Holding Your Process Sacred
Adam Quiney
Executive Coach | Transformational Coaching and Leadership for Leaders of Leaders
One of the big ways I see me (and others) stay stuck is waiting until we’re ready.
This is the flavour of hiring a cleaning service after I’ve got the house looking a little less messy.
My life is utter chaos right now, there’s no way I have the space to bring in a coach right now. I’ll wait until things are a little less insane, then I’ll have the space to work on myself.
The trap with this approach is that, assuming I’m hiring this person to help me with the very thing that seems to continually be showing up in my life (messiness, chaos, busy-ness, relationships falling apart, etc.), I’ll forever be creating new reasons for “Not Yet”.
So, it’s a bit of a cycle.
But wait, there’s a second even MORE nefarious trap!
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This second trap, is that, seeing this problem, I conclude “Well, I guess I should just do it anyhow”. I effectively throw away my sovereignty, in service of a rule that “I’ll never be ready so I should just leap in.”
That won’t really create a breakthrough either — I’m subverting my intuition and internal guidance in favour of a rule. I may start the thing, but I’m doing so at the expense of my own process.
What I find more powerful is to distinguish the pattern (eg. I wait until I’m “ready”, before starting the thing that would support me being “ready”), choose into it (I’m going to wait anyhow, even if this is my pattern), and then simply witness how things go.
I’ll make the decision, and then I’ll set reminders on my phone to check in with myself. “Hey, how is this going? Are things actually getting less busy/scary/chaotic/hard/etc.?”
This way, I’m honouring the choice I already know I was going to make, but I can at least learn from it.
We all have a process. Hold yours sacred.