Thrival Mode

As an executive, career and life coach I have the opportunity to work with many different individuals in various stages of their career and life. One of my favorite things about this shared exploration is witnessing the breakthroughs that my clients are able to have on redefining what success in work and life looks like.

As a coach and leadership consultant, the vision of my entire business is: To inspire individuals and organizations to create a new measuring stick for success in life and work. This measurement is inclusive of both external and internal benchmarks for success and incorporates the human element valuing authenticity, work life integration and connection.

As it always seems to magically happen, the universe brings me new clients in multiples, meaning more than one at a time and connected in a shared goal or obstacle. Don’t misunderstand, I am not talking about a group coaching session (yes I do those too) but it is almost like a theme.

This month the theme many of my clients are exploring is the difference between surviving and thriving. I am now calling it Thrival Mode, like survival mode, get it?

I mentioned these two similar yet vastly different words to a client today and spent some time discussing what thriving was for her. This wasn’t easy work.

You see surviving is easy to define. It is easy to explain and share with another human being. Most of us in creating a definition of surviving would come up with identical criteria: oxygen, water, food, shelter. My mind goes to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, I think of Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway, or Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest.

But Thriving is different. Thriving is 100% personal. Thriving is a feeling, an experience, a way of operating in your world and not a destination or to-do list. What is most difficult, is that no one else tell you what thriving looks like for you. You need to figure this one out for yourself.

My client was feeling this and answered with something to the effect of, “I am working on surviving right now, I don’t think I even know what thriving looks like!”

So that is where we started. Where we dared to dream and imagine what thriving might look like, might feel like, and began to write it down.

What if each day we were thriving vs. merely surviving? What does your Thrival mode look like? The conversation sparked something in me and I came up with what I am generously calling a poem on the subject:

Surviving

can be defined

and communicated

from one person to another.

But not Thriving.

Thriving must be felt

lived

and ultimately defined

by you

and

for you alone.

What does Thriving look like for you? Do you feel it now? Is it easier to say what it doesn’t feel like? If so start there.