Goals: Raise Motivation and Confidence Level Clarify Area of Change and Focus, February 2022
In the January Blog, you were asked to rate how motivated you are to make a change. If your rating was below 5, you have some work to do to raise your motivation. If your rating was above 5, then you are ready and willing to being your change.
You were also asked how confident you are to being the pathway to change. If your rating was below 5, you have some work to do to raise your confidence that you are ready and willing to work on confidence building.
Choosing the area, you want to work on and what the focus is in that area is an important decision. At this time, you may or may not be ready to choose an area of focus, and that is perfectly fine. Because the purpose of this blog is to raise your motivation and confidence and then to clearly define the area of change and then the focus.
How do you increase your motivation to make a change?
The first step is to give yourself permission to succeed, to be honest about what you fear, to be present, to accept that the work may be out of your comfort zone and to accept vulnerability, trust, hope and encouragement.
How do you increase your confidence to make a change?
Making a change can be accompanied by a variety of feelings and emotions from exhilaration to deep disappointment. The goal is to ignore the negative thoughts and feelings and focus on the adventure and even the excitement of the journey. Change is to become enchanted with life and allow ourselves an opportunity to succeed.
In order to prioritize either your area or focus of change, get Post-it notes and write down the area of your focus and identify the areas that you are both optimistic and realistic about. What's powerful about doing this is that you will be doing a reality check and recognizing very quickly the dreams and facts of succeeding. This also gives you an opportunity to be aware of the fears and challenges of changing your behaviors. Reflecting on these key insights will open up tough uncomfortable internal conversations and give you an opportunity to speak up and reach inward and pull up courage and vulnerability and stay in the moment to achieve change.
What if uncomfortable questions come out your key reflections? If you are not entirely sure what to do with this information, reach out to a coach who will assist you in finding valuable insight to set you on a path to address the right issue. This is a pivotal point on your pathway to change because you realize that you don't know how to deal with this and you opened the door to conversations that you don't feel equipped to address. Remember you are a traveler and not a mapmaker and if you have someone you can reach out to, you have given yourself an opportunity to succeed.
March 2022 Questions and Suggestions
This month you are challenged to get curious and possibly surface emotions and emotional experiences that you have not been able to articulate or address. These are thoughts and behaviors that you repeat over and over that prevent you from making the change you desire. You are challenged to dig deeper to the thinking and feeling behind those behaviors. You are asked to peel away the visible and invisible layers of your ego and gain productive insights. You are asked to take time to call upon that higher all-knowing self that allows you to reach those messy conscious or unconsciously held cultural beliefs and reveal your vulnerability. But remember that at the same time you are engaging in new and never before used trust, creativity, and accountability to make change.
This is your opportunity to wash away the locked down emotions and experiences that may make you feel so flawed and threatened. You are asked to open your heart and take off your protective shields (amour) and recalculate and recalibrate your most unique and valuable assets--your clarity, trust, courage, accountability, hope, and values that lead you to a vision of your healthy change.