Are you short-changing your happiness because of a simple misunderstanding?

You might have heard other coaches tell you “You don’t need to be at the mercy of your thoughts and feelings.”

They’ll walk you through exercises to manage, control or change your thinking and your feelings.

You end up feeling it’s ALL up to you, and it will take constant vigilance to stay on top of it all.

On the other hand, they might tell you your emotions are always true, and reflect reality; that they’re fragile and must be coddled.

So where does that leave you?

Someone shouts at you and you feel like crap. You don’t speak up when you want to, and you feel miserable. You don’t WANT to identify with your feelings – but how do you stop?

You might go into victim mode and withdraw to lick your wounds.You might go into control mode and try to change your external reality – stay away from the mean people, fight back, try harder…

In my life I’ve gone backwards and forwards between two ways of being in the world, two Alis – I call them Fluffy Duffey and Toughy Duffey.

Fluffy is a gentle soul, but she’s a shrinking violet – sees herself as a victim of whatever life throws at her. She blames and shames herself for whatever goes wrong and is adept at using anything as a weapon against herself.

Toughy, on the other hand, is – well – tough as an old boot. She is armored and always ready to fight. The answer is always to work more, to be better, to try harder.

But both approaches – Fluffy and Toughy – were uncomfortable. Fluffy shrank from life, and Toughy wrestled with life. Both stances HURT.

I learned that there is a third way. A way of peace, sureness and confidence.

I learned that we’re all, naturally and by birthright, deeply resilient, and able to navigate our lives with ease and grace.

Feelings are what let us know we’re alive. They connect us to our true self, one that’s neither fragile nor controlling, but that allows us to live fully from our strength.

We never need to transform Fluffy into Toughy, or vice versa.

We never have to worry about doing damage, or being damaged.

We are intact, whole and strong.

In all my years of therapy, coaching, training and introspection, the single most transformative thing anyone ever said to me is this:

You don’t have to believe everything you think.

And when you know that – when you’re no longer caught up in your fearful or insecure thinking – you can find a beautiful resilience within you.

That, my friend, is where peace lives, and that is the basis of my work in the world.

Here’s a question to consider:

What would my life be like if I saw myself as neither the victim of life, nor the boss of life?

Early in my life I led an extremely peripatetic existence. My father, over whose actual employment let us draw a veil, was posted hither and thither a great deal, and was of the opinion that the best thing to do with kids was take ‘em along.

Many of his colleagues left their young sons and daughters behind in gracious English boarding schools when they took off for foreign parts, but not him. He felt that travel broadened the mind and all that.

I agree – I love that my parents chose that – though it was odd that when we lived in Pakistan they then sent us to not one but two ghastly, yes, you guessed it, boarding schools.

My sister and I attended many schools, the good and the bad, in many countries. It’s a wonder I can read and write, let alone conjugate verbs and do enough arithmetic to work out a tip in a restaurant…

Usually, of course, we were either woefully behind, or embarrassingly ahead of, our peers, in academic matters.

I remember a time in New Zealand, in the 4th form (aged 14) when the chemistry teacher asked the class for thoughts on how to move a liquid from one test tube to another. I innocently put my hand up and suggested using a pipette.

It went down like a lead balloon as apparently the curriculum had not yet progressed as far as pipettes. So, out of phase not only with the kids, but with the teachers also.

Whilst not being an unintelligent child, I found myself really unable to make much of school.

I tended to score very highly in a few subjects – perhaps those that had somehow, through the many schools in various countries, offered a more linear and cumulative trajectory for me. And I did horribly in others.

So, back to potential – you can guess which word appeared with monotonous and disheartening regularity on those report cards.

“Alison is a frustrating pupil. WHY does she not live up to her potential?” And so on.

And, of course, I internalized this, to conclude that it meant, not that I was clever and the world was my oyster, but that I simply didn’t have what it took.

My family life was in disarray at this point, with my parents having separated under very acrimonious circumstances, and I found myself in a country, city and school I would never have chosen for myself.

“Potential” came to mean, to me, just another way in which I was failing.

And in fact the dictionary bears that out: “Potential: latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success or usefulness.”

“Latent qualities or abilities” – as determined, I wonder, by whom? That “may be developed” – how, and again, by whom? And success or – for goodness’s sake – USEFULNESS – also, as defined by whom?

It all seems too deeply conventional, restrictive, and based on – what? More and more it seems to me that even the psychological assessments that we’ve all done, and the labels we put on ourselves, are sometimes not so far from arbitrary.

Potential seems to reference my personality. My exam results. What the career counselor thinks I might be good at. The thing everyone in my family has done. The opportunity that came along at the right time.

And also – the things that are unfulfilled and disappointing. Where I’ve let myself down, failed to live up to what should be, what could have been.

It implies that we can, or should be able to, access what we’re already aware of – but ONLY that. And maybe never go BEYOND that.

“I didn’t live up to my potential.”

I, however, like everyone else, can only ever see myself through the filter of my own thinking.

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Two brilliant quotes crossed my path this week:

“Don’t give them what they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.” – Orson Welles

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs – ask what makes you come alive and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Harold Thurman

These days, I’m not really interested in my or my clients’ “potential”. I’m interested in what makes their hearts sing; what they really, truly want; how to create what they never thought was possible.

When we say “potential”, we mean what we have already identified.

”Possibility” is about the new. The as-yet unthought thought. The formless, made form.

Possibility feels more open-ended – the mystery, the unknown.

Possibility – who I truly am and what I truly want.

So, practically speaking, what does this mean?

I used to look at people who seemed to be living their dreams with envy. I felt I’d been shunted towards what I was good at, instead of what I loved.

My dear mother used to tell people when I was a child that I wanted to be a librarian. I really didn’t, though I did love books and words.

Because of her own limited thinking, that she passed on to me (no blame or shame – we all have it), neither of us could see the real aspiration; didn’t know you could have dreams that seemed beyond you.

(The dream was always writer, not librarian.)

So I wonder, for you – what’s the dream? What might be possible?

What is it that sits beyond potential for you, and you’d love to see what could happen? You’ll never know if you don’t explore it.