Articles on Life and Business Coaching, Wellington, Hutt Valley

These are the most recent in an ongoing series of articles on life, and life and business coaching. If you would like to read more, check out my latest eBook by clicking here.

TRIGGER POINTS

The observation I would make about what gets people to make important changes in their lives is that things have to reach a pressure point (“trigger point”) before there is enough leverage to spark the change.

So why can’t we often get on the front foot and be proactive with the change that we know would greatly benefit us and instead leave things until it is almost too late to do anything about them. The answer I would suggest is that the pleasure we know we will experience in making change is not as strong as the fear of being hurt or feeling pain if we go against what we believe is true.

We have ingrained into us limiting beliefs that no longer serve us which are so rigid we hang on to them for grim death (sometimes it can end up like that literally).

Hopefully before that happens, we get a big enough wakeup call that the fear of the consequences not changing outweighs the fear of moving away from our limited version of truth. For example, a visit to your doctor’s office brings some unexpected bad news – the tests reveal you have the beginnings of lung cancer! So, you are faced with a choice – to keep smoking and almost certainly become very ill and possibly die or to give up smoking and at least with treatment have the possibility of being in remission after time. It may be that you had tried over many years to give up smoking and had tried many options to help with that, but it never stuck.

It is most likely that now after the doctor’s news, you will go “cold turkey” and stop smoking immediately. Why now?

Well, the fear of death is far bigger than the fear that if you give up you will feel stressed and anxious again, you will lose your confidence, that you have tried before and failed, you will lose friends who also smoke, or whatever other beliefs have kept you smoking all those years notwithstanding attempts to give up.

You have at last reached your “Trigger Point”.

So many of our ingrained beliefs which have often been there from childhood disempower us and stop us from achieving our true potential. We do not know that we are not in charge of own ship and that someone or something else has control over the rudder.

We do not realise that the reason we overeat and struggle to lose weight is because of something that happened to us when we were small children. We are not aware that historic trauma leads us to self-sabotage and prevents us from experiencing long-term fulfilling relationships. We are not aware that feelings of not being good enough to our parents have created perfectionist tendencies and result in procrastination and the list goes on.

For many of us our lives are lived on autopilot, and we are guided by default settings which may have been useful to us at some point in our life but are no longer. It’s like trying to navigate around town using an out-of-date map. You just end up either going round in circles or never reaching your destination.

Fortunately, we do not have to have a gunfight to change our programming in advance of reaching our trigger points.

The simple act of attributing greater pain to hanging on to our limiting beliefs will help us shift to more empowering ones which will support us in making those decisions we need to make to ensure we reach our goals and achieve our full potential.

Self-awareness is crucial. An unexamined life produces unremarkable results. Looking inwards is strength. Being vulnerable is strength. Being prepared to change before life forces change on you is strength. How strong to you feel?

Would you rather wait it out until the gunfight at the “Am I Okay Coral” or get on your horse now and head off towards a bigger and brighter future? Your choice or someone else’s?

SUCCESS PRINCIPLES

Principle One – Audit your Inner Circle. Waiting for others to give you the thumbs up for what you want to do will slow you or even stop you from doing what you need to do. Instead, just be you and do it. Don’t expect others to be able to see through your prescription lenses. Your dream is your dream and not anyone else’s.

Principle Two – Solve Bigger Problems. The levels of stress you experience with small problems is about the same you experience with bigger problems. Look to getting better at solving bigger problems.

Principle Three– It’s all on you. No none is coming to save you. Even when times are tough people still succeed and prosper. It’s up to you and what you choose to do.

Principle Four– Who is steering your ship. Are you the captain of your ship or has someone or something else got control of the rudder? Are things that have happened in the past preventing you from living a full life. Is it past regret, guilt or feeling not good enough keeping you looking in the rear-view mirror instead of ahead?

Principle Five – Meet every day with the intention of being the best version of yourself. Results will follow.

