During a recent presentation, I asked the audience If someone remarries, is their first spouse part of the family lineage or not? The responses were a mixture of yes, no, and yes, if there are children involved.
The answer is yes. The first spouse is part of that family lineage, the family system, the inter-connected dynamic. Without them, the second spouse wouldn’t be there. It started me thinking of situations in which I have found that one event or person connected me to something else that was in actuality the connection I was meant to find. One thing led to another and both individuals were part of the path.
Consider for a moment the stories you have heard where someone happened to be in the right place at the right time or avoided being in the wrong place.
- Two truck drivers who took a different route one day and saved a man who was considering suicide
- Individuals who ran late and missed a plane or an intersection where five minutes later there was an accident
- Spur of the moment, you attend an event and there you meet someone who becomes important in your life.
When has this happened for you?
For me, I can remember numerous occasions and here are some personal examples:
- Meeting an American while studying overseas and deciding to change when I attended graduate school to align my graduation with his
- Sitting next to someone at a workshop who told me out of the blue about a coaching program that was connected to a book I had recently finished and it changed my life
- Mentioning to someone that I was interested in a particular company and they happened to know of an opportunity there
Consider all the places, experiences, and people who have been in your life and which one of these elements led you to:
- Find your dream job
- Meet your soul mate
- Make new connections
- Experience a life-changing workshop
There are also those situations where the path from cause to effect may be unclear or painful to traverse. I still remember taking the Myers-Briggs test before starting work at one company. Based on the result, I told myself I needed to build my extrovert self and my feeling self. The result proved to be quite a stretch, especially when I first became a member of an all extroverted management team. I followed that experience with a job that required me to manage a team comprised of people with the MBTI characteristic of feeling. I certainly stretched those parts of myself; however, the path was uncomfortably challenging. Where have you set a goal and discovered the path to achieve it was more difficult than you anticipated or the result was mixed (i.e. met the time goal but sacrificed quality)?
If you find it challenging to understand how systemic cause and effect works, please contact me for a complimentary coaching conversation.
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