? Were you shady or honest? Were you authentic or manipulative? Etc…
So what do your actions say about your pathway?
Are you actively taking actions that would move you towards creating your desired experience? Or are you doing something else?
Review Your Script
Now let’s put it all together to gain a snapshot of what it is like for you when you chose not to take actions you wanted.
So the reason why you did not take the action you wanted to take is because you were wanting to avoid feeling (current experience here).
You wanted to experience (desired experience here).
The outcome you were seeking to experience (desired experience here) was (outcome here).
And the pathway you took to give you this experience was (actions here), while being (way of being here), and (focus here).
So the next and most important part of the script identification step of the coaching progression is to assess if your script is a productive script for achieving your desired experience…or is it self-defeating? (Spoiler alert: it often is self-defeating).
So I have one question for you…
Looking over your script: How is this working out for you?
For many clients, revealing their script is a powerful moment, especially when they begin to see how the general form of their script is impacting other challenges they face in their life.
Ready to assess your script to determine if yours is really a productive one for solving this issue and creating the life you want?