Written by Carole L. Sanek, Certified Life Coach
Carole is a certified life coach and author and all-around great listener. Her book Fractured-Living with Grief launches in early 2021. People who have worked with her call her the grief whisperer.
In 1974 the group America recorded their song “Tin Man”. If you know the group or the song, you will probably hear it in your head right now. It may replay on and off all day. You are welcome. If you don’t know the group, the lyrics are worth reading because of that one line, that absolutely true line “But Oz never did give nothin’ to the Tin Man, that he didn’t, didn’t already have.”
The song was written by one of the band members, Dewey Bunnell, and it was one of America’s biggest hits.
My point in writing about this song is that we spend so much time looking for things that we already possess, and many times, even when what we are looking for stares us in the face, we still don’t see it. The Tin Man already had a heart; he just did not feel it beating.
The Wizard said, “A heart is not judged by how much you love but by how much you are loved by others.”
There are a lot of hidden messages in Baum’s book. I always felt it made a better movie for adults than children, and I have recently enjoyed doing more research into the storyline and discovering things I probably never would have known.
It made me think, and it led me to writing these thoughts here.
There are so many things we crave that we already have. In all the work I do with others, my main theme has always been about going for authenticity, using your emotional intelligence, and speaking your truth. This all boils down to being more self-aware. I really like to see people re-discovering things they already could do that somewhere along the way had gotten lost in the cobwebs of their emotions.
Scroll through social media platforms and you will see many people doing the exact opposite of being authentic. Using their emotional intelligence and speaking their truth is more like parroting what someone else has said, and then they sit on the edge of their chairs waiting for that first person who will disagree with them and let the arguments begin.
What has happened to civilization? We used to think more for ourselves. We were better at being authentic. We used our emotional intelligence and when we were little, we excelled at speaking our truth.
Somewhere along the way, we lost our courage to do these things. We got lost in a myriad of tangled words and beliefs from others and in many cases, we were not using our own intelligent thoughts. How do we get untangled? We work at it. We have a long talk with ourselves and our egos and we get serious about being better people.
Choose what you want to work on first and just do it.
Authenticity:
Become more self-aware.
Realize showing your vulnerable also shows you are human.
Stop cringing at feedback, take a deep breath and accept it
Emotional Intelligence:
Here it is again, become more self-aware.
Respond to a situation do NOT react, breathe deeply and then respond.
Take responsibility for how your actions will affect the people surrounding you, as above, do NOT react.
Speaking your truth:
Summon your courage because speaking your truth will require courage.
Answer questions with the truth – don’t say you are fine when you are not.
Be okay with the word “no”.
I kept my advice simple and I realize it may not be simple for you, but you can try. When you try, you may be very surprised to find out that you always had it in you to be authentic, emotionally intelligent, and speak your truth.
Carole L. Sanek is a certified life coach specializing in personal coaching with her specialty being working in grief. Carole is also an author and her first book “Fractured” is with a publishing house in Chicago, scheduled to launch by the end of the year. Carole is especially excited that even though she was diagnosed 27 years ago with breast cancer, she wiped that slate clean and thrives on in her life. Reaching Carole is easy as she believes in transparency and authenticity and welcomes people to reach out to her.
