Claude, a young coachee, was disappointed. He had started his professional career a few months ago and somehow, nothing seemed to work out as he expected.

He shared how hard he had worked until now. Whenever he had been assigned work to do he was there early and would stay at it longer than others. He also saw himself as having given up a lot to do the work and become a professional.

But now, things didn’t seem to work out as he had been told they would.

His past had been bright. His future looked bleak.

He was confronted with challenges he had not experienced before and was outside of his comfort zone. Instead of acknowledging how it felt to be where he was, he focused on how he felt in the past when things were working out well. The, to him, logical conclusion he drew was that now he was failing and that people disliked him.

The way he approached the situation was there to protect himself. It was too frightening to learn that failing might be part of his journey and growth. In his case, it meant giving up the idea he had established of himself when he felt himself succeed and experienced it as happening by itself. It meant stepping into the uncertainty of his future and yet dare to do the work without knowing if it will succeed. And it meant to feel that he might fail. He wasn’t ready yet for this. Consequently, he looked for answers and certainty elsewhere. His elsewhere were the answers he had given himself while projecting his beliefs on others and his situation.

When feelings become overpowering, they assist us in protecting ourselves from a pain we fear. However, that leads to feeling the same pain while blaming someone else or something else for causing that pain. This conflict between who we are and how we’d like to be makes it hard to think clearly. It’s a conflict that is based on judgment and thus adds guilt or blame to the experience.

It takes courage to be yourself. Not because it means to oppose these judgments, but because it means to let them go.