What If the Younger Version of You Already Knew?

A few days ago, I was sitting at my office desk, looking at the folder on my computer called “Old Journal Writing & Coach Emails.” Wow, I totally forgot I had all these electronically.

For the past four months, I’ve been doing some research and continuing excavation of my past. I’m doing it mainly for the book I’m writing, working title When Your Mind Gets Too Loud.

I’ve become fascinated by how quickly something can happen and how our minds take off with a whole story about what it means. My book is really about learning to catch that story before it takes over, so we can see what’s actually happening and give ourselves more choices about what to do next.

I know… this might sound a little weird, uploading 30-year-old electronic journals and emails into AI and basically saying, “Here you go. Tell me what you see.” Yet I was fascinated by the whole idea because I wanted to understand who I was back then. (Another aside: my AI created its own prompt for this research and that’s the best way to go with work like this.)

What was I thinking? What was I struggling with? Were some of the patterns I’m writing about now already there?

I remember that period of my life as pretty tumultuous. There were relationships and work issues, lots of questioning about who I was and what I wanted, and eventually my marriage coming apart. By 1998, I was drinking heavily, unhappy in my marriage and pretty disconnected from myself.

To put it mildly, I remember being so fricking lost.

Yet as I started reading some of what I’d written years before and the AI’s insights, something totally surprised me.

I knew a lot more back then than I thought.

In 1994, I was already writing about how much I intellectualized my feelings instead of actually feeling them. I could see that I had a habit of getting into my head, analyzing everything, and trying to THINK my way into an answer.

Yeah… apparently my fascination with what happens when your mind gets too loud didn’t exactly start with the book I’m writing now. 🙂

Then, as I was scrolling deeper into the AI’s insights, another entry made me lean in and read again. My best friend had walked away from our friendship, and I wrote, “I let everything great and fun in me leave when she left.”

I sat there staring at that line for a while. Wow, I remember that…

Because there it was, 32 years ago. I could already see something I’ve spent a lot of time understanding since then: someone can leave your life, and somewhere in all that pain you can start leaving yourself too.

Later that same year, I was writing about wanting work where I could make a more visible difference and use my intelligence, creativity and skills to help other people. Years later, I described myself and my work as that of a voracious learner who loved to learn, investigate, discover, share, guide, and enlighten.

Hmmm. If you’ve known me for any length of time, this probably sounds pretty familiar.

I’m still the person who’s always reading something, studying something, investigating how the mind works, asking a million questions, connecting dots, and then wanting to share what I discovered. I’ve done that through marketing, coaching, writing, and many more conversations over coffee.

What fascinated me was realizing how many times my gut seemed to know something before I was ready to actually do anything about it. Knowing and being ready to live what you know aren’t always the same.

I think that’s also why Debbie Phillips became such an important person in my life. I’ve mentioned her more than a few times in this eNewsletter. 

I hired Debbie as my executive coach in 1998 when things were really starting to unravel. At the time, I wasn’t sitting around thinking, “Gee, I’m terribly unhappy in my marriage and disconnected from myself. I should probably blow up my entire life.”

I needed someone to ask me questions I wasn’t asking myself. Debbie helped me look at things I wasn’t seeing clearly, or things I could see somewhere inside but wasn’t ready to trust yet. What I loved about working with her was that she didn’t hand me some magical answers to my life. She helped me face and see with new eyes what was already there.

That year I stopped drinking. I started looking more honestly at my marriage, relationships, work, and the ways I was living. I got more support, including therapy, and kept writing and questioning and trying to figure out who the heck I was underneath everything that had accumulated around me.

Looking back now, I don’t think my younger self was simply lost. Working with Debbie gave all that curiosity and questioning somewhere to go.

Younger Shannon was lost and searching. There’s a difference.

I was writing, getting help, and trying to make sense of what I felt. Sometimes I had a really good gut about what was happening and then proceeded to argue with it, intellectualize it, or decide I wasn’t quite ready to “go there.”

And sometimes I needed another person sitting beside me saying, in essence, “What if you looked at this another way?”

That’s what hit me as I sat at my desk reading all of this on my computer monitor.

For years, I’ve thanked Debbie for being this incredible coach who helped me through one of the most difficult periods of my life. What I hadn’t fully seen until recently was HOW she helped me.

She helped me hear myself.

Yesterday, Alice and I were having coffee on the deck when I told her about my old journals, old emails with Debbie, and the discoveries I was making for the book I’m writing. There was a moment when I had to put my coffee down on the table because I heard myself say something that kind of blew me away…

I’m basically being the person Debbie guided me to be. And now I’m her.

I don’t mean I’ve literally become Debbie. What I mean is that much of what she did for me when we worked together for over seven years is what I find myself doing now as a coach.

It was the curious questions, listening for what’s underneath, and helping me hear and see myself more clearly.

Maybe that’s why going through all these old files has been so fascinating. I thought I was digging around trying to discover who I used to be. Instead, I’m finding pieces of who I’ve been all along.

I wish I could go back and sit down with that younger version of me for a cup of coffee.

I wouldn’t tell her how everything turns out because she has to live it. I’d probably tell her to keep writing, keep asking questions, and pay closer attention to that gut of hers because it’s smarter than she thinks.

More than anything, I’d want her to know that feeling lost doesn’t mean she knows nothing.

Because now, 32 years later, I’m sitting here reading her words and realizing she was leaving clues everywhere.

Maybe you are too.

Sometimes we just need enough space, the right questions, and someone who really listens to help us hear what we already know.

That’s what Debbie gave me all those years ago. And maybe that’s why this work feels so meaningful to me now.

Hands at your back.
Always,
Xox
Shannon

Weekly Photos:

Love being back home, did I say that already? And here are some pics I took while in Houston and some from home as well.

1. There truly is “no place like home.” 🙂 I love these trails, and they get pretty dusty and dry in the summer. The only thing that is green is the trees.
2. This is one of my favorite heart rocks on the trail. I think I’ve shared it before, and I have to share it again because of the way the sun just shows off the part of the heart that’s at the surface. 🙂
3. Then those Turkey Buzzards are so funny how they all hang out on one dead tree right near the river. There are either six or seven, hard to tell with the shadows of the trees.
4. Love this young buck. You can see where his horns are starting to sprout. There are always so many deer along the river, lots to eat.
5. Well, this was highly unusual. I’ve been walking the Sacramento trail for a while now, and only one other time did I find money, and it was a dime. Well, this time, I found 61 cents. 🙂 Leave it to me to find change anywhere, mostly dimes, quarters, and pennies.
6. And this was a cool feather I found on the trail. I love taking a picture and then uploading it to AI. And it’s usually spot on in the bird. It said this one was a Downy Woodpecker. The feather is only 3.5 inches, and it’s one of the smallest woodpeckers in North America, only 6 inches long. And I always look for the meaning in the birds/animals I see. They are connected to paying attention, persistence, and discovering what’s beneath the surface.
7. I’ve shared this view with you before. And this day, it was quite a bit hazy. You can hardly see Shasta Bally. That’s smoke from the fires to the north of us. There are quite a few fires in Oregon and Washington, and the smoke makes its way down here. It doesn’t happen every day, just when the winds shift, and the heat and lack of humidity are high.

P.S. If something in this story hit home and you’re wrestling with a decision, change, or something you know is there but can’t quite hear clearly, I’d be happy to jump on a call with you. Just some curious questions and a conversation to help you hear what might already be there. Leave me a comment or hit the “Contact Me” above and send me a note.

P.S.S. Love Books as I Do? – I’m always reviewing the best nonfiction books – Where Buddha Meets Business.

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