I am all about change and growth. I am such a change junkie that back in corporate days I was the person they would send in to turn a struggling department round – take it apart and overhaul it. I was never the “Business As Usual” girl – I got labeled a “Change Merchant” which I took as a real compliment. I wasn’t afraid to make sweeping change in order to make things better. In fact I relished it. I hopped from department to department (change! change!) waving my magic wand for nearly 2 decades.
So when I made a radical career switch (change!) to become a Life Coach I knew the way I embrace change and risk would be a real asset. People come to coaches because they want something in their life to change, right? I am your girl!
However – the longer I have been coaching the more my perspectives around change have evolved. Often a radical shift in life situation is not actually required, but a radical shift in PERSPECTIVE, is. It’s that perspective shift that opens up the gateway to a happy, passion filled life.
Most of the time when I am coaching what I see is not that people need to CHANGE stuff about themselves – it’s more that they actually need to connect with WHO THEY REALLY ARE.
It’s much less about turning into someone else, someone “better”. It’s much more about being more of who they really are underneath once you clear out all the crap about how their life “should” look by now and how they “should “ be spending their time.
It’s less about changing external circumstances (at least initially) and more about connecting to what’s true internally.
It’s much less about changing who you are and much more about changing the way you THINK about who you are.
Finding your passion is much less of a quest to find the answer “out there” in the world, rather a clearing of mental and emotional clutter that helps you hear the perfect answer bubble up from within.
Living a happy life is much less about changing what you do, and much more about TRUSTING yourself to make the right call. It’s about backing yourself that you have the resources within you to figure it out, whatever happens. It’s about cultivating deep level of trust in yourself.
It’s less about “making change happen”. It’s really about improving your relationship with yourself so much that change just naturally evolves and happens all on it’s own. It’s not a forced process, it’s a gradual unfolding of “rightness”. Clients end up in career paths or relationships or living circumstances in ways that are so much richer and brighter but which neither of us could have predicted at the start of their journey. They know and trust themselves on such a different level that change stops being scary and starts just being the obvious next move. Obvious like “Duh! Of course I need to quit and go retrain as a herbalist/vet/IT geek/. Of course!”
The most powerful kind of personal change comes from a change in how we know and listen to our true selves. It’s an INTERNAL change FIRST – once we have that down, changing the status quo in terms of our job, relationships and so on EXTERNALLY becomes a natural pull forwards towards our best life.
If you are struggling to make a change on the OUTSIDE – have a look at what you can change on the INSIDE first. Connecting more deeply with your strengths; letting go of perfectionism or people pleasing; allowing your passions to make themselves known; trusting you have the inner strength to handle whatever comes up – that’s all an inside job. Nail that, and change on the outside is an absolute breeze.
