Coaching...For a Change: Get to Work!

“At some point, I promise, at some point every single thing is gonna go south on you, and you’ll think: this is it. This is how I end…And you can either accept that…or you can get to work.

That’s all it is. You simply begin. Solve one problem. Then the next one, then the next. You solve enough problems…and you get to come home.” – The Martian, 2015

If you’ve never seen the movie The Martian, starring Matt Damon, I highly recommend it. Super long story short, it is about a man put in possibly the worst situation any human being on this planet can imagine; being left behind on a planet light years away from Earth, with very limited resources to survive. In his situation, he had to figure out how to survive long enough for folks on Earth to construct a plan to build a spaceship and take another journey back to Mars to save him. Which, by the way, takes roughly seven months for the flight alone.

I can imagine many of you have encountered points in your lives and/or journeys where everything seemed to go south, as if nothing was going right, and the universe seemed to be conspiring against you. Can you picture that time? Are you at that point right now? I believe these points in our lives, or moments, are not only inevitable, but necessary when trying to grow or change. They are inevitable because life, by its very nature, is dynamic and unpredictable with relatively little room for complete control. These moments are necessary because they help push us out of the comfort zones that keep us from growing. Logically, we can’t get to point B by staying at point A.

So, what do you do, when you’re in that very real tough space? Well, you get to work and start solving one problem after another. Easier said than done, I know. But, I encourage you to first ask yourself, what is a better use of your time? Is it better spent thinking about how bad things are? Or, is it better spent thinking of possible solutions to get you out of that tough space? It is certainly possible to do this exercise by yourself. However, often, we have a natural tendency to generate what I like to call, safe solutions. These are the solutions we are most comfortable with because they are the most familiar to us. It is a result of us staying inside our head.

Working with a coach can help you build the introspective muscles needed to get and stay out of your head; to challenge these safe solutions by asking you how they can support tackling your new and different barriers. In these capacities, coaches can serve as trained sounding boards who can help you explore solutions outside of your comfort zone. They can also help you generate practical plans to your uncomfortable solutions by identifying potential barriers and ways to move around them. The goal here is to help you…get to work and maybe, try coaching…for a change.