Are you living like a fraud? Are you hiding behind a mask? Do you feel trapped like you are living someone else’s life? Many of us live by other people’s standards or do what we think we should be doing. We can end up living a life that doesn’t make us happy. We may feel something is missing but have no idea what the something is. If you can relate, this series is for you. Hello, I’m Samantha Bennett, offering CBT Coaching at Be Brilliant Life Coaching. Welcome to a five part series relieving stress and reaching your potential and living the authentic you. Today we are looking at living without conflict, living without the stress of other people’s demands of us and instead focussing on what we value in life.
This series
- Week 1 – Take The Stress Quiz
- Week 2 – Finding Meaning In Your Life
- Today we are going to better understand areas of stress and difficulty in your life by looking at the conflict between how you are living and what means most to you
- Week 4 – We will set goals for change to reduce your stress and help you live more fully
- Week 5 – We will put these goals into action and review
I hope you will get a lot out of this series. Please get in touch with any comments.
To get the most out of today’s exercise I would encourage you to complete the exercises from week 1 and 2, links to both are above.
Living in Conflict
Conflict occurs when we are not living by our own standards, meaning and purpose. We may feel like we are trying to be someone else in certain areas of our life. When we live by someones else’s rules or expectations for us, we are not living authentically. We can not live to our full potential until we live by our own sense of meaning and purpose. We won’t feel content and truly happy until we live by the values we personally hold. Each of us are individuals with our own unique blend of talent, strengths, genes, intellect, abilities, drive, interests, focus, personality and experiences. Only you can be you and you have something unique to offer. You can offer this fully when you are being yourself, living truly and authentically you.
To live authentically we need to acknowledge and accept who we are and use our unique blend of talents, strengths in line with our personal meaning and purpose.
So let us now find out if you are living authentically you
Make three columns on a page, labelled My Meaning, Stress Area and Conflict.
Write down a brief summary of your meaning that you discovered last week in the My Meaning column. Write down your areas of stress from Week 1’s Stress Quiz in the Stress Area column. Now looking at both of these columns and identify any conflict and write it down in the Conflict column.
Here is an example of one stress area from a previous client:
| My Meaning | Stress Area | Conflict |
| To be successful in my work. To make advances in my field of research. To teach others and receive recognition. | Work – long hours, lack of promotion, limited research, not feeling fulfilled, lone working, bad management. | I’m working on someone else’s agenda and not doing what I know I am capable of. I’m spending hours not achieving results. I’m stuck in my job not being promoted or recognised for what I can do. I don’t feel I will be able to be successful in my current position. I do not have the time or opportunity to do research I want to do. I don’t receive praise and don’t have opportunity to teach. |
Are you living true to yourself and by what is meaningful to you? Write down what you have learnt from the exercise.
Over this week continue to identify conflict and times when you are not being true to yourself. Next week we are going to set goals for change using the conflict you have identified. And remember you are the best at being you. You have something unique to offer when you are being truly you. Until next week have a great one. If you want help managing your stress now, please look at my past articles including Managing the energy in your arms and legs during Stress – Fight or Flight or get in touch now for a chat.
With thanks to Luke Bennett Photography for this week’s feature image.
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