What does it take to experience transformation?
What does it take to experience transformation in the domains of
our lives where we have never experienced mastery?
As we look forward to our future, it can also be rewarding to
review how far we've come and what we've learned. I have had the
privilege of coaching some amazing men and women in what I
believe is the formula for experiencing transformation in the
areas of life where they have not experienced mastery, and would
love to share some of my observations with you. Please bear in
mind that I do not present the following as truth, but purely as
my own opinion, based on my own experience and that of my
clients.
I never stop hearing clients say: 'Sally, I want to change'. My
response is usually, 'I get that you want to change, but are you
prepared to do what it takes to be committed to changing? There
is a huge difference between the two.' Understanding the
difference is fundamental to the LIVE NOW Philosophy. Much of
what I will speak about here relates to this philosophy.
I think of wanting as 'shape shifting', where humans live in a
state of past and future projections, to which they add meaning,
and continue to live a life of 'doing' where they are often
struggling, overwhelmed, frustrated and angry. I see commitment,
however, as a powerful state of transformation, where a person
exists in a state of 'being', attracting synchronistic
opportunities and living a life of integrity - a life of ease
and flow.
In my opinion, people generally do not experience sustainable
change in many areas of their lives because they do not realize
that they get a lot out of keeping things in these areas exactly
as they are. I believe that every human being has a default
identity, which feeds their internal inner critic dialogue and
keeps the person in the vicious cycle of not producing the
results they want in their lives. Before transformation can
occur in any area of life, that identity must be challenged.
Usually people are not aware that they have a default identity,
so before a client can transcend it, the coach must first
presence the individual to its existence.
Clients will often say to me things like: I do not set
goals because I don't want the definition of goals to constrain
me. I have done goal setting before, and it doesn't
work. I have read the books, done the courses, and
invested A LOT of money into my own transformation, but I
struggle with sustaining change. I get the shot of euphoria at a
course or from reading a book, but then I go back out into my
life and the same old things still happen.
I think that beliefs and values are adopted in childhood; they
then form our behavior, which forms the structures, which form
the culture, which then forms the results. Most people try to
incorporate change from the outer two layers of culture-results.
For example, they might say, 'I wish to lose weight', and then
expect the results to show up; or 'I wish to dictate the
cultural change within this organization', and then expect the
culture to change overnight. Then the individual and the
organization are left wondering why the experience is not
sustainable. If you want to achieve any level of sustainable
change, you need to go much deeper - you need to unearth the
'negative' beliefs and values that were adopted in childhood and
held in the subconscious, and 're-train' or 're-program' them
into more positive, empowering beliefs.
Do you know that whenever you are triggered, it is never the
current circumstances that are triggering you? It is always
something unhealed from your childhood. When I meet a client
aged 30, 40 or 50, they come to me with 25, 35 or 45 years of
preconditioning in their default behavior. To sustainably
circumvent decades of default behavior takes something! I
believe that the default behavior is adopted at around 3-5 years
of age. Children are present, they implicitly trust, and they do
not have safety issues - these are learnt. They innately trust
the unknown. From the minute a child interacts with others,
walks and talks, he or she begins to adopt beliefs and values
from parents, siblings, teachers, and his or her environment,
and as a result the lid goes down on the child's potential.
Therefore, when clients present themselves to me, they come with
'what they know'. They live in a world - or box, as I call it -
inside which they believe that they are safe and in control. The
irony is that the box of what they know confines them, for they
do not trust the unknown. When they step outside their box, they
confront beliefs and behaviors that have kept them constrained
for years, and two fundamental things occur: they experience
fear, and their inner critic dialogue becomes a lot more vocal.
If insufficient work has been done on their default behavior,
they will go back inside the box of what they know - where any
change they have made is not sustainable. To achieve any level
of sustainability, they must learn to master their fear, master
their inner critic, and trust the unknown.
Most coaches say that coaching is about the present and the
future. I have an issue with this. I think that we are
self-fulfilling prophecies if we do not heal our past
preconditioning. Coaches also tend to view any past-based
interaction with a client as counselling or psychotherapy, and
outside the realm of coaching. I disagree. I am not interested
in delving into the past for the sake of dragging up old wounds.
I am, however, very interested in helping people regain their
power, and to do this I need to show them that their past is
forever in their future and they are not even aware of it half
the time. We read time and again that 'what we think creates our
reality', yet we are not taught to be vigilant with our thought
structures.
