Go Beyond the Wall to get to Your Authentic Life
"It’s like there’s this wall and I can’t get away from it”
“There’s a huge wall in front of me and I can’t go anywhere”
“I keep hitting a wall whenever I try to move forward.”
“I’m so tired of banging into a wall every time I try to change this”
I’ve heard about so many walls in my years as a life coach. Women come to me because they want to live from their most authentic self. That means they have to make changes. At some point almost everyone hits a wall.
In the beginning, changes are actually kind of easy. I’ve seen women make some small but significant shifts pretty quickly. When that happens, they wake up to the possibility of a whole new way of living. Women can really taste what it would be like to live an authentic life instead of the one they’ve constructed to make everyone else happy. The honeymoon is delightful, and plenty of women don’t bother to reach for more.
THE WALL
But. The thing is, if you really want to live with authenticity, you’ll eventually come up against some significant resistance from the inside. It’ll feel like slamming straight into a wall of your own making.
You’re probably familiar with that wall. It’s there to stop you from moving forward. It shows up to keep you stuck in your habits, to keep you playing small, and to keep you “safe”. It thinks it’s helping you, of course. But it isn’t. The only thing the wall can do is stop you.
Many women hit the wall and think it means they’re headed in the wrong direction. They stop and turn around. They try something else, but eventually they’re back at the wall.
What comes next is really important. Some women set up a lawn chair and camp out at the base of the wall. They’re not really happy, but they’re also not willing to figure out what to do about it. Others bang their heads into the wall for days, weeks, or months as they try to decide what to do. They end up bruised and exhausted but no closer to their authentic life. That’s why it’s good to have someone on your side who’s met the wall before.
After many rounds of meeting the wall with my clients and with myself, here’s what I can tell you about it. As frustrating as it is, meeting your wall is a great sign. It means you’re ready to take on a significant shift. The changes you’re proposing are deep and real. I see your wall as a gatekeeper. When the wall arrives, you know you’re not on the surface anymore. So if you can find your way to go beyond it, your “reward” is lasting transformation.
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU FIND YOUR WALL
The important thing to do when you’ve come up against your wall is to figure out how you’re going to move beyond it. Remember, the only thing it’s there to do is to stop you from moving forward in your growth. The longer you complain about it or fear it, the longer you’ll stay stuck. So as soon as you encounter your wall, start looking for ways around. Of course, that’s easier said than done. If it was easy to move to your next level of authenticity the wall wouldn’t even be there. So you’ll need to be skillful to work with it.
What I like to do with clients facing a wall is use a metaphor tool that I learned in coach training with Martha Beck, Inc. Instead of fretting about an amorphous felt sense of being blocked I have clients imagine they are facing an actual wall.
Now things get interesting, because when I ask women describe the wall I get a lot of different descriptions. Some walls are made of cinderblock and are 50 stories high. Others are made of cardboard. Some folks have walls that stretch out for miles. Others’ walls are as little as 3 or 5 feet wide. No two walls are the same, but as soon as we’ve got an image, we’ve got something we can work with.
With an image of the wall, you can also imagine ways to get beyond it. So, if your wall is made of cardboard, you may only need to push it over and it’s gone. If it’s a narrow wall you could walk around it. If the wall is tall or very dense you might imagine a wrecking ball smashing through it or finding a ladder to climb over it. The main point is to figure out one or many different ways to solve the issue of getting beyond the wall.
The last step is to take the solution from the imagined to the real. Again, thinking metaphorically, you’d imagine a way that the solution from the wall image would actually work in your real life. If I’ve lost you, consider this example:
Once I was coaching myself about a wall I kept hitting when trying to speaking my truth. At first I imagined a short brick wall. Then I noticed there was a gate in the imagined wall. The big problem was that the gate was stuck. The hinges were tight and the latch was broken. I couldn’t get through the wall because the gate was broken. When I looked for a solution, I realized I needed to oil the hinges and fix the latch so that it could swing open and closed.
When I brought that solution to the real would problem, oiling hinges became practicing being vulnerable. Fixing the latch meant that I could have boundaries about who I let into my inner circle. I didn’t know I was stopping myself from speaking my truth because I felt uncomfortable being vulnerable. I also didn’t know that I was worried that if I was vulnerable I’d have to let everyone into my inner circle. Those insights came up when I worked with the image of the wall and gate. It was really powerful how that simple image gave me a lot of insight AND pointed towards the solution to the problem.
TRY THIS: IMAGINE YOUR WALL
If you’ve been hitting your head against a wall lately, you may want to try this tool in a journal. Here’s how to work with your wall as a metaphor for insight and solutions:
Consider a real life problem, or stuck point
Imagine that situation as a wall. What color is it? How tall? How Wide? Describe it fully.
Pause. What do you notice as you describe it? Is anything surprising you?
Keep imagining the wall and consider how you might get around it? Come up with as many answers to this question as you can
Pick your favorite, and the easiest! (You don’t have to be hard on yourself!!)
Imagine what’s on the other side of the wall too. Notice and describe what or who’s there in as much detail as possible.
Pause. What do you notice about the other side?
Come back to the real world problem and, thinking metaphorically, figure out how the solution you used to get beyond the imagined world would translate into getting beyond your real life stuck point. It doesn’t matter how far fetched it is, just play around with it.
What did you notice about the problem when you thought of it this way? What about the solution?
Go for it. Do your solution in the real world and see what happens.
BEYOND YOUR WALL
Your wall came up to keep you safe, so when you’re first beyond it you may feel a little awkward or uncomfortable. That’s ok, it just means you’re in new territory. If you went beyond a wall to get here then you can bet that you’re in territory that is leading you closer to your authentic self.
There’s no telling what you’ll meet on the other side of the wall. While that can feel scary, realize that the other side doesn’t matter nearly as much as the process of getting beyond the wall does. Once you’ve learned to meet your wall and find solutions you can use the metaphor process to get past any barrier that comes up on your way to authenticity. This can be a huge gift for folks who are used to letting their walls keep them stuck.
Knowing how to move beyond your wall gives you the freedom and confidence to move forward even in the face of obstacles. It means you don’t have to get stuck so often or for so long. And it means you’re well on your way to standing in more authenticity.
Moving beyond your walls is a way to liberate your Heart from the boundaries that your mind puts on it. Your Heart’s freedom is the key to your authentic life. When your Heart is free and open you are able to be your true self. That self is the one the world is waiting for. If you’re stuck at a wall right now, find your way to move beyond it and give your Heart the freedom it deserves!