Principle Six – Be bold. Take uncomfortable action and extend the threshold of your comfort zone. Tackle things you have been avoiding.

Principle Seven – Focus on the solution instead of on what happened and who is to blame. Focussing on the problem will only make it seem bigger and will create negative energy. You will not find a solution in a negative mindset. Learn from what happened and move forward with positive energy.

Principle Eight – Look for little shifts. Small hinges swing big doors. What could you do on a daily and weekly basis to move you closer to what you want? Start your day with an empowering routine. Take a new weekly course or training.

Principle Nine – Persist until you succeed. Keep moving beyond challenges and setbacks. Even if you fall over pick yourself up and dust yourself off and learn what went wrong and do it differently next time. Success could just be around the next corner. If you give up prematurely life will go back to what it was previously and that did not make you happy or you would not have attempted change.

Principle Ten – Who not the how. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Find someone who has already done what you want to do and model what they have done. This will save you time and help you avoid pitfalls.

PAIN AND PLEASURE

Two of the most powerful influences on whether we make the right or any decisions at all will depend upon two things – pain or pleasure and the weight we attribute to each.

If we are for example thinking about a major change such as resigning from a job to start a new business, then the idea of being our own boss and in control of our destiny will be the pleasure pull for this decision, yet this will be tempered by the fear of the unknown and the fear of failure and the pain that may cause us.

Moving out of our usual comfort zone into the threshold of change will be a challenge for many of us particularly if we have spent a long time in it.

Sometimes fear will stop us in our tracks and even if we are not happy where we are we may choose to stay put and tolerate less than we know we deserve. In that situation we can remain stuck until life gives us another shove in the direction of change.

Life is all about growth. We can either embrace growth and consciously make decisions about our future or be dragged kicking and screaming into it once our trigger points have been reached and we can tolerate the status quo no longer.

The old adage “feel the fear and do it anyway” encourages us to be scared but to still make decisions for our best future in 2025. The biggest and best fruit are always at the top of the tree. It will be worth the climb in the long term.

Sure, it may not be smooth sailing, there may indeed be some pain. What doesn’t kill us can makes us stronger. Lessons are learned and we can pick ourselves up and keep on climbing and even though the fruit at the top of the tree may not be exactly as we had envisioned; it will taste even sweeter.

Embrace the new year with renewed energy and decide for yourself what your best future will look like. As always, we are here to support you on your journey.

A NEW YEAR

Well, it’s that time of year again. The end of one year and the start of a new one.

A new year does not always mean a new you or anything different from previous years. We can face the same obstacles, excuses and distractions as previous years. They don’t magically disappear at the strike of 12pm New Years Eve!

This time should not be about resolutions you will forget by February. It should be about a decision of some kind. This decision should be about not waiting to chase your dreams. It should be about doing something right now no matter how small or big. Just start. You don’t need to have all the answers now. You can figure it out. Trial and error are ok as you learn more from your failures than your successes.

Once you decide to do something you will notice opportunities cropping up that support your decision.

So, as you welcome in the New Year what’s one thing you can decide to do and act on now so you can become the person you want to be and to do the things you want.

WHEN WE MEAN TO BUT DON’T DO

The race has started to get all those last-minute things done we have been meaning to do before the end of the year! This seems to happen this time every year.

What would it be like if we didn’t have to run around like headless chickens trying to cram all that stuff in, we meant to do this year before the clock hits 12 on 31 December.

It would certainly make life less stressful! We might even get more done perhaps.

Most of the things we try to get done at this time of year are things we had been meaning to do during the year. When we mean or intend to do something it usually means it’s been on the list, but we never got round to it.

Converting those “meaning to’s” into reality requires planning, preparation and time specific action. However, when we boil down where we spend most of our time it will likely be working to survive in a job.

Unless we force ourselves to take time out of the rat race to focus on ourselves and what we want from life much of what we want for ourselves will never happen. Our lives slip by quickly. Nobody wants to have regrets at the end.

Committing to a coaching programme is your opportunity to convert those “”meaning to’s” into “done and dusted’s”. There is value in making a commitment to yourself and your dreams for a better life. All you need is a desire to do things differently than you have always done. Your comfort zone is not your friend. Life really begins outside this zone. It may not be easy. It will require courage, but it will be worth it.

BUSINESS SUCCESS

If you are in business and want to make 2025 the best year you have ever had then you will need to examine:

Your Mindset: if you believe you can – you will and if you believe you can’t – you won’t. This is often the most neglected part of business. We bring ourselves into everything we do. Are we holding ourselves back?

Your Marketing: this is the oxygen for your business. It influences, persuades and is a service. How can you make that more effective and reach more potential customers?

Creating Momentum: how do you make your success sustainable? Remember small hinges swing big doors! Small consistent progress will help you go the distance.

Our business coaching courses can help you to take the time out from your busy days to focus on yourself and your business direction. It also provides accountability for making sure you do what you say you are going to do.

PURPOSE

What guides our lives is our purpose. This is something that keeps us on a mission even if we are unsure where we are heading. It’s easy to forget to live on purpose when we get caught up in our daily lives. We can get stuck in our jobs and daily routines and our purposes gets put to one side. Yet we have that nagging feeling that there must be more to life than the 9 to 5 drudge!

Deep down we know that we are meant for more. When we ignore that feeling and continue to live life out of alignment with our purpose, we can feel lacking in energy, it can affect our relationships and drain our joy of life.

So, what’s your purpose? What do you want to spend time on every day? When do you want to move from making a living to making a life worth living?

Our coaching programmes can help you to get clarity on your purpose.

IN TIME

As humans we have always been fascinated with the idea of time. There is the practical aspect of time such as how many hours there are in the day and what you can fit into those hours. Then there are the ideas of past and future time. It has been said that time is illusory because the only time we have is right now and that what happened in the past stays there and what may happen in the future has not yet happened. However, we can run into problems when we bring past or future time into our present time. The former can bring guilt, shame, and grief and the latter fear, worry and stress. If we spend much of our present time occupied with past or future time, we can miss out on life right now and the opportunities it brings with it.

REGRET IS HEAVY

Imagine you are 98 years old and about to die and you have regrets about not living to your full potential. What could you do today to avoid having those regrets?

The truth is you already know what those regrets will be so why not do something today to solve those. We can have so many “I should of” moments in life. Why not make the decision today to change at least one of those moments into an I will moment? Make a plan to avoid your regret

How would that change your life for the better?

THE FEEDBACK LOOP

“Sow a thought, reap an action, sow an action, reap a habit, sow a habit reap a character, sow a character reap a destiny”
Anonymous

THE LOOP

Events + data (information) = truth (meaning) + thoughts + emotions + actions = results which produce events:

No result (event) can occur without some form of action being taken.

No action can be taken without an emotional driver.
Most emotions are generated by a prior thought (NB body/chemical impacts).
Many of our thoughts comprise unconscious thinking patterns that have been generated as a consequence of what we believe about life (our filter of perspective or personal truths).
Our personal truths are the unique meanings we have attributed to what we have experienced in life so far (events).
Poor information in = poor results

AUTHENTICITY

Authenticity is knowing who you are and being brave enough to live it.

What is authenticity and what does to be authentic mean?

Words and labels are only guides, however for me being authentic means living my truth. It’s making choices about who I want to be and what I want to do with my life at any given moment.

When you engage in coaching you will learn that many of the decisions, you had made and continue to make in life have been influenced by beliefs, patterns, and habits which were ingrained into you at a very early age.

If that is the case, then who or what is steering your ship as you sail through your life’s journey. Coaching will give you clarity on this and help you to grab back control of the wheel of your ship and to chart a new authentic course for your future.

Interested? Click here if you would like to know what coaching can do for you.