Now What? Strategies

Change is the one constant in life.

We hate our taxes and our weight gain and our in-laws some of the time, but Change is something we loathe with a constant, burning passion.

Why we hate it is simple – the minute we Change the thing we’re used to, we feel dumb. It takes work and the whole time we’re struggling, we know that as soon as we get good at the new way of doing things we’ll have to change again.

Now What? Strategies take the hapless/hopeless feeling away and help you plan your steps in a way that makes the process fun again. We start where you are, on familiar ground, and use the things you take pride in as a measure of the way you want your future to be.

We talk about the things you need and want and why they matter to you. We talk about your goals and we look at the skills and strengths you bring to the mix. We also talk about the things that get in your way – the things you don’t like and aren’t good at – because we want to get them out of your way.

We identify what you’re passionate about. We explore all the ways that these new and different ideas are similar to things you already know and do. This minimizes that awful feeling of being off-balance that happens when we step out of our comfort zones and begin something new.

Why is so much time devoted to all this talk? Because it builds belief in yourself and the learning process. It’s the single most important ingredient in the recipe for success.

Everything we do in life – except for those automatic things like blinking and breathing – is a step-by-step process we learned from someone we trust. Walking, talking, climbing stairs, flushing toilets, getting most of the food off the plate and into our mouths… these are processes that someone we trusted taught to us. Every single one of these accomplishments was learned in steps and stages. The more we practiced them, the smoother we got. By the time we were good at it, we’d forgotten that it was a process. We’d forgotten that walking began with crawling and standing and falling and standing again.

The reason it’s so easy to forget a process is that we don’t notice it while we’re in it. We’re focused on each step as an end in itself. We don’t see the forest because we’re listening to the person we trust. When we reach our goal and look back, we don’t think about that first incredible tree. We think about the person we trusted.

When people get a great idea and decide to make it happen without bothering to design a plan, they forget that the learning curve is a process. They think that if they can see the goal, the steps will take care of themselves. When this turns out to be wrong, they get angry. They feel dumb. They lose confidence and sometimes they give up.

Failure is temporary. Giving up makes it permanent.

These people who try to start something new without planning usually make 3 mistakes:

1. They’ve no idea how to take the first step, so they guess. More often than not, they guess wrong. When it falls apart, they give up.
2. If they don’t give up, they turn to someone they know because they trust them – not because they know how to help. More often than not, this is wrong too.
3. When guessing and trusting don’t work, they figure they could do worse than copy the competition. Wrong again.

Does any of this sound like you?

If it does, that’s great! Because we can fix it. We can figure out where to start before you start… and then you’ll be on your way.

It’s January… what better time to take on Change? I can’t wait. Can you?