February Wishing Exercise: Being, Doing & Having

Wishing exercises sit at the beginning of my life coaching work with clients so that we know what we’re aiming for. These exercises are designed to get to the real wishes. Have a look through the wishing category for more free life coaching exercises.

Without knowing it we tend to limit our future plans, dreams or wishes to what we think we can get, in a way that won’t challenge us too much or take us out of our comfort zones. In other words before you even get started you are concerned with ‘how’ you might achieve something and limit your wishing to ways that have worked in the past and don’t risk any failure. This is a recipe for disappointment. Wishing should get to the ‘what’ and leave the ‘how’ till later and a good life coach will be there to help with both stages.

Another common limit to wishing is that we make the most important element of the wish conditional on another element, when in fact they might be unrelated. I listened to an anxious and belligerent client tell me that he had to risk his personal relationships so that he could work all hours to afford the boat he wanted to take to the Mediterranean to fish from, so that he would be less stressed in life and discover peace and happiness. That might seem like a great wish (putting to one side the bit about his personal life), but when you break it down he had sewn together different categories of wishing where one might be more important than the others.

Those categories are doing, having and being. When you imagine a future dream it might in fact contain elements of doing things, having stuff and being in various states and emotional conditions. You may discover that one of those elements is more important than the others. My client wanted to do lots of work, so that he could have a boat to allow him to be happy. When we investigated his equation, the being state was the most important – being peaceful and stress free. With that as the real wish we were able to explore more simple and immediate ways of achieving it.

Try this wishing exercise to test your thinking.

1. Get in mind an area of your life that you want to improve.
2. Draw three columns on a sheet of paper and title them ‘Doing’, ‘Having’ and ‘Being’.
3. Come up with at least 10 wishes for each column.
4. Circle the ones which are most important.
5. Work out some way to take one step towards that element tomorrow.

If you would like help discovering a compelling future for yourself and help in getting to it then you are more than welcome to get in touch here. And please leave a comment below with one or two of your wishes.

And now for your comments: