Sometimes you don’t know what you really want. You think you do, you know that one thing that needs to change for life to be better. If you lose weight, you will be happy. If you change jobs, you will be fulfilled. You decide what that one thing is, and start telling people it needs to change.
What I love about being a coach is creating the space for someone to dig around and to figure out what they truly want. Digging through the detail and uncovering people’s truth is one of the best parts of my job.
Let me tell you about Alex.
Alex is in her early 40s and has two children. She was considering a new career. She had a job that worked for her family, she could work around the kids, in a pretty straightforward, but unqualified job. She thought that maybe she needed something more challenging. She started looking at job ads with bigger hours and more responsibility. She was determined to find something ‘bigger’.
I asked questions, Alex completed written exercises and I listened. It became apparent that she had lost her confidence through her child rearing years. She had been so enmeshed in nappies and toddlers she had willingly, left life decisions up to her husband to guide the family. And she realised there was one aspect of her life that was draining her: what she really wanted was to own her own home. Renting / non-ownership had become exhausting and stressful and was taking more brain space than she realised.
She noticed that she kept all the packaging of new items, in case they were going to move soon. She was fed up with the endless property inspections and of living in a place she could not make her own. Major purchases were put off because they were not sure what their permanent home would look like. She was stranded in the meantime. The meantime is what you own, or what you are doing, while you wait.
Working together clarified her truth and what she really wanted. Firstly, Alex realised she knew she really wanted her own home. Secondly, she realised she did have some control and ability to influence what her future contains. Third, she realised her ‘easy’ job suited her just fine, and was happy to stay in it, and not commit to more hours. Instead, those hours would go toward building her home.
Last week, she emailed me a picture of her standing in front of the ‘Sold’ board of her new house. Alex figured out what she really wanted and ran with it.
It’s like the old tale of the Princess and the Pea. She kept thinking she need a new mattress. But she really needed to dig deep and figure out her ‘pea’. And remove it.
What do you really want? Truly deeply want? Not the first thing that comes to mind, but what do you truly yearn for? Is there something that you really want to stop or start? Coaching can clarify a truth you may have been hiding from yourself for a while.
