Taking Action For Personal Success – Part II

A few days ago I started this topic of  Taking Action For Personal Success - Part I,  I began with how creating action is not always easy, it does take mental strength. However it is critical to our feeling of personal success and achievement. Action is doing. It is experiencing something. Today I’m going to continue with…

Coaching Application

Coaching is about being in action. My clients hire me because they want to move forward and they want change to get results. As their life/career coach I can’t do it for them. But what I can do is enthuse and inspire them into wanting to take action and then support them to take the many small steps that will help them reach their personal success.

Ideally, my clients come to me prepared to generate their own action. The very act of seeking out the services of me or any coach often indicates they are ready for some change in their lives. Many individuals will come into the coaching with a plan of action and a strategy. Many will have thought of the steps they need to take to make progress or may ask for suggestions about how they can move forward. The main service these clients ask from me or any coach is to listen, ask questions to help them to clarify their plans and to acknowledge their development.

Other individuals may find it more difficult to move into action and may lean on me a little more in the process. When my clients don’t generate their own action, I ask them ‘courageous action questions’ to encourage movement. Here’s what I mean by ‘courageous action questions” that you may find helpful

• What’s the first step you need to take?
• What would someone, who is fearless, do about this?
• What needs to happen now?
• What would it make sense to do now?
• Can you come up with some action steps to take this week?
• What is the risk involved in this if you do not do it?
• What is stopping you from moving forward?

Inviting Action

As an individual is discussing an issue, many suggestions for possible action my come up. I normally try to hold off on providing suggestions as it’s more empowering for the individual to come up with ideas for reaching their personal goals on their own.

There may be many possible ways to move forward and, one thing I know for sure is that the person who comes up with idea themselves are most likely to follow through on. This can be a real challenge at times, especially if there is a solution “starting them in the face.”

However, when a client indicates that they want to move forward, but can’t seem to come up with an idea for action, particularly if it is coming to the end of the session, I often will provide some “mentorship.”   Often I will wear different hats during my sessions.  I know this fly’s in the face of what traditional coaching is supposed to be.  However, as people evolve I feel I must evolve as well to assist them.  I like the approach that Robert Dilts takes “from coach to awakener.”  This perspective allows me to be coach, teacher, mentor, guide, sponsor and awakener.  All these roles are essential in creating inspired action.  Sure we can all get someone to take action, but it’s a different story to assist the person in taking inspired action.

Inspired action – for me – is essential in obtaining personal success.  If someone is taking action just to please or keep someone else happy, then the results will not be authentic.  Reaching personal goals through inspired action is feeling not soon forgotten.

Gaining a Commitment

We tend to avoid making commitments to ourselves, or others, unless we absolutely have to do so. Alternatively we make them too easily and then let them slip if they become inconvenient. For example, “I promise to eat less ice cream!” Unfortunately, when we avoid making promises, or we take promises lightly, this allows our personal forms of sabotage to come to the surface, like laziness or procrastination. Once this cycle begins, it becomes difficult to get out of the habit or produce results.

Making commitments creates a great structure for causing things to really happen. By utilizing your mental strength and making a commitment, you are holding yourself responsible and accountable to take a specific action to produce a given result. By encouraging my clients to make commitments to me and themselves, I assist them to create shifts in their lives, to change their behavior and achieve their desired personal goals. Be impeccable with your word and encourage friends and family to be impeccable with their word….this is at the core of being a warrior!

A suggestion for action becomes a commitment once the specifics are tied down. Just requesting someone to be in action is not specific enough. As their coach, I must clarify the action expected and when it is expected to happen. This level of specificity may be the very thing missing for my clients to move forward. For example, when they say: “Okay, I’ll talk to my boss,” I’ll most likely ask, “When will you do that?” When they say: “All right, I’ll make more sales calls this week,” I’ll ask, “How many will you make?” When they say, “I’ll have to be better at going to the gym,” I say “You bet you’re a** you will!”  Only kidding…I’ll probably ask, “How many times will you commit to going to the gym in the next 30 days?”

At first this my look and sound like a boss or a parent, but sometimes we all need to be held accountable for taking action so that we can reach our peak personal performance.

It‘s important not to push yourself into a commitment you really don‘t want. It is much more powerful for you to keep you word (to yourself