There’s More in YOU Than You Realize

Reader,

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” — Wayne Dyer

I love this quote, and I found myself thinking about it differently after three days in Keystone, Colorado last week.

What happens when you change the way you look at yourself?

I cried in Keystone and I laughed until my stomach hurt.

I spent three extraordinary days with a small group of wildly accomplished women who are less interested in proving how successful they are and far more interested in helping one another become what’s next.

Women driven by curiosity and a willingness to be vulnerable. Spirited by their own ambition and genuinely invested in one another’s success. Women who understand that someone else’s success doesn’t diminish yours.

When you surround yourself with this kind of energy, it expands what you can imagine for yourself.

Somewhere between the conversations, the s’mores, the tears, the laughter, the hugs—and even a clogged toilet—I realized how much I needed it.

I arrived with a head full of pressure-filled questions and worries.

Pressure does that. Pressure puts blinders on our thinking.

Pressure keeps us focused on managing what is instead of imagining what could be.

Stay there long enough, and you can become incredibly good at managing your life without ever asking whether you want something more from it.

I left Keystone with space to see myself differently.

Something happens when you sit across from people who really see you. They hear your experience, your ideas, your ambitions and because they aren't standing as close to your life as you are, they see connections you can't.

They see the through-line. They recognize value you can't quite articulate. They connect pieces you've been seeing separately. They see a bigger future for what you already possess.

That's what these women did for me. While plunging a clogged toilet, I realized:

These women were doing for me what I've spent years doing for other people.

As a coach, I sit across from people with decades of experience, intelligence, ideas and ambition and see the thread running through it all. I see what belongs together. I see what could become something bigger. I see how what they know could become an idea, a business, a body of work, a new chapter.

I help them recognize and put to work their Intellectual Capital.

Intellectual Capital is the unique combination of what you've lived, what you've learned, what you've accomplished, how you think, the problems you know how to solve, and the ideas only you might think to connect.

No one else possesses your exact combination.

We can be remarkably bad at recognizing the value of our own Intellectual Capital.

Sometimes the person who can see possibility so clearly for everyone else needs someone to hold up the mirror for her. Maybe you do, too.

High achievers can spend so much time producing, performing and solving that we rarely stop long enough to recognize the extraordinary asset we've accumulated along the way.

You may be sitting on one of the most valuable assets you've spent your entire life building and because you carry it with you every day, you may not fully recognize its value.

What if seeing, exploring and take meaningful action on our Intellectual Capital was the new wellness for high acheivers?

What if real wellness is recognizing our Intellectual Capital to help us redefine our ambition with more meaning, ease and fullfillment?

Exploring your Intellectual Capital shows you that your value isn't only in what you produce or how busy you are but defining what brings us more meaning.

What if you stepped away from the demands of the day to give you the space to recognize who you are and explore what you could become.

That's the best kind of luxury. You've earned that luxury.

That's wellness for the ambitious mind.

Giving ambition somewhere more meaningful to go.

Maybe Wayne Dyer was right.

Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.

Change the way you look at yourself, and you may discover there is far more possibility there than you realized.

This week, find someone who expands you. Someone who helps you see what you can't see because you're standing too close to it.

Then ask them: What do you see in me that I may not see yet?

Your next life leap may not require more from you.

It may begin by recognizing more of what's already in you.

Here's a short video of my trip to Keystone created by Alice Kim.