Santa is never real (again)...
I just finished a client session and she had one of the magical, bone-deep permanent belief shifts.
She couldn't go back to her old thinking if she tried.
Impossible.
She had been struggling to complete a big project for MANY months.
It was a massive project both in scope and skill - it required her to get out of her comfort zone.
She came to me to help her manage her time better so she could finally check the box. Finish the project.
So we started with the "math" part of time management.
How to...
🕕 collect and organize all of her tasks.
🕕 how to schedule time on her calendar.
🕕 how to create systems and processes for her specific responsibilities.
🕕 what to do if she underestimated how long it would take her to complete the task
Once we got the math part down, the drama followed.
It always does.
The drama is the part where the rubber meets the road.
Her big project was all broken down and scheduled.
Yet other things got in the way that she didn't control.
Unexpected phone calls.
Unexpected projects would come up.
She needed to tackle something else first.
"This is what keeps happening," she said during our last session. "My life is too chaotic; there are too many things going on; it just sucks because I have no control over that. I should bail on the project."
The problem is, none of this is true. She controls absolutely everything she chooses to do with her time.
We always have control.
We can always say no to new opportunities, ignore the phone call, stick to the schedule.
So we dug into it, peeled back the layers, and found that the problem is that she was afraid that she wasn't qualified to do the project and everyone would realize that she's a fraud.
In her mind, there wasn't any possibility that she could do a good job, it would likely get rejected, and it would be a colossal waste of her time.
People would judge her, she would beat herself up, who was she even to think she was qualified to do the project in the first place?!
She was hyper-focused on every possible excuse or reason not to work on the project because she felt awful when she did. All of her fears came to the surface and would spin out over her self-perceived inferiority.
She couldn't see that, though.
She couldn't see the forest through the trees.
She worked hard.
Put in the hours.
Usually exhausted at the end of the week and feeling a bit defeated because she hadn't made an ounce of progress.
She felt hopeless and like a failure.
We got to work and had a super-powerful session.
She unloaded all of her insecurities on me, her fears, what she envisioned as the worst-case scenario, and we tackled each one.
She had a massive shift and was on top of the world at the end of the call.
She came to our next session saying she had the worst week she's had in a long time, possibly ever.
Life had thrown one of those medical emergency curveballs at her, and it was pretty heavy.
She filled me in on everything that happened, how she was handling it, areas she needed coaching on, etc.
And then she casually mentioned that she had worked on her project several times. It was the only thing she worked on outside of handling the crisis.
I said "woooahh...pump the brakes."
Um, can we shine a light on the fact that you worked on the big project during a week that you had 4,000,0000 excuses not to work on it, but you did it anyway?
A project that only just last week would get put on hold for any possible little thing came up?
During a major crisis, no less.
Her shift was permanent.
One that will change her life because she eliminated all of those fearful thoughts immediately.
Because she sees that they weren't even real, they were just a creative way to keep herself from taking action—a clever and subconscious excuse not to try.
Which is what our brains are hard-wired to do.
We have to override it to change the results, and that is where I come in.
I need to develop a term for this type of transformation because it's one of the most powerful things that happen during coaching.
It's not always like this; some belief systems take time and consistency to break.
Others happen in a flash.
In a split second, it will never be the same.
It's not about the project, it never is.
It's about who she is and her perceived value in the world.
The trajectory of her life has completed changed in one hour.
It's freaking magical, and we all deserve to experience it at least once.
And I'm so lucky to be along for the ride.
It's almost more fun to watch someone else go through it than to experience it for myself.
It doesn't have to take years and years to see progress.
It can happen in a split second.
And you can't unsee it.
You never accidentally believe that Santa Claus is real again. 😂
Start small and start with your mind.
Your thoughts determine how you feel, how you feel determines how you show up in the world, and how you show up in the world determines your results.
You have to start at the top for it to stick.
When you’re ready to conquer the stuff that is holding you back in life, hit me up. I can help.
Best regards,
Machele
Machele Galloway is a Certified Life Coach through The Life Coach School. She's based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and specializes in helping her clients manage their time and their minds. She firmly believes that you can't manage one without managing the other. She virtually coaches women nationwide. If she isn't coaching clients, she is studying concepts and techniques. And if she isn't doing that, she's probably playing with a dog or watching the Real Housewives of some city. - “Life is short. Play a little.”
