I became a health coach because I care deeply about helping others navigate the process of personal growth and change. Many times, we know we need a change, or we know we want to change, but the process is hard, so we let it go and fall back into familiar habits and patterns.
What I have learned over many years of working to create change is that oftentimes the answer to the question, “What is my next step?” lies within us. A key part of growth is learning to ask the questions and to listen deeply to the intuition and guidance from our deepest wisest center. We can learn how to do this. We can practice asking questions and finding answers.
This is not a process that our modern culture necessarily supports or facilitates. It is not a process that many of us know how to even begin to approach. It is a process that takes space, time and often periods of silence. I have learned personally that developing a ‘listening attitude’ is key.
When I work with individuals on creating change, an important part of the work is to find what they deeply value. We create change from this place. When we are aligned with our deepest values, we become energized, motivated, and activated for change. Then we can work to explore and practice new behaviors and cultivate new attitudes to support the desired changes.
Another key discovery in my own process of making personal change was learning to embrace my feelings of ambivalence. In every effective behavior change that I have made, there has been a part of me that has wanted to make a change AND a part of me that has not wanted to change.
As I learned to identify this part of me that didn’t want to change, and the reasons that the behavior served this part of me, it became easier to create the desired changes. I had a new ability to work with that aspect, instead of trying to use willpower or might to push through. I have often found that when I allow this part of me to ‘be there’ and I listen to the messages it is sending, it changes effortlessly.