Life Coach Gets A-Ha! Moment

Posted on 27 September 2007

I don’t know how many books I have read on life coaching, business, self development, NLP and sales training in the last 5+ years but it’s a lot. Subsequently, I don’t quite get the amount of A-Ha! moments that I used to get in the early days. What I mean by an A-Ha! moment is something that has me reading or listening to that part again ant thinking Wow! I can steal that, er I mean borrow that, to use with clients.

I had an A-Ha! moment last night and it came from the excellent book “Embracing Fear: How to Turn What Scares Us into Our Greatest Gift” by Thom Rutledge.

This was probably the best A-Ha moment I have had in the last year so I hope you are sitting down with eager anticipation. It eager anticipation can’t make it I’ll take mild interest but not board senseless. If that’s you, get yourself off to youtube.

This opens up a different approach for me to use on procrastination issues such as weight loss, quitting smoking, getting fitter etc. So if that’s you, get the skinny here and now for free. On the other hand, you could send Thom and I a check to ease your undoubted guilt at getting something so valuable for free.

When people think about changing an aspect of themselves (let’s take losing weight as an example) they can often form a mental image of what they want to be like. Therefore, that potential is always there ready to go when they positively have to do it. What happens though when they do decide to just ‘go for it’ and take up the challenge? In that moment they are throwing all their eggs in one basket because if they fail, they run the risk of believing that it is no longer possible. After all, they gave it everything, their best shot, they went balls out, they were full on, yet still they didn’t get the desired results.

Disaster, right?

Wrong!

What really happens is they never do what they think they are doing. They hold back, they say they are trying to lose weight rather than they ARE losing weight; they give themselves options to slide back at the very time they should be ruling them out. The reason they do this is fear. Fear of losing that potential ideal self that brings them hope if not actually any positive results.

When people do cut off options and say they have decided on something and really believe it, in most cases they succeed. To do so though requires discomfort, the discomfort of the unknown, the discomfort of realizing that the ideal you vision is gone forever because it now needs to become the reality.

I am 95% sure you will not fail! If you commit and decide you will almost certainly succeed and then the picture you had in your mind all the time will be the reality. What a lovely thought that is.

Note: I am putting my interpretation on the passage in ‘Embracing Fear and using it for work I do with people that come to me for life coaching. This does not constitute medical advice and if you feel you may be suffering a medical condition please seek appropriate help.