Maybe your thing is being funny. Or that you have been through a lot and you come out stronger, or that you’re really good at your work.
Young people are notorious for looking for their thing, as their mind scrambles to settle into some identity that will presumably keep them safe. They’re the one who’s good at math, or the creative or thoughtful or organized one. The one who always wanted to be a nurse or who was always great with animals.
The new coaches I work with sometimes think that finding their thing is necessary for creating a coaching practice. Do they write, speak, network, make creative tik tok videos? What’s their helpful marketing thing?
Our thing promises to be that place where everything flows seamlessly. It’s our fastlane; our opportunity to thrive.
Our thing will be the identity that keeps us safe. It protects us.
If you’re one of the unlucky ones who doesn’t know what your thing is, you suffer. Without a thing, it looks like life will lack purpose. It will be unnecessarily hard and you won’t have as much of this other thing people call success.
Here’s the real thing: You don’t have a thing and you never have. You don’t need one. It’s a trap.
This thing thing has always only ever been mind activity–thought bouncing around, trying to gather things to keep its idea of a separate you safe and worthy.
A thing only ever shows up as a thought in retrospect. A mind looks back and identifies a thing from the perfect chaos of how life is living you. It’s not a real thing though, it’s just a time-based, made-up identify that allows your mind to relax for a second.
You having no thing is great news. With no thing needed, you’re free.
You can be pulled through life, by life. No need to take stock, put an identity marker in the ground, claim a this-is-who-I-am position. You’re lived in real-time and it can’t be any other way.
You can do whatever the heck you want to grow your coaching business. Your actions are driven by what’s alive in the moment. Life steers you into action and while a mind may try to glean a thing from all of that action, there really isn’t a thing to glean.
There is enormous freedom in not having a thing. There is enormous freedom in seeing that this thing thing has only ever been a thought.
