Discover your Edge

Posted on March 07, 2016 by Courtney Reed, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

I once heard a very wise man encourage someone to “discover your edge and then live into it”. I mean…doesn’t that give you a mental image? It does for me…I imagine a finely honed and sharpened sword capable of accomplishing any task it’s owner puts in front of it. Discover your edge and live into it – what a powerful statement! At one time, we all had an edge, didn’t we? And many of us still have that edge, even if we don’t feel it, but we feel maybe it’s become a little bit dull or perhaps it’s been overused without the proper care. And the edge has been worn down, weakening its sharpness, until we think we can’t even use it anymore. Just like the finest quality gourmet knife, we believe it becomes unusable if the edge isn’t sharp.

But experience tells us that when we start to hone that edge, it becomes sharp again, and we can use it better and more efficiently, often times better than when we first discovered it because now we know not only it’s full potential, but how to care for it….we know it’s strength and qualities whereas before, perhaps we took it for granted. Sound familiar? At some point in everyone’s life, we feel we’ve lost our egde…we feel it’s been dulled. We overuse and overcommit ourselves and take little time to care for our edge properly. Consider my hand raised on this issue…been there, bought the shirt!

I’m gonna ask you to think for just a minute about your edge….I firmly believe that everyone has one, including you. My question to you is this: What is your edge? Answer that to yourself…everybody has one…what is yours? What do you excel at, what is your passion, what is your creative outlet, what is inside of you, or what is it that at one time you believed was an unparalleled quality or skill or strength that you had (or still have and it’s hidden beneath life’s hiccups). That’s your edge…what is yours???

And as we discussed before: over use without the proper care, abuse, self abuse, abuse from others, negative self dialogue, all of those things that may have occurred in our lives weaken it’s sharpness from our own perspective. Maybe we feel like our quality has been diminished. Maybe someone has labeled you inaccurately and you’ve started to believe that label. Maybe you’ve labeled yourself. If you could replace the inaccurate labels with your own self-truth descriptors, what would that look like? How would you begin to hone that edge again?

Those hurts, inaccurate labels and negative judgments others have hurled at you…what if you could take a moment and be grateful for them? Sound crazy? It’s part of your experience. You’ve grown from them, you’ve learned invaluable information about yourself from them, so be grateful for them for just a moment. How, you ask? Be grateful for your own strength to persevere through the muck! Thank yourself for having the courage to identify the challenges and for having the strength to carry on despite them! And now, the most powerful “thank you” of all – thank yourself for the actions you are about to take…the actions that enable you to move forward beyond the challenge! What would you say to yourself if you were thanking yourself for what you are about to do for YOU?

You see, we all have something that is a challenge to us or discourages us and life coaching is about asking the questions to identify those challenges and mentoring my clients into moving beyond them. Life Coaching means cheering on others to have the courage to design the life that they want and deserve, and then giving them the keys to unlock the door that allows them to live it! Whatever your goals may be, you deserve to achieve them. And there really is no greater honor than for a client to ask me to be a part of their journey!

It’s an exciting time to be a Life Coach! If you have a calling for this, I encourage you to open yourself up to all the benefits of this career. If you need encouragement and inspiration in doing that, there’s a world of Life Coaches just waiting for you to reach out to them! Inspiration and encouragement could be the key to unlocking the door that leads to greatness!