Life Coaches Blog

Scott Young has a fantastic series of posts called Making Personal Growth Last. He makes a lot of good points that I agree with so much that I wished I had written those posts But since he’s already done such a good job of it, all I’ll do is offer my own take on some of them here.

Don’t Expect Quick Fixes

Every other book and personal development course out there is promising you the most incredible results by the time you take to read their titles or less.

I’m not saying a quick fix isn’t possible (I’ve seen it happen), but expecting it is another ballgame from doing it. I saw this a lot of times in my coaching and seminar experience. A lot of people buy into the hype of quick and instant change without a lot of hard work, and it seems to me a symptom of a lazy attitude rather than a willing commitment to make changes work.

While better techniques and more effective methods will help us get where we want to go faster, and the more we learn the better we become, but skill building and implementation takes time.

Do the Best You Can

David Allen makes this point very well in his excellent book Ready for Anything; aim to do your best, not be the best.

When you strive to do your best, the only person you have to beat is yourself, and you avoid all the unnecessary ego busting and comparing that goes with always needing to beat everyone else.

Take Pride in the Little Things

I had my first yoga lesson the other day, and boy did I suck. Halfway through the lesson I was crying like a little girl and wondering what I got myself into…hey, yoga’s not half as easy as it looks!

But sucking is inevitable anytime you want to stretch yourself beyond your old comfort zones (literally, for me). Like Kathy Sierra says, everyone needs to get past the ’suck threshold‘ before they can kick into the ‘I rule’ realm. And to keep yourself going, you and I need to recognize the little triumphs along the way out of the suckdom.

For me, I was proud of myself for even going and lasting the class!

Growing your self-esteem is a pillar to powerful self-growth. The big victories come after the little ones, and telling yourself you did a good job of the little ones boost you towards the big ones.

You did good today in some way, buddy

Brutal Honesty with Vision

I had a lot of difficulty with this myself. Last year, I was struggling with making a decent living for myself. On the one hand, I wanted to believe that I was able to pull my coaching projects off the ground and make them work (the vision). But on the other hand what was really going on was that it wasn’t working, and I was pulling myself down (the brutal reality part). I didn’t want to face it though because I thought somehow facing the truth (honesty) would take away my hopes (the vision).

But I realized, it has to be a good mixture of the two; I had to see things as they are and see things as I want them to be at the same time.

Keep brutal honesty in the present moment, but let the vision of your future pull you forward, and if necessary, the pain of the past to give an extra push.

Go read Scott’s excellent Making Personal Growth Last series.