Shift happens!
Sometimes we have those big ‘aha’ or lightbulb moments when suddenly everything seems clear. We know what direction we want to take and how to get there.
I can remember when I had the idea to set up People Like Me Coaching and Training Consultancy about six years ago. I’d finished an extensive training qualification to be a professional coach eight months earlier at the time of both the pandemic lockdowns with some vague idea of a retirement plan somewhere down the line.
Yet, this particular evening, I was lounging on the sofa, after a, let’s say, trying day at work and I suddenly sat bolt upright absolutely sure what I needed to do. I remember running upstairs, getting a piece of flip chart paper and coloured pens (I always have flip chart paper!!) and started to map out what it could look like. Less than a month later, I’d handed my notice in and registered a business name and website domain.
I’m not an impulsive person and I tend to play it safe so there were a few worried and confused looks on the faces of those close to me.
But...looking back it wasn’t really a sudden ‘aha’ moment. It was a combination of tiny kaleidoscopic mindset shifts over the previous year that had built into a mosaic of opportunity that did indeed suddenly seem clear.
I’d been feeling stuck. But my mind hadn’t. In the background of my busy work life, my thoughts had been percolating and slowly working through:
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“Who am I to think I can do this?”
“Maybe it’s better to wait until I retire”
In retrospect, once the seed of an idea had been planted when training, I had been almost unconsciously working my way through these thoughts toward making change happen in tiny shifts. How this worked for me:
1. I let my unconscious mind do its work: I started to notice opportunities that had always been there but unnoticed by me. This isn’t as ‘woo woo’ as it might sound. We know that the brain’s reticular activating system serves almost as an algorithm, filtering and feeding us the type of information we interact with. When we start to focus on something, our brains start looking for it. After I’d done my colourful mind map, it felt like universal magic when a ‘start up business’ course at our local college got advertised but there was no magic involved. It was just my brain filtering and noticing something that had actually been advertised for a while and was actually on it’s second cohort.
2. I avoided the toleration trap: Poppy Delridge, a transformation coach, talks about getting what we tolerate.
“We don’t get what we want, we get what we tolerate”.
I had been tolerating a situation that absolutely did not fit. I knew if I stayed, I would start to see what was happening as ‘normal’. But once I had another option in my mind, however scary that felt at the time, I started to get clarity on how different that was from my current situation. I handed my notice in after a weekend in London when I was sitting watching Matthew Bourne’s ‘Nutracker’ and all through it, all I could think was “I have to resign”. I spoke to my boss as soon as I got in on Monday morning. Again, this looked impulsive to people around me but was the result of months of percolating on what I could and wouldn’t tolerate.
3. Back to values. I reminded myself of what was important to me; personally and professionally. I wanted something that fulfilled my need for autonomy and growth, that would allow me to act with integrity and with a high level of control. If my role at that time had fulfilled all of those, I may well still be there but there was something else missing. Having an impact is important to me. I’ve always worked in the health or public sector sphere so impact has always been a driver but often that impact would not be seen until much further down the line. I wanted to work with impact now! I wanted other people to have the space to consider their own values, shifts and goals in the way I was doing.
So my kaleidoscopic shifts formed into a coherent picture that led me forward. But what does this mean in terms of coaching? Well, I had my own coach during my training and I used that time and space to work through whether to set up my own practice or not. Yet it was another six to eight months after that coaching had ended before I actually reached the point of ‘yes, I’m going to do this’. Because shift doesn’t happen quickly. Particularly if it involves thinking patterns you’ve developed over decades of life experience of which might be:
People pleasing
Feeling the need for control
Hiding so you won’t be judged
Procrastination
Perfectionism
‘Must/should do’
Often magic happens after the coaching has completed. Or in the gaps between coaching sessions where you have thinking time to work out how those thinking patterns serve or protect you. Those seeds of potential change need time to be watered, tendered, protected before you decide whether its going to survive as an idea and if so what needs to be done to move it forward.
So I work with people to think this through in real terms for them, with the ball firmly in their court, not mine.
Because ‘eureka’ moments happen but that’s usually because shift is already happening quietly in the background.
I’ve been doing more of my own shifting in the last few months which is turning into an exciting mosaic of another opportunity…but it needed time to do that. Watch this space!