What you focus on you become.
The choices you make determine the outcomes you desire. What you focus on you become, spending five hours, five nights a week at the gym when your goal is to fix your relationship breakdown with your partner is not a smart move. Similarly, the endless hours pursuing looking good in front of strangers on social media when all you want is to seek a more authentic and meaningful connection with those close to you isn’t going to help.
Behind every goal and pursuit, there is a value-driving it. Our daily actions will always reveal what values (core) are most important to us; it seems going to the gym to develop your six-pack was more appealing and essential than repairing your relationship.
In other words, your goals must be in alignment with your values. If your endeavours are less than a top-six core value, then chances are they are incongruent and value-less and will ultimately lead to unfulfillment. Even if you achieve the goal, you will still feel starved of true inner peace and fulfilment. Perhaps the risk and reward for instant gratification of the bigger house or that shiny new car sitting outside are not all it lives up to be?
Risk and reward
Furthermore, everything you have ever achieved resulted in taking some risk. Falling on your first attempts to walk then risking to try it again, the first time the stabilizers came off trying to ride a bicycle on two wheels, plucking up the courage to ask that pretty girl with short hair out on a first date they were all leaps of faith into the unknown with elements of risk.
And, the reward is immeasurable the look on your child’s face taking those first few steps on their own, the sense of achievement mastering the art of riding on two wheels, and who can ever forget that feeling we had in our stomach when the pretty girl said yes.
Subsequently, if you see risk as a pursuit too far and prefer to stay in your comfort zone, you are destined to a life of mediocrity, boredom and short-term satisfaction. Your best life and best-self lie beyond your comfort zone, that is where all your potential lives waiting to be discovered.
Can you remember a time when you took a risk and a leap of faith into the unknown? Here’s the thing, if we want to grow and add meaning and value to our life and others, we must continuously be ‘risk-taking’ leaps of faith into the unknown.
What are you waiting for?
As I have said many times, your life is not a dress rehearsal, there is only one performance playing, and it is right now. The script and story that lives inside of you, who you are, what you stand for is waiting for an audience to see and applaud it.
So, what you are waiting for? my guess is, if you are still reading or watching this, there is an outdated story that needs to be examined. As a coach, I get to work with my client to shine a spotlight on it and to rewrite it,
Four stages to change
I often get asked, “how do I make changes to my life that stick?”
Firstly, from my experience when a client comes to me for coaching, what they say they want to change and what they really want to change can be worlds apart. Up to this point, my client had only their inner gremlins their his/her self-talk to deal with; now they are letting someone else, a coach take a peep into their inner world, to observe, question and to offer different perspectives on what is the change, the goal they want.
Secondly, we move on to clarify where they are at this moment in their life, what’s happening towards achieving the outcome. What has worked, what has not?
Thirdly, we delve into what you could do, e.g. “What if you secretly knew the answer, what would it be?”
Finally, you decide what action you are going to take, and how and when are you going to achieve it by. In brief, this is a short description of one of the many tools and processes I use to help my client achieve the change they want.
So, why bother to do this? Well, there are many clichés I could extol; e.g. “if you don’t know where you are going, how will you know you are there? a rudderless ship will land anywhere and nowhere?” to name two.
But seriously, if you don’t have a map and a plan, how will you know how to get there? I bet the first time you started your new job, and it required a bus and a train journey you looked at a map. Alternatively, you could wonder map-less looking for your new office. In the hope of landing on it…
Ultimately, a coach will help you map out and set your goals, will guide, stretch, and get you to risk playing outside your comfort zone to achieve your outcome.
To sum up, my clients get to see and experience a new and refreshing way of living, one full of opportunity, excitement and adventure—a welcome change from the outdated practices of the past. And, as a coach, it is a privilege to be part of their journey.
So, what are you going to risk? and who are you going to become?
Keep safe
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