In my coaching sessions, most people want to have certainty or some form of assurance that the changes they will be making are going to work. All of us want that, don’t we? The problem is that some people want absolute certainty.
Well, in my opinion, that’s the very thing that’s stopping them from ending their suffering. The idea is not to work on changing the things that they came to me with (e.g. starting a business, leading a team with a new idea, ending a relationship, starting a new life in a new country etc.), the idea is to work on their self-sabotaging belief that certainty is more important than change.
Behind the need for certainty, there is fear. Fear of losing a certain lifestyle, fear of failing in the eyes of others, fear of losing the comfort and reputation previously enjoyed, fear of not being strong or smart enough, fear… fear… fear… For some, the fear seems very real: they believe they’re risking their lives, but in actuality, death is very unlikely. The “death” they fear is all the above: fear generated from our ego-based identities.
None of the things in the physical realm operates on the law of certainty. In the physical world, everything is in the flux of change. Quantum physicists who have studied the most fundamental building blocks of our world say these are in a constant state of change, and the change of one part affects all the other parts.
Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg says that we will never know everything about anything. This is not based on philosophy, but on advanced calculations and experiments.
So a coach is to help people redefine change and also embrace the beauty of change. Instead of fixating on certainty, I help my coaching clients simplify their lives so that they can easily adapt to uncertainties in life. And the fact is that uncertainty has a pattern when we understand that we are free. This field of study is called Chaos Theory.
It boils down to this:
a) Embrace uncertainty, be comfortable with working on a rough plan.
b) Take action, not just to achieve something, but to receive feedback.
c) Study, reflect on the feedback received and begin to see a structure and pattern.
d) With the information analysed, come out with a more intelligent approach and go through steps b) c) and d) again.
The largest part of the coaching people for change is actually around steps b), c) and d). The idea is to help clients see that Life is our greatest teacher; trust it, show up and interact with it.
Of course, this process is not focused on changing life circumstances, but more importantly, on changing people. Now, that’s the goal of the goal. Most people don’t realise that. When we achieve this, we move to a higher level of awareness and living (we evolve).
There’s a proverbial saying, “If you continue to do what you’ve been doing, you’ll continue to get what you’ve been getting.” In other words, to get something you’ve never had, you’ve got to do something you’ve never done. The funny thing is, although this makes absolute sense, why are people still clinging on to their existing unsatisfactory life? This question leads us back to our same old enemy – fear.
People fear they might fail trying something new. But no one can really be absolutely certain they will fail. So in all fairness, they have at least a 50% chance of succeeding. Isn’t a 50% chance of succeeding much better than a 100% certainty of failing by doing the same old thing? If there’s one thing that you want to take away from this reading is, that is: be resolved to doing something different – today!
If you are resolved in trying something new, you can read up my article Re-Create Yourself with NLP.