I believe that moment by moment by moment, we are either in our
default or in our power. How do you live in your power all the
time? You have to begin by believing that it is possible, and
then you need to learn certain tools to help you maintain any
change you make. Here are some of the sustainable tools I teach
clients in my own coaching programmes:
1. How to master your inner critic dialogue; 2. How to be a 10
every day and sustain that state; 3. How to de-trigger within a
mili-second regardless of what comes at you (rather than live in
a triggered state for an hour, a day, a week, a month etc); 4.
How to live 'in the zone' and be the conduit for attracting
synchronistic opportunities to come to you; 5. How to stop doing
life - experiencing struggle, overwhelm, anxiety, frustration,
anger - and start living a life of being which results in an
experience of living in flow, with ease, no longer striving to
accomplish goals but attracting and manifesting goals as a
function of who you are being; 6. How to end the lifetime of
sabotage and learn experiential compassion for yourself ... and
the list goes on. Experiencing any of the above is like walking
on water!
I disagree with those who believe that happiness lies in the
fulfilment of goals. I have clients who pretty much 'have it
all', but are not happy. I also have many clients who want what
those clients have, thinking that when they get 'there'
(wherever that is) they will be happy. I see so many people
striving for a future that is no more than an illusion, not
realizing that happiness is a choice only accessible in the
present - but that's another paper in itself!
This is not to say that I discredit the power of obtaining
goals. Be very clear to the universe about what you want, just
do not be attached to how it shows up! Rather than striving for
goals in the world of doing, we can all arrive into the state of
being and attract what we want as a function of who we are
being. Do you realize that on any given day, from the minute you
are awake, your thoughts are primarily past- or future-based and
you are hardly ever present? I believe that the magic we all
seek lies in the unknown, and the ability to access the unknown
can only exist in the present moment. Oh, but to be present, one
would have to FEEL again ...
Buggar that! Let's go back into the mind chatter of past and
future thought structures. Your life will be transformed when
you live in the reality of the present. The past is no more than
a thought, and exists nowhere other than in a thought, so why do
we keep feeding it? The future is an illusion, and can only be a
function of what we think in the 'now' moment. When you collapse
your past and future thought structures and train yourself to
live in the present moment, you will no longer be living in a
world of thought and illusion, but in the reality of the present
moment. Your life will be excitingly unrecognizable!
For this, you need to come back to want versus commitment. It
really takes something to be committed - and it is something you
choose moment by moment based in what it is you say you are
committed to. With commitment comes responsibility and
integrity, and I believe that to experience true freedom you
must transform your relationship to these three things:
Commitment Responsibility Integrity.
Sadly, most people have no freedom with commitment, and even
view it as a prison sentence. Most people's relationship with
responsibility is heavily weighted from the past, so they have
no freedom in the 'now' moment. And most people's relationship
to integrity is that they do their version of it when it suits.
To experience trust in the freedom to be, you must learn to
transcend the past and transform your relationship to these
three areas.
In one of my seminars recently, someone said, 'Sally, I got
something the other day'. 'What was that?" I asked. She said: 'I
now realize that when you are committed you do not always enjoy
what you are doing!' 'Brilliant!' I said, and gave an example: I
am currently training for a body sculpting competition, and am
often asked why I am doing this. I always reply that it trains
me to live at a high degree of integrity, and fundamentally my
reason for doing it has little to do with the competition
itself. Do you think that I enjoy going to the gym at 5.30 most
mornings to do one or two hours training every day? Not
particularly, but I do it because that is what I am committed
to, and it enables me to live in integrity with my word, thereby
producing the results.
In my coaching practice, I have seen that many people do not act
every day in alignment with what they say they are committed to.
Why not? When they are confronted, fearful or anxious, they
allow themselves to live life as a consequence of these feelings
- and these are default oriented feelings that keep people in
the vicious cycle of not producing the results they want in
their lives. This is why I stand for people to not make whatever
they feel at the default level of thinking mean anything, and
just stay on the court by saying to themselves:
I am fearful. OK, fear is present - so what! Don't make it mean
anything - EMBRACE THE FEELING and take the action anyway.
Fear is only a thought and has no power unless you feed it. If
you feed it, you will always be stopped from having what you
really want by a past- or future-based thought structure. You
will either have dragged something in from the past, or gone off
into the future and created a world that doesn't even exist.
Fundamentally, fear is a function of not being present. If you
can learn to transcend/embrace your fear, you are well on the
way to achieving what you want in your life. Remember, what you
resist, persists. The answer lies in the ability to BE WITH what
you feel without adding the meaning!