I have been trying on different glasses for years now, both for my shortsightedness and for protection of my eyes from the sun. When I was a child, maybe around the age of 6 or 7 just when I started observing things more and more, I used to go really close to anything I wanted to see. I used to sit first row in class and literally 20 cm away from the TV screen, or so to speak! This is what I knew was right for me and what I thought suited my needs and wants, my own reality. So, one day when an eye doctor came to class to examine our eyesight, it was then that I realised that I was not viewing the world as the others did, and that made me really stressed as a child as I wanted to ?t in with everyone else and not be different.
In the process of trying to find the right pair of glasses that suited me, I had to accept that I am different, that I did not see the world as the rest of my fellow schoolmates, and being an ‘over-analyser’ as my mum calls me and a ‘need to know how everything works’ type of person, I needed to understand what I really wanted and what really suited me…and that is when the search began.
In my life I went though different phases especially during my teenage and university years where I got the pleasure (yes pleasure!) of experiencing major wins and loses, pain and love, panic, anxiety and joy. I got to experience brief moments of major successes and major failures, or learnings as I call them nowadays (my amazing beautiful failures). I went through school aiming for the feeling of achievement, got my engineering and business degrees from university and really worked hard to be the best I could be in my chosen field of expertise. As a high achiever I aimed and succeeded in getting a great jobs working in the challenging male dominated energy industry and I also got to play volleyball at a professional level in my country.
Yet instead of focusing on these major WINS I now see they are, I was always focussing on the ‘I should have done better, I could have done more’. So being a person that perseveres to the point of absolute craziness that never rests until I find what I am looking for, I searched and searched… and yes searched some more, even though I was still wearing my so called ‘chosen by my parents’ glasses. I was feeling comfortable wearing them, maybe even wondered sometimes, why do I keep looking for more. Well, you see, I was wearing a set of glasses that complied to the specification I was given by my parents and the society i grew up in, yet why couldn’ t I see right? My surrounding kept asking me: What more do you want’, ‘Why can’t you be satisfied with your life?’ and always something wasn’t just adding up. I kept doubting myself, asking for direction from others, asking for an invincible hand to ‘save me’ from failing, to choose for me and to make me ME. And i kept asking, and asking…
They say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears! Well, mine came to me in the form of a coach and for this I am forever grateful. And to keep using the analogy, that’ s when I entered a shop that was offering the type of glasses that made me see the world with a different kind of brightness, a different kind of focus, a different kind of reality full of possibilities and opportunities to create the kind of miracles and opportunities i always knew I could and will create! The right pair of glasses gave me a chance to see ME.
People became more friendly and kind, more attractive, more joyful and calm and there was a creative FLOW! The kind of flow where you allow yourself to trust yourself more, the kind that allows you to be you, to embrace your uniqueness, that aligns you with a higher power (your higher self for those who believe there is something more than just us) and the one that allows you to take the risks you always wanted to take, yet were afraid to do so. The trust to be the ‘YOU’ kind of way!
That is when the journey just begun. As i became a coach myself, i got to experience the joy of trusting the process, trusting myself, my surrounding and to provide a safe space for others to allow themselves to trust the process and to trust their selves. And all of these came to be with the right pair of glasses!
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Article written by: Nasia Kalaika MEng, MBA, PMP
Certified Coach by Global Academy of Coaching
www.NasiaKalaika.com