You’ve had it! The GREAT realization. You understand now, finally, the connection between exercising and energy… or how organizing your space clears your mind for problem solving. Maybe your insights are deeper – how your fear of rejection as an introverted child leads to your difficulty with speaking out when necessary.
All good! Sharp! Smart!
Fast forward two weeks… the space is a mess of piles and notes, and printouts and you CAN’T find your favorite pen for doodling – something that helps you problem solve. Or, you’re standing up in the conference room sharing the latest sales numbers and your voice sounds like an animated cartoon.
What happened?
We’ve all had insights and realizations. Sometimes they’ve arisen spontaneously, sometimes because of a trusted someone’s words. Many of us have moved from insight to action only to drop back into the old, outdated patterns and add shame and guilt to the mix of messages coming from harsh inner critic.
What’s the solution? A coach! Someone who will not only help you gain the insights, but offer you practices and exercises to move a desired behavior into a keystone habit. They’ll cheer you on, hold you accountable and challenge you to show up fully in your life.
They do it in biological time – staying with you through the inspired and then inevitable trying times, until you transform that part you’ve always longed to.
They know just the right reading material to keep you engaged and the perfect exercises to stretch you toward what you want to be.
Coaches show you compassion, when you’re short on it for yourself. They expand your perspective when the elasticity of your own has worn out. And they bring both learning, experience to the art and science of their work.
Coaches hold you accountable to what you, yourself want to achieve. They check in to make sure you are doing the exercises, practices and reading you’ve been assigned to create new keystone habits. (Keystone habits are like the the central stone in the arch which, by exerting pressure, holds all the others in place. Keystone habits, like falling dominoes, bring other good habits along in the wake of their fall.)
Coaches see your blind spots – you know – those areas you keep missing no matter how often you look in the mirror. They hold a cleanly wiped mirror up to you so you see what was hidden from view. And since they are both artists and scientists (if they are good), coaches give you assignments that help you cultivate the capacities missing due to the previous blind spots.
Coaches cheer you on when you’re making progress and celebrate with you! That’s important because without acknowledgement and celebration to anchor the shifts, its hard to keep finding the energy to keep building new behavioral muscles.
Coaches reframe your perspective. That means that you might have been looking through a straw and not seeing the amazing sky. They might take away your straw and offer you a telescope instead. As you see more,, wider, farther, you can add dimension to your reality – and move from that place.
Of course, the hard work is yours to do. Yet, with the unrelenting support of the right coach, the compassion, accountability and challenge they offer, the burden is shared, and lightened. And the clarity out of which you’ll work liberates more energy for the task at hand.
So you can go on attempting all this alone or you can find that person who resonates with you, who can offer a magic blend of support, wisdom, accountability, compassion and challenge to move you into the shifts you want to make.
Why now? There isn’t a moment more of your precious life to waste.