Becoming Your Project:

Making Life Happen

It’s the start of a new year (it could be any time, though) and the New Year’s resolution meme has begun its predictable cycle.  We “resolve” to lose weight, change career, stop smoking, travel more, become less of something and more of something else.  In a few months we will look back and probably not have achieved many, if not most or all of the items on the list.  The resolution cycle has become a stalwart of the media because it is so predictable and we relate to it for this reason.

Why? Do we suffer from a collective lack of willpower? Are our lives too hectic? Are the resolutions too ambitious? Are we simply creatures of habit?  These are the excuses we recite to ourselves or hear from others.  Our inner critics will offer up plenty of reasons like these not to change our lives.

Counterintuitively, talking about resolutions seems to work against achieving them. Have you noticed this? It’s like letting some air out of your tires. Plenty of research backs up this observation. Talking about a resolution fools us into thinking we’ve partially achieved it. Clearly, some common strategies for achieving goals do not work. There are steps, though, that can be taken to implement meaningful, measurable life change.

The most important step is to set goals that are resonant.  Stating that you simply want to lose weight is not a resonant way to frame weight loss. Why do you want to lose weight? What will it mean to you? How will you feel when you achieve the loss? Who will you become? Who will you un-become? And for whom?  Reaching down into the significance of goals and understanding how you connect with them is the critical first step in setting (and excluding) goals.  The list is not enough but the process of developing the list is a necessary first step. A life coach facilitates this process. The work, though, has just begun.

With meaningful goals in place the next step is to develop an achievable plan for reaching each goal. Many of us do not take this step on our own but an effective life coach will insist on it.  You will set a target end date with significant, measurable milestones between now and then.  Your life coach will facilitate this planning and work as your project co-manager to develop an achievable though assertive, disciplined roadmap.  This creates order.

With a plan in place your life coach asserts one more role as supportive advocate to help you realize the plan.  Your life coach will cheer your successes, help you adjust your perspective to steer around obstacles, and work with you to alter the plan as circumstances change.  This creates accountability.

A life coach will help you set resonant goals, create a plan to achieve them and unconditionally advocate for you until you become your project.  Without all of these components, resolutions rarely resolve into reality.  Life coaching is about designing and realizing real change in your life.    (Other Thoughts and Essays)

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