and one more

So if you have taken one small step and it is becoming a new habit, well done (say that to yourself in whatever way works for you).If you've been getting off the bus one stop away from your office and walking a bit further than usual, well done. If you made time to phone someone for a chat and then phoned someone esle for another chat another day,well done. If you tidied up one part of your desk at the end of each day, well done. These small changes quickly become habits and then you can select another small step which will take you just a bit closer to the life you'd really like.

Some people are very ambitious and find small steps frustrating so the size of the change you want to make is negotiable. But if your life had stalled and you were very stuck, beware of choosing something which really is too difficult at this time. You don't want to set out to do something unless you can do it until you've reconnected with your self confidence.

Be creative about the stpes you choose, be creative and suit yourself. What works for me might not work for you so although clients often ask me what they should do, as a coach my answers will usually be questions. Questions to help the person make their own choices in their own time so they are living their own life

take just one step

So what's the basis of restart coaching then ? That's often the first question people ask when I talk about "feeling stalled" or "derailed plans". I find some people get used to feeling stalled or trapped very quickly and assume, "that's it ... this is my life and there's no point in trying to change anything."

I disagree

There is a small but powerful question which can help ....... "If you could do one thing to move yourself forward just one step towards your imagined better life, what would that be ?" That's it ..... that's the magic question.

If you can find one small action which you believe would move you forward and you do it, then you have started your new life. If might be phoning your bank to make an appointment to discuss chaotic finances, it might be walking home from work , it might be having a piece of fruit before breakfast or starting a journal, anything which helps you feel a sense of a new beginning will work. Do it once and then either do it again or plan the next small step.

As soon as you've taken that action and praised yourself for starting you have changed your world for the better.

Coaching can take you on from that point but the first step is your own.Tto anyone feeling stalled or trapped today, make one tiny change and let me know what happens.

Restart coaching

One of the aspects of coaching I always used to enjoy was restart coaching. This is when someone had faced something which completely derailed their plans or halted their dream and everything seemed to stop.

Coaching seemed to be an excellent way to enable the person move from a standing start into do able action to promote their own recovery as quickly as possible.

This blog is an example.

In the last year all my plans had to change as someone in my family became seriously ill. At first we were all working to see her recover but in the autumn we had to accept that wasn't going to happen. So from a situation of living according to a list of my own priorities, only living more slowly I had to put many things on hold and live a very different life for a while; just getting by really as my Mother's priorities became family priorities.

It would have been easy to remain stalled after her death earlier this year; to have given up coaching and other satisfying activities to settle for just getting by because "just getting by" can become a habit.

Fortunately coaching also becomes a habit and it wasn't long before I wanted to get back in touch with my own passion to have the best life possible and turned to self coaching for help. Several weeks down the line and I'm once again coaching, with great pleasure, and adding more to my everyday life each day, even more aware of how important it is to live each day to the full.

Once again I have reminded myself of the power of coaching; the questions, the techniques the whole mindset. Once we know how to "think coaching " we have a rich supportive resource for when we feel derailed.

I've used restart coaching for myself and here I am !

I'll do it tomorrow

I hear this a lot when I'm coaching. Towards the end of a coaching call ( for more on this see www.coachingatthenextlevel.biz) I move the client towards some agreed actions.

when we've agreed what the client would like to do a common answer to the next question, "When will you do that ?" is "I'll do it tomorrow! " This is the same if the person is planning to do five or six different things or something which will require planning or something which requires a business to be open and tomorrow is Sunday ...... you get the idea.

We all do it. We can see what we want to do and we trust oursleves to "do it tomorrow". But of course there is always another tomorrow and many of us have too many things to do tomorrow and thus we develop the habit of procrastination which is a very tiring and demotivating habit.

So next time you find yourself thinking "I'll do it tomorrow." Check your diary; is tomorrow a good day for this task, if not choose a better day. Write the task into your diary making sure you give yourself enough time to do it and then treat it as an appointment with someone you think of as really important ... becuae of course you are the most important person in your own life.

Get real

Get real; I hear this used as a way of putting someone's ideas down, as if being real means thinking little, beige, thoughts within a small comfort zone.

I think being realistic means understanding that anything is possible. It may not be possible today or even tomorrow but if you can catch a dream and build it into a well formed goal, why then I know from my coaching experience you can move towards it one step at a time.

Many people come to coaching ( www.coachingatthenextlevel.biz) having lost confidence in their own ability to manage life. For these people small successes are essential to rebuild that "I can do it" feeling small children often have. We learn so much as children and the world is so big and exciting, if we reconnect with that experience and confidence then we really can "Get real" and create the life we'd really like.

How realistic is your thinking today ?

Getting the structure right

Getting the structure right for one's own life is essential. I sometimes coach people who begin transforming in their lives by deciding what time they'd like to get up and what time they'd like to go to bed each day.

This doesn't mean having a completely rigid schedule but it does mean knowing how you feel if you get up at mid day or if you're awake most of the night. If that works for you then that's fine but some people find being awake at 3am very lonely and find that if they retrain their sleeping patterns their life looks quite different quite quickly.

I get up early every morning so I can take my dog out for a walk in woods or along the banks of the Wear in Durham. Its not always a great start if its dark or wet but I prefer the idea that I'm getting up to go for a walk then getting up to go to work. And of course whatever the weather, walking gives me the chance to establish a positive start for the day especially when my dog is so full of joy when he's free to run about. Joy is infectious after all!

Choose just one question to answer or problem to solve

Coaching is full of suprises.

Here at the next level (www.coachingatthenextlevel.biz) I specialise in coaching people who feel stuck, people who feel there's so much to do or so many problems to solve that they can't do anything to improve their lives. They live in a over full, dusty, stressed, uncomfortable comfort zone.

Many of us do have very complex lives and sometimes I think we'd all benefit from simplifying our homes, our diaries and our relationships. That isn't always the best place to start however because it can sound like an instruction to throw things away or to give things up and when a person feels disempowered and demotivated asking them to give up or throw away parts of their world really just doesn't help.

What does help is to choose one question to answer or one problem to solve. From all the possible irritations and blocks, choose one and make a change there.

Time and time again I have been delighted and surprised to see the impact of making one change. Why ? Because when we make one change everything changes. It may only be a tiny change but it is movement from the comfort zone which is anything but comfortable.

So if you feel stuck today, choose one question to answer or problem to solve and see how that feels.