There’s a new concept being passed around the world of thought called “verbing”. Now before I dive into what this means for personal development, I want to explain why this shift in thinking is so important in my opinion.
First, I realized when you want to create something- a course, a program, a painting, a room, or even a better version of “you” it starts out as an idea, or a vision. You often see it in motion, you innately understand it can exist before it actually does exist. It is quite literally a God-like character trait.
So your idea starts out as a vision, which creates a feeling, which causes an action or a verb. You are motivated by the feeling, and that causes you to want to act.
The words you would do describe what you are searching for might start as a feeling and then into verbs:
Why do you want to create a program?
Possibly to help other people in an area that you have experience in.
Help is a verb
Why do you want to redecorate your living space?
Maybe because the old space is leaving you uninspired and you want to create a space that speaks more to who you are becoming.
Create and inspire, are verbs.
After you have taken action, you have a result. This is sometimes expressed as a noun (person, place or thing). You decorated the room, you created a painting, you took a class, or finished a book or program, you earned a title.
Let’s take this a level higher and say you always envisioned sharing your life with someone. You could see the two of you traveling together, supporting each other in your dreams, maybe even having children someday. All of those feelings inspire you to act- you date and go to social events always keeping that vision in mind.
Fast forward- you find your someone, get married or move in together and now you are a couple. You are a spouse or partner (noun).
Is this where the story ends? No, this is where the verbing comes in- the mind shift if you will.
As we know, life marches on and we find ourselves back in the space of wanting to feel all those original feelings we had in the beginning. We want to feel inspired, loved, supported, creative, understood. Maybe the reason why you don’t anymore, is because you are limiting yourself to the noun you have agreed to- a spouse, a partner, mother, father… human!
What if you turned these nouns back into verbs?
Let’s go verbing!
Let’s say instead of limiting yourself to “partner” you now are “partnering”?
You are in the act of being a partner.
Instead of being a “mom” you are “momming” or instead of being a “human” you are “Humaning” whatever that means to you!
You are still working on that dream- still creating in the space of being a mom, dad, partner, human, and allowing yourself to grow into that role through the different phases of your life.
I just wanted to insert something here that T.K. Coleman said about wanting things. I think we will always want things that we don’t have. We are usually trying to predict what we will be doing and feeling before we even do it. The desire to feel a certain way will ultimately cause us to act, but how do you know if it WILL fulfill you or not?
Here is what T.K. said:
Wanting what you get is a necessary practice...when it comes to getting what you want, you don’t really know if you want it yet because you don’t have it. You don’t know if you’ll want it until you actually get it and see all that it entails to be the possessor of it. What you have is a belief that you’re going to feel better with it- or a belief that you’re going to be more fulfilled with it. You might be right, you might be wrong. It’s a negotiable assumption. If you’re successful in getting what you want, it always entails challenges that you couldn’t have predicted, so practicing the art of wanting what you have is necessary. The way you’ll know if you need something else is when you make the most of what you already have and it still isn’t enough.
I feel like we need a whole blog post in and of itself on the Art of Wanting!
One more thing I wanted to explore was this concept around “titles”. As someone who loves to run, I’m always seeing parallels to life and running. I’m hoping this reference will make sense and help me explain my thought process.
I find myself dodging the title of “runner.” Now, my reason for doing this is because I understand that many people have misconceptions around runners, or they have certain expectations about runners, and I don’t want to fall into any categories that don’t ring true for me, so I just avoid it. I think the same could ring true for any title. There are always going to be expectations and misconceptions about it.
I wonder if certain titles can cause you to feel like they are trapping you into certain verbs?
At first I felt like I needed to do some work around this, (and I have) so that I could just accept that title, but truthfully, I don’t think I do. You never need to adopt a title that doesn’t feel good on. Besides, I have other titles or descriptions that I value more- like mother, teacher, kindred spirit, etc. So for me I definitely identify as someone who likes to run, but I want it to be more for me to control, and not something that categorizes me. I want it to describe something I do- verb, and not something I am- noun.
You get to choose what nouns you want to be, and how you want to verb them!
