BLOG: Beyond Intellectual Understanding
We're knowledgeable, capable, curious women. We've been in this personal growth game, searching for our best life, for decades. We've read the books, followed the authors, and learned the salient points.
So I may Know what constitutes the good life, intellectually. I may know the What, but it's another thing altogether to have a deep understanding that we feel down to our core. It's another thing to know the How and put it into practice, effortlessly.
I've been aware of the fact that I'm a perfectionist for a very long time. But when it came down to trying something new, the fear of failure would stop me in my tracks. I absolutely could not move forward, because it was Terrifying to do so.
The key is to change the feeling. If it feels fun and exhilarating to try something new, I'm going to do it. It's just that simple.
So how do we change the feeling? That's the beauty of transformational coaching. In our work together we create the experience that you're looking for in session, so that feels right to put it into practice out in your life.
The process finally gets people moving in the direction they've wanted to go for a very long time.
I had a client who had a recurring pattern that had showed up in her career over the last fifteen years. She Knew it. She's a seeker of her best life, so it's a pattern she'd figured out and known intellectually most of her adult life. But she hadn't been able to find out how to do differently.
Here's how the pattern played out. She'd take a position, people-please, and yes her way through the first few years, all the while piling commitment after commitment on her shoulders without boundary.
After several years, it would all become too much. She'd dread going to work, or worse, it would all become so much that it left her crying, and eventually, she'd leave.
In this last iteration, one with a particularly toxic environment, she knew she'd have to leave. She knew this for an ENTIRE YEAR. Each time she'd muster her courage to tell them she was leaving, she'd back down for fear of making them mad.
Within three weeks of our work together, she was able to tell them she'd be leaving, but that she'd stay to help out as long as they needed. Within five weeks, she told them her end date.
We did it by making it feel better to tell them than the alternative. And, yes, she did it in steps. That's what difficult change work is about. Chunking it down, so it all feels manageable.
Her ultimate transformation was amazing. She had always maintained a calm, confident, control in the work that she does as a doctor. Now she has that same calm confidence in her interactions with colleagues in the political sphere of her clinic. And she feels amazing.
Perhaps you, yourself have a pattern. Maybe it's people-pleasing, perfection, or a lack of confidence that makes you feel like a fraud.
