What's stopping you, the truth about those mental blocks!

We all get mental blocks, the loss of drive, motivation but once you understand what's underlying it you can deal with it however you want - you have choices, how good it that!

No matter if you consciously set goals or not, may be you say to yourself "I'll look for a new job in the new year" or "I'm going to take three months off " you will be looking forward in some way. A lot of my work is really clarifying and making the goal tangible, is it what you really want?

Then there are the Big Hairy Audacious goals that really stretch us. Such goals aren't set routinely and a lot of people don't think that far ahead or that big, they are good to really get us thinking and get us going for what we really want - the big one if you dare!

So what happens when all the initial enthusiasm and energy drops and doubts start setting in. This is a common and universal to all becoming stuck, de - motivated or just plain lost. It's these 'mental blocks' that cause everything to grind to a halt. Now this 'stuckness' can take the form of : -

1. Procasternation: - Putting it off, those thought patterns that say "oh I don't have to do it now, I'll be more enthusiastic after the summer, oh it can wait, I'm OK anyway what's the rush" ... you know the kind of thing!

2. Rationalisation: - The analysing and the rational brain concludes " ... actually I don't need to exercise more really because I'm on my feet all day" or "I'm ok my Grandmother lived until she was ninety AND she smoked all her life". You rationalise and think it through to the conclusion that suits your limiting belief and that of course keeps you in your comfort zone and keeps the status quo.

3. Resistance: - Simple refusal, often you get so close to getting where you want to be and then you think "forget it, this is totally exhausting I'm not doing anymore" and you walk out or sack your personal trainer, life coach, tutor, mentor or business partner. It's a child like response that has served you well in the past however there are times when you sabotage your own success with such reactions.

Underneath and at the centre of these three behaviours is fear!

fear of success fear of failure

fear of the unknown

The fear is feeding limiting beliefs, beliefs about ourselves that we hold as true - the way you see yourself. They are the biggest single block to fulfilling your potential!

They can be thoughts of not quite measuring up and are ways of seeing ourselves that are rigid. Often you can hear the inside voice that is your biggest critic for example when things don't quite turn out as expected "I should have known, why am I so stupid".

The statements we make about ourselves can be limiting for example "I'm not adventurous" or "I don't do parties'. Those throw away comments or sweeping statements about ourselves really do say everything.

These limiting beliefs are myths but feel very real as it's a view of yourself you've grown up with, however they can change and do change, it is possible.

Once aware of your limiting beliefs and that they are a stumbling block you can do something about it. Start with the possibility that they are not necessarily true and what if the opposite where true of you?

So saying "oh it's just the way I am" just doesn't hold any sway, yes change can be uncomfortable but you'll be working towards the reward what you want. If it's a pattern in your life what's going to be different next time?

Life coaching is also about ...

Today I once again met a lovely woman in Cambridge who made the assumption that coaching is about having goals - “ahh don’t you have to be focused and have a goal in mind?” or “oh isn’t that all about getting to your goal”, well a lot of my clients do want to make changes in their busy lives by setting or creating new goals.

However I also have clients who –

1. Don’t have any goals in mind

2. Have had enough of working towards goals

3. Really don’t want to anything to do with goals

So Life Coaching for me is not just about goals, focus and achievements. A very important part of what I do is giving people time to work out how they got to here and how we move on to where they want to be and sometimes it's just about understanding behaviour and patterns.

For example one client I shall call Jane contacted me and we met for two hours every month for six months. She was based in the South East and after University had taken the best job offered that was many years ago, in the mean time she had experienced two bereavements, three promotions, a company car – she was doing very well. So what did she want with coach?

Well she wanted to be looking towards the next three and final years of her career, she was going through a period of transition to early retirement or rather a new and very different life.

In her feedback she wrote that the coaching was “ purely time for me to redefine what my career and life was about … “

We did not talk about her career performance, goals or plans. She used the space literally for time to think out loud. It is my view that she used the time to really take another perspective and assimilate the bereavements, how fast her career had moved and many more events that had not been given any attention over the last twenty years but she felt were significant.

We all experience deep and moving times without any chance to really think about the impact of what’s happened to ourselves and our loved ones. We can be very hard and judgmental on ourselves at such times.

Having a coach is like having a confidante, a sounding board, a collaborative partner to support you through life’s changes. I used Jane to highlight the wide spectrum of clients I work with and to show that it’s not all about goals sometimes it’s just about having the space and time to be and in turn gaining an understanding oneself.