Thoughts on Life is a Highway
I have been asked to describe how I came to name my coaching company “Clear Path”. I have to say it came to me in a song. Yes, a song.
In 2011, I was finishing up my first level of training as a health coach at Duke Integrative Medicine, and we were all thinking of our next steps and our different paths to using this training to help others. It seemed we all had different routes we planned to take. The song, Life is a Highway, entered my mind and refused to leave.
There are so many great lines and their meanings to me in the lyrics! What do they mean to me?
Cumulatively, to me they mean that we should enjoy this life, live it how we want, and take chances for what we consider important.
This is totally in line with Tal Ben-Shahar’s (the “happiness” Professor from Harvard), definition of a happiness. In his book Happier, he writes “Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way to a destination we deem valuable.” It can be summed up as living appreciatively in the moment with an eye toward the future.
Enjoying Positive emotions requires practice at living in the moment, appreciating life’s gifts, learning and moving forward from failures, and understanding our own strengths and value.
Back to the meaning of those lyrics...
Breaking down the garden gate and moving forward in life…Life being a road we travel on… There being worlds beyond every door we thought dark and closed. Sometimes bending and sometimes holding strong…One day here, next day gone… today not having much time left for opportunities.
Coaching is a perfect vehicle for deciding priorities for today and your future, not wasting another day thinking about them. Together with the tools of positive psychology, it is the perfect vehicle for getting started through your own garden gate and onto your own highway to your optimal health and life.
Grammar and Personal Change
I recently happened upon a TED talk by teacher Phuc Tran, as featured on the TED radio hour on NPR. His TED talk is "Grammar, Identity , and the Dark side of the Subjunctive." I hope to do his talk justice with this short summary. In his 14 minute talk, he explains the world of difference between his understanding of language and that of his father, a native Vietnamese. The Vietnamese language does not contain the concept of the subjunctive, the verb form used to express suggestions, wishes, uncertainly, and possibilities. The indicative, used to make factual statements, express opinions and ask questions, is part of that language, as well as ours.
When faced with having to tell his father that he could not, after all, stand to study his chosen fields, Tran feared a reprimand. But that would have necessitated the concept of "you should"--whether it was , "study harder, try again, think about it” or any of those variants. Lacking the subjunctive, his father simply said, “ Don't study what you don't like. Study what you do like."
The indicative can be harsh and uncompromising and straightforward. It's benefits? It enables us to talk realistically about our life and all its experience.
The subjunctive can allow us to dream and imagine creative ideas and visions of "what if?" But what about its dark side? When not using it for dreaming of possibilities, the future, it can drag us down with its relationship to regrets.
Here in the U.S., we all use both every day in our language. The beauty of this TED talk was in pointing out the downfalls of each--so that we can, to quote Tran, "actively choose a more positive and optimistic outlook."
My friends and clients know well that I firmly believe in avoiding the use of the phrase "you should." It has never felt to me like a productive term for any reason whatsoever. It implies some external pressure to make a decision, rather than an intrinsic desire to make that decision. It can always be replaced with a less confrontational phrase or question. I think it is usually just a bad habit that many of us don't realize we are using. How have you used "you Should" or even "I should have" lately? How can you reframe those thoughts and get rid of that dark side of the subjunctive?
My Integrative Health coaching model, based on the Duke Integrative Medicine Wheel of Health holistic approach, uses both the subjunctive and the indicative. The subjunctive is used to help you express your dreams and visions for the future with improved health and life changes. The indicative is used for simply stating what is, what happened, and how it worked out.
From there, as partners in change, we continue to plan for the future possibilities you can bring about with health coaching.