What does that really mean supporting our inner adventurer?
How do we deal with situations when our inner sabotage voice is so strong that any change seems to be threatening our well being, inner piece and even entire life?
There are changes that are coming from outside, where the only option is to accept them or to change our own attitude towards them.
But what about intentional changes that we want to generate in our lives in order to continue our personal and professional growth?
Are you one of those that continuously searching for challenges and implement them in your life? How connected are you with your inner adventurer?
How do we deal with our inner doubts once the idea or will of making a change is coming to our mind?
In my recent coaching session, my client was doubting about whether he is ready for the professional change and his thoughts were dragging him down, since the reality he was seeing is that he is not capable, not ready and was afraid of changing his status quo. Sounds familiar, isn’t it?
We completed the following exercise which I would like to share with you today.
Make sure you have several seating areas, since changing and moving from one seat to another will make this exercise even more powerful.
First, make sure you have formulated your request properly, for example: ¨Change of work¨, ¨change of city¨, ¨change of my habit¨, etc. It can be anything that you doubt about.
1.Once you have it clear, you proceed to first seat and ask yourself the following: What is the benefit of this change for me?
List all of the benefits that come to your mind, noticing your emotions and feelings once you think about those. How do you feel once you imagine the result?
2. Next you move to another seat, where you will ask yourself: What is the benefit of NOT changing? Again list everything that comes to your mind, including your comfort zone, tranquility, etc. Listen to yourself and note all emotions coming (are there any at all?)
3. You will continue with moving to the next chair, where you will ask yourself: What is the cost of not changing? It can be financial or emotional cost. Project yourself in a year after this decision of ¨not changing¨, what do you see and feel? Note and list everything that you can capture in this seat.
4. Changing again to the new seat, ask yourself: Where I can seek for support? And this is important piece of exercise, because we tend to imagine that in those cases we are alone, however it´s not so true. In any situation you can find external support. In case of my client, he mentioned that it will be his new colleagues, his new mentor, induction manager, etc. Who could be your support in this change?
5. Next seat, we move to face our inner saboteurs, our inner voices that are doing great job in order to prevent any changes in our lives. Indeed in majority of cases their role is to keep us safe, however they are very powerful when it comes to put logical explanations and ¨facts¨ why the change should not be happening. I put ¨facts¨ because mostly those are our limiting beliefs that we tend to experience as the only truth. So, lets identify all those voices and their speeches. The question here is: What agreement do I want to make with them? Again, it can be anything, in case of my client he understood that this is only part of him and he can manage them by acknowledging their good will and asking them to only speak when they have anything new to say.
Finally, it is important to physically move to another space from where you can observe everything that just happened on the previous seats. I invite you here to become your self-observer and note all emotions and challenges that you faced previously. You can make it by creating silent space for a couple of minutes. From this observer place, ask yourself: What am I choosing to stay with out of these 5 different experiences? What do I want to create for myself?
How do you feel after this exercise? What has changed?
I really hope you are ready to support your inner adventurer and make an agreement with your saboteurs.
Be healthy and happy!
With joy,
Jelena
become your inspiration 