How does Change Really Happen?
There are usually 3 reasons people come to for life coaching, they search something on google or they get a recommendation from a friend of colleague about something.
- They are desperate, their experience of life has got so bad either immediately or over time and they have to do something, now.
- They have been pushed into it, someone close to them is sick of what they are doing, how they are behaving, how down they are, or how much money they are spending, or the state of their health, well-being.
- They have had an insight, something has started to look different about life and they have realised that all the stories they have told themselves for years are not true, and they want to explore that.
Of course, these are not the only reasons, and there are variations of it, but is there ever really a right time to get help for something you want to change?
The problem with 1 and 2 are, they are variables, today that person suggesting you need to do something about it may be having a bad day and, tomorrow you may not feel that bad about that thing that has been bothering you.
Is there ever a right time for change? Do you have to be ready?
Here is the interesting thing, you never know when insight will happen. With all my coaching we go on a journey of exploration of what is true, and what is not true, and while there are lots of conceptual ideas about what is needed for change to happen, I can say for sure that I have seen people change regardless of any of them.
What we explore here is beyond concepts of change, but seeing the truth of who we really are. When people are teaching concepts of change in their work, you usually are required to practice something, do a technique together, find a strategy to cope with something differently. Strategies are a quick fix, like a sticking plaster, often over a bullet hole, they are temporary.
Of course, if you have found something that makes you feel better, or helps you make decisions that are important, I am not saying don’t do it, just that there is a better, permanent way of understanding yourself and seeing things differently.
How is insight different to techniques, strategies?
I recently read a book by Dr Maggie Gilewicz – “How to make sure your life doesn’t suck” that said:
“True sustainable change requires only three ingredients: willingness/openness to change, an open mind and heart, and patience. When these three are in place, true transformation is inevitable”
When people are desperate they are often beaten into a state of reasonableness, they become open to something new because all else has failed, they literally have run out of ideas that they can come up with.
Being open simply means that, with the sum accumulation of what I know, there doesn’t look like a solution, and the reason we get there is because we’re always trying to use the intellect to solve what look like our problems.
Insight, is beyond intellect, it’s beyond the sum accumulation of all the knowledge we have gained over time, it is innate, we are born with it.
The built-in system we have already works
Yesterday I was talking about insight with a friend, and we were watching my 3-year-old boy trying to eat monkey nuts. As he watched me opening them he was trying to squeeze them, crack them open, it was just turning into a mess. So, he sat back and kept calm, he came back to the table with his elbow, he started crushing them, pretty soon he figured out that would not work either so well, so he took to using his teeth and spitting out the shell. None of these were great options but he got a few nuts, the point is that you can see how it works, when problems come, you keep calm, you sit back, you wait for a fresh idea and new ideas come, things get resolved. What if that is how it works for everything?
The number of clients I’ve had that will identify with, having an issue when going to bed, but waking up in the morning with answer…. Not realising that we have a clear mind in the morning, and that’s when insight can come through, thinking it’s a random phenomenon instead.
Insight is permanent
Once you get to see things differently, your insight is permanent, you don’t have to practice something to avoid it or change it anymore, you have had a sight of how things work differently when we are not caught up in our thinking. You can navigate all of life this way, effortlessly, and grow way beyond anything you can imagine while reading this.
Certified Transformative Coach with 25 years of experience helping people live a better life.
