When you refuse to take risks, you refuse as well to take the opportunity attached to that risk, you close the doors that open up for you on your path. On the other hand initiating change, transition and transformation, and not giving up, is the only way to generate evolution, progress and growth. How successful you are, is highly dependent on how much risk you are willing to take.
In order to change your life, you first have to change your mind, the change has to come from within. You must be willing to change the rules you live by, your beliefs, your assumptions, the meaning you attach to things.
You were born with a purpose. You have the potential to be great, to be amazing. Settling for less means choosing to limit yourself. When you welcome the unknown, when you embrace change, when you take risks, there are no guarantees, so you need to get ready for pure adventure, and you must figure it all out as you go along. Change can be empowering! Change can help you evolve! It can make you discover new ways to do things. Change has the potential to set you free. Change can make you come alive!
Coaching Application
Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.
There are always difficulties arising, which tempt you to believe that your critics are right.
To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a client comes to a coach for support, he may feel either stuck, or unfulfilled, or confused with his life or he might be disappointed with how things have evolved so far. The coach should first try to understand where the client is, and why exactly is he unhappy with his current situation. He can investigate what are the client’s values, goals, dreams. What are his underlying beliefs? What is he committed to?
When the feeling of being unfulfilled, stuck or unhappy emerges, that could be a signal that the client is not acting in alignment with his real values. As an example, clients might say that they value safety, security, comfort, but at the same time they are bored with the predictable outcome of their safe life. In this case, safety might not be their true value but rather an adopted one, a value imposed on them from outside. Alternatively, clients might have certain limiting beliefs, which tell them that they are not allowed to undertake change or they might even think that they cannot change.
Oftentimes, people submissively tend to follow a pre-set path, the common path, because it proved functional before. As coaches it is our role to help our clients challenge their beliefs, it is our role to help our clients understand that all their beliefs are optional and they can stop believing them anytime they choose to.
Another common blockage might appear fueled by fear. The fear of losing, the fear of being un-cool, the fear of embarrassment, the fear of being rejected, the fear of being ridiculous, keeps us stuck. Fear keeps us from taking action, from changing the status quo. Only when we manage to overcome that fear, only then can we be fully committed and put all our efforts and all your resources to work in order to change and make our true dreams come true. It is in our hands, we can decide to choose to expand, to move on, to grow to be true to our full potential. We do have the power to break free!
As coaches we can stimulate our client to start slowly, to take small steps every day toward doing things that they haven’ t tried before. Taking small risks each day will awaken our clients’ appetite for taking risk and slowly they can lose their fear of being rejected and their fear of failing. Leaving the comfort zone more and more each day, combined with taking consistent action can make the fear or failure and discomfort dissipate slowly.
Another way to help clients defeat fear is to encourage them to put themselves exactly in the situations they are afraid of. Sometimes, even if things do not turn out for the best, showing high resilience and taking every rejection as a lesson, any obstacle can be overcome. You can practically not fail unless you stop moving in the direction of your dreams. Anything that goes wrong is just a temporary setback if you don’t give up.
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Powerful questions that a coach might ask in order to challenge limiting beliefs, help the client allow himself to dream, dissipate the fear and stimulate action taking: