The new genre, the new tribe, truly noble, truly woke, yet truly deluded…is that me?

Living our best life and being our most successful selves is phenomenally noble and wonderfully woke

and yet if we are honest, how many of us have thought about what that actually means

Like generations before us, we all strive for a life well-lived

Today this seems to mean a combination of being woke – the definition of woke, as stated by Merriam-Webster being, ‘Aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social injustice’ - and living our best lives, which according to social media roughly translates as being present, travelling the world, landing a dream job and being physically and mentally fit and strong - sounds good to me!

So today we are striving to live our best, woke lives

Which makes sense – sort of. Most of us now know, through various pieces of research shared on social media, news articles and blog posts, that success today is not just about the job, the car, the house and the holiday destination. We are rightly angry at the injustice in the world and understand that ultimately a good life includes owning our own actions and ensuring our personal behavior moves society and our environment forwards. We understand the importance of mental as well as physical health and we aspire to be our optimal, most productive selves, living in the moment as much as we can

The thing is – are we deluded?

Strong words you may say, but given the amount of depression and burn-out there is amongst ourselves and our friends, something can’t quite be working

Certainly amongst my own friends, it is not uncommon to go on a march, totally inspired and passionate about making a difference to our world and yet stand in a crowd of thousands of friendly, enthusiastic, motivated people, feeling lonely and empty

Feeling like everyone else around you is sorted and on it, but feeling a big gap, a big hole, feeling a bit of a sham and not really knowing why, we may experience this on a march, picking our kids up at school, or even sitting on a picnic blanket, surrounded by some of our dearest friends 

So what do we do?  What do we actually do with this lonely, empty, wonky feeling? 

I’ll tell you what we do… we keep on smiling, we post another perfectly crafted selfie on Instagram and we keep on perpetuating the myth that we too are ‘sorted and on it, living our best woke lives’ 

Who are we kidding? We are successful on the outside, yet wonky on the inside

Our intentions are great, our actions are not bad, we have watched the Ted talks, read the books, listened to the motivational speakers, meditated, journaled and said our affirmations – so why are we still feeling wonky?

In truth, it is actually often relatively simple

We are not living our own best woke lives, we are living the best lives pioneered by the society we live in, by our friends, by our parents, by our social media feeds

Then we do a bit of research and realise that a better definition of living our best lives is one that includes self-awareness and self-growth which ultimately leads to taking actions that help us discover and improve our talents and our passions.

 Socrates summed this up when he said,

 “The unconsidered life is not worth living”

He meant that a life well lived, our best life, is one which has purpose and integrity, which is actively chosen by us as individuals, and lived in harmony with what we personally value, what we uniquely believe in and what we individually hold dear

Our real, true, unique best life is a life of congruence

Very few people truly understand the transformational concept of what it is to live congruently

Congruent people live their lives confidently, passionately, joyfully doing the things they know are important to them, not others, not society, not what their teachers or parents told them to do

The actions of congruent people are in line with their personal values and beliefs, day by day, moment by moment. They know exactly what they want from life

This gives congruent people enormous personal power and satisfaction

Whether we are aware of it or not, congruent people are magnetically attractive – we are drawn to their energy. We all love being around congruent people, they glow, are positive and optimistic, open and authentic

We would all love to be congruent people

When we are congruent we are able to lean in and make great things happen, discover and explore our potential, learn new skills, meet new people, follow through and get stuff done

As Socrates referenced, when we do not check in and examine the life we are living, we risk not living a life actually worth living, we risk not living congruently, we quite literally - risk missing out on life

That makes more sense – but where to start? The last thing a lot of us need right now is another massive reading list or to spend hours searching for a life coach or a new person to follow on instagram

How do we learn more about ourselves without disappearing down a rabbit hole of personal development books, Ted talks and social media feeds?

 Well, we may well have your answer

Because congruence is such a life-enhancing quality to possess, we created a solution so you can learn and practice congruence

Owning Congruence is one of the 5 principles of our company, Progressfull™ and we have an Upskill, which is what we at Progressfull™ call an online course or masterclass, which will help you learn and most importantly practice, the new beliefs, behaviours and mind-sets you need to Own Congruence

Progressfull™ will help you think through how you can have a life full of progress. An experience with us takes you from feeling overwhelmed and unfulfilled to inspired, energised and on track

Our approach is clean, clear and crisp - no fuss, no unnecessary complications, just simple, practical and playful. You will gain sparky deep insights, simple practical frameworks and handy transforming tools designed to help you Own Congruence 

The Owning Congruence Upskill includes video and exercises designed to help you unlock your ability to Own Congruence and live a life of progress, a life of harmony

Owning Congruence is about being aligned, being in synch, being compatible outside and inside. Owning Congruence is about us choosing to hold ourselves accountable and responsible for how we are, what we say and what we do - all of the time, without exception

Stephen Covey, the great late leadership guru, highlighted the importance of a life lived in congruence and how helpful it is for us,

“Deep security comes from inside-out congruence, from living a life of integrity, in which our daily habits reflect our deepest values”

Which brings us back nicely to one of Aristotle’s quotes,

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit”

This is Owning Congruence in action - you can take action and learn more about how you can Own Congruence here

If you would like more information about our process, guiding insights and glossary you can read more here

Learn more about Progressfull™… 

We combine my experience of over 20 years of working with some of the most brilliant minds in innovation and communication, winning awards, growing businesses and inspiring teams, with my co-founder Jo's skills as a highly experienced CEO level executive coach and facilitator 

Over the last 25 years Jo has worked closely with global high performers and their teams, sharing tools and concepts to help them gain a truly competitive edge and has developed a wealth and breadth of experience designing and delivering truly effective, bespoke training tools and programmes to help them grow themselves, their teams and their businesses

We understand you want to continually learn and progress in life, that you don't want psychobabble or unrealistic 'positive thinking', so we focus on outcomes and results

We have simply packaged our lived experience and learning into sparky deep insights and handy transforming toolkits. Toolkits for everybody to use in the real world

In reality all the answers to the questions of how to progress and live a better life already exist out there in some way, from the wisdom of the Ancient Greeks to the latest findings from the world of Neuroscience

But even if we are aware of these ideas and concepts, very few of us have the toolkit to actually apply them in our everyday lives, from home, to work, to our whole life

So, we decided to create it!

We share sparky deep insights and handy transformational toolkits, including tools for purposeful self -reflection, usually only accessible for high performance executives.  Making these available for everybody to use in the real world

So, you can quite literally, be progressfull, taking your personal progress into your own hands

An experience with us takes you from feeling overwhelmed and unfulfilled to inspired, energised and on track

Our passion is to help you unlock your personal progress – helping life work for you not against you – from home, to work, to your whole life

Progressfull™ helps you access the ability to live a life full of progress.  To help us do this we have created 5 principles we can adopt to live a life of progress

You can learn about the 5 principles by experiencing the Upskills

The Upskills will help you learn new beliefs, behaviours and mind-sets to live a more confident, progressfull and fulfilled life. Each Upskill includes video and exercises designed to help you unlock your ability to live a life full of progress

Being progressfull is not easy, but it is worth it.  We all have just one life, so we might as well make sure we swap perfection for progress and be progressfull

Being progressfull ensures we are living our own unique life and most importantly, that we are living it well

For more information on how you can swap perfection for progress and being progressfull, take action and learn more about how you can Own Congruence here