Ep 27 – The Secret Ingredient to Make Change Happen

 

• 00:53 – What makes change happen?

• 05:53 – The secret ingredient to make change happen

• 06:50 – Role of coaching in transformations

• 07:30 – Using the secret ingredient to make change happen

 

I’m going to reveal the secret ingredient in time but first I’ll share the story with you about my process of discovery and then come to how you can make it happen for yourself.  

Picture this – Have you desperately wanted to make change happen? No more losing my temper, or getting affected by what other people say, or allowing people to walk all over my personal space, only to always get back to old patterns and ways before you know it? Change is never easy. We all know something is not working for us but how do we make the transition to what works instead? 

I’ve been wondering about this for a while now – I want to become a great writer but I only write when inspiration strikes me. I want to be a regular trekker but I’d rather binge on cakes and sweets cause who doesn’t like them right? I’m curious and sign up for more things than I have time for and end up feeling drained and exhausted before I know it. And I used to wonder why I am not able to change my patterns. I know what it is I am doing wrong, but I cannot seem to correct my ways to do the right thing. 

One of the many things I’ve learned as a coach is that you cannot hold the mirror up for your clients and reflect their thinking patterns before doing it to yourself. And so I decided to coach myself, I explored them a little deeper, why couldn’t I write every day? What held me back from doing that? At the first exploration I came up with multiple superficial excuses – I don’t have anything compelling enough to write about, I have no time, I have no energy after writing content for my clients all day etc. etc. 

So I told myself, let’s schedule the writing in – a set time every day only for writing. You’d think the problem was solved. But of course life isn’t that simple. Everytime that scheduled hour came in – I found 100s of other things to engage in. I even used that hour once to clean the kitchen, mind you. And I realized, something is wrong still – I was escaping it. 

So I decided to coach myself again, why was I not writing everyday now that I had set aside a dedicated hour to do it? I came up blank, I dug further deep and it became uncomfortable. I didn’t want to explore more, I felt like I was not going to like whatever came up after this and that intuition was right. The more I started becoming aware of my thoughts as to why I was running away from writing regularly, the picture started to become clearer. I was afraid. I was afraid to write something bad. I judged my writing before my thoughts become words and I preferred running away to penning down things that were not good enough. That was why writing to me came effortlessly when I am in that state of flow – that state of being where you feel like someone else possesses you and pens those words down. But not otherwise. Because if you didn’t write at all, you can still convince yourself that you are a decent writer. I didn’t want contrary evidence to it. 

And that realization hit home, there was that Aha moment I constantly wait for my clients to stumble upon in my coaching conversations. That moment where you become aware about an aspect of yourself you never knew before – a new learning about the self,  a conditioned pattern you never really took notice of until that point. 

The minute I hit the nail on the head in terms of the problem the answer came to me automatically. I knew I had to address the fear, reason with it that this was counter intuitive that I could only get better if I wrote and not the other way, and voila, change happened. 

 

And that is the secret ingredient: Awareness.

One of the biggest learnings I’ve had in my coaching journey is that Awareness is curative. I often wondered how coaching can be this effective. A person asks questions, and behaviors can be changed, that definitely was not all it took to change people in our lives. But the more I delved into the process, coached clients and got coached myself, I realized this was indeed possible. 

I realized why awareness is curative. More often than not, we are not aware of what exactly is wrong. We know something is not working, but we attribute it to something superficial without going into the root cause. And most of the time, we are hard at work to fix something utterly different from the actual cause. This gap is precisely what coaching exposes.

Coaching unravels the root of the problem not just at the superficial levels, but deeper down to re-look at the core of who we are and what is truly holding us back. The minute we turn the spotlight on our clients’ right issue, it becomes apparent for them what they need to do next.

I’ve always believed that the answers lie within us if we only dare to look in the deepest and darkest corners within ourselves. 

 

But never quite understood it till now. 

It’s like Eckhart Tolle’s famous quote:

“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.” 

 

How can you use awareness to make change happen in your life:

 

   #1. Don’t stop at the first answer that comes to you

Dig Deep until you strike gold. The process of exploring what is not working within us is uncomfortable, take it from me. But it’s worth it. Don’t settle until you are convinced there’s nothing more left to dig up. The chances are that what holds us back is a misconstrued and deep-rooted belief of yourself. And you can only bring about that change if you see the fallacy in the thought process at the fundamental level.

 

   #2. Non-Judgmental Awareness

This is the most crucial aspect of change. What do we do when we make mistakes? Immediately call ourselves names and say to ourselves, “Idiot, how did you not see this before? Are you really that stupid to believe that? I am such a loser” We often judge ourselves harshly and critique ourselves and more than necessary. But change cannot happen from a place of self-deprecation or unworthiness. When you go down that path of observing yourself and becoming aware, learn to practice non-judgement. Often in my coaching conversations, I feel a breakthrough happens to my client when I ask a simple question, “What would you tell your friend, if he/she came to you with this exact problem?” And suddenly my clients are not so harsh, they are kind, compassionate, and can actually come up with practical ways and means to get around the problem. So practice awareness, in a manner that’s non-judgmental.

 

   #3. Anchoring that learning

Just awareness is a pointless endeavor unless you anchor that new learning about yourself and put it into action. Without this step, the awareness becomes just another piece of information that is added to the list of facts stowed away for a rainy day. It has no utility unless you glean something from it and put it to practice. In my example, I took steps immediately to address that fear of not being good enough – I realistically assessed where my writing skills were on a score of 1 to 10 and determined where I wanted to be in a few months. Then determined steps to get there. And guess what, one of those steps was to write daily. So as you gain awareness of what is truly holding back – flesh that out. What can you do to assuage that self-limiting belief or baseless fear? Start small actionable doable steps that you can measure and track progress. 

Try this approach out the next time you find yourself unable to change your ways and actions in life and let me know what comes up for you. If you want a companion to co-create with you and be your thinking partner as you transform your life, book a free discovery session with me here.