This post is part of my special Coaching Tips Series. This series was inspired by my clients and the core themes in their challenges. When we can apply these tips, we bring a lot of ease into our lives and step into our leadership.
When we get clarity on what we want and where we want to go, we get excited and uncomfortable. I wrote about this in my post “The uncomfortable truth about you.” Often that discomfort slows us down or stops us completely.
So how do you keep going when discomfort is there?
While we don’t want to stay in discomfort, if we try to block it out or avoid it, we miss out on important information.
Here’s a 3 step process that I often use with my coaching clients to help them access that information.
Step 1
Accept that discomfort is part of the process
Step 2
Reset your mind into positivity. How? Do some 10 second meditations.
Put all your attention onto a physical sensation. Here are some tips
- breathing – put your hand on your belly and feel it move as you breathe
- touch – rub two fingers together with such attention that you can feel the ridges
- hearing – listen to what you can hear: what is the sound furthest away from you? what is the sound closest to you?
Do this for about 2 mins and usually you will feel a shift.
helpful tip: 10 seconds is about the same amount of time as 3 slow breaths
Step 3
Shift your attention to what the discomfort is telling you.
It’s important to do step 2 so that you can be in a positive mindset where we can discern and learn, instead of getting all judgey judgerson about it all.
Here are 3 lenses through which you can do this for yourself.
- No, not that. The discomfort might be pointing you to something that you are not ok with – self-doubt, too much work, how will I ever get this right? So maybe you need some allies to help you, or you need to make a time-phased plan (one step at a time), etc
- What’s missing is… The discomfort might be from the fact that you are far away from your goal and that you currently don’t have the skills, knowledge, or resources to make it happen. What’s great about this is that you can then quickly make a list of things you need to learn or invest in to make your big plans happen.
- More of that… excitement and anxiety have the same energetic wavelength. Perhaps your discomfort is actually excited about “I get to do more of the things I love”. So what is it that you want more of? Focus on that and make it happen
Give it a go. Let me know how it goes. Want to talk it through with me? Use a free Experience Coaching session and I’ll help you.