Making changes for a successful life

Making changes for a successful life 

For some of our clients, it can be much more than just a busy lifestyle that stops them from finding the time to focus on their behaviors and learn to break old habits. Yet we will normally work with people who have acknowledged they would like to make some changes but accept that they have no real incentive or need to go through with any of it. So how do you activate what motivates them and turn it into something that helps them make the changes they see as important for living a successful life?

Planned changes

We know change can be hard at the best of times, but it can be so much easier if it’s something your client wants to change and comes at a point in their life when they feel ready to grow. This type of planned or intentional change will be when your clients are, for example trying to break a habit, change careers or learn a new skill. It will normally be as a result of their own awareness of the need to change, but can also follow feedback from others or be as a result of an intervention. But whatever the trigger, a planned change is normally something we choose or have some control over.

A good coach can help their clients spot an opportunity, set some goals and see things through, so they broaden their scope of possibilities and develop the new potential that helps them live a successful life. It’s important for your client to understand how they feel now and how they would like to feel (or think they will feel) as a result of any planned change. You can explore this with them by asking them to picture their ideal self (future state), then compare it to their current self (current state).

One way to do this is through the review and understanding of their professional and personal values, as they are at the core of our belief system. According to the American instructor and consultant Robert Dilts, the fact that values are so closely linked to importance, meaning and desire, mean they are one of the prime sources of human motivation.

This is a fundamental concept in coaching change because:

“A person’s degree of motivation determines how much of their internal resources they are willing to draw on.”

Working with somebody to identify and review their values can be an important first step in helping them to start living a successful life, but it must be based on honesty and openness. Encouraging honesty when reviewing values will ensure they are chosen regardless of what anyone (including you as their coach) will think of them and starts the process off on a really solid base.

Other options you could explore in your coaching sessions are to look at planned change through the lens of needs or skills, but whatever approach you take, create an environment where you:

• Encourage – to get an individual out of their comfort zone and explore new behavior
• Empower – to enable them to find their own solution
• Stimulate – their personal and professional development