Change Do You Do It or Does it Undo You

It has been said that change is the only constant. Change is all around us every day and every day our lives our changing. It can not be avoided. We can not bury our heads in the sand or a favored pillow and pretend it's not there.

Sometimes it creeps up slowly over time, we got older, eventually the children grow and leave, step by step our health fails.

Other times it is thrust upon us "out of the blue" divorce is upon us, our work requires that we move, we have moved from a level of success to another.

Or sometimes we wake up and realize that we have to make a change: We have all the money and lifestyle trappings we want, but there is something wrong in the center, we are not where we want to be in this phase of life, we can 't see what is next.

Change is like the water that our lives are held in, and the question becomes do you know how to navigate your yacht, sailboat or raft to and through the current changes to the best place possible? When not navigating waterways well you can be lost at sea for too long, your resources and dreams have been exhausted, you may be reduced to just existing. Recovering from an experience like this can be expensive, eating up valuable time and leave you jaded or disillusioned. Your life energy is undermined. And you are left confused and scared.

But change may be the major stimulant. In retrospect, it may be the best thing that ever happened to you. It may contain rewards that you never dreamed of. But to get access to this level of change, you have to be captain for the change. If you want the growth to success, how to set goals effectively and navigate the transition is the key. You need to muster all your internal and external resources, all your navigational skills and make it work for you, regardless of the change is.

If you do not do anything new in light of the change, you often just create the same outworn results. If you can not change your strategy, you can repeat old patterns of behavior and thinking. You miss the bigger opportunity, and you do not create the life you really want for yourself and your family.

One of our current clients is a woman who came to us during a major health, financial and relocation crisis. Change was on her big time, at almost every level, you can imagine. She had a recurrence of a cancer-based disease, she had to move across the country, her finances were scarily low. In our work together, she has moved from this place of deep insecurity and confusion to a place where she is settled, more at peace with herself than she ever has been and is now still a remarkable success wholesale. She fulfilled the dream of the kind of business and life, she has always wanted for themselves. She is building self-esteem. She could never have done it without the right kind of support, and she is the first to witness it.

Another client has suffered a divorce or loss that was blocking her from her final thesis. She was stabbed in self-doubt, procrastination, without any vision for the future.

She is now close to completing his dissertation and the last months have been exceedingly rich and empowering for her. Visions for her next step is to form. She is excited about the possibilities where previously she could not sense a direction.

Both decided to take change and make it work for them. They found the support, access to resources and built the determination that there was a need to navigate to a current that moves them clearly and safely.

When you look at their process and that other customers, we have seen a progression of steps that occurs when you move through change.

When change happens, you usually:

C: Choke-this is the time when you feel overwhelmed, confused, frightened and often do nothing. Spend too much time in this stage could undermine your energy, usurp your resources and make it more difficult to manage change.

H: Handle obstacles - you "wake up" and realize you have to do something, sometimes nothing. Occasionally people in this stage can see the priorities and begin to handle them, often avoiding the main issues in an attempt to just do something.

A: Access Support - This is a turning point. You realize that you can not do it on your own. You must have a trusted ear. You need someone who can see through the confusion about the change, and help you build a viable action plan. Albert Einstein said we can not solve a problem on the same level where it was created. To find the second level, you need someone who can look at the total picture, a person who is not overshadowed by the emotional reactions, someone who has your interests in mind.

N: New opportunities - Embedded in every change is a possibility. If you continue an old pattern of behavior or thinking - you'll miss it. Unfortunately, we often myopic when it comes to recognition of creative solutions. This step requires someone to help you see and keep the big possibility the image you may be missing.

G: Grow to the next level - This is the part that many people skip. If you do - the whole gift that is at the heart of the change will let you go. In order to "make change", to make it work for you, it is important that you develop the qualities that the skills and heart working effectively with change. As you do this you begin to recognize entirely new level of satisfaction and power in yourself. These developments are yours, you'll use them in anything you attempt in life. They become second nature.

E: Enjoy - This is the amazing scene where you can step back and look at all the experience you've been through. You recognize yourself as the primary navigator of the change. You can feel the sun of success, the warm breeze of joy when you start to really enjoy when you arrived. And you know that if necessary you can navigate CHANGE again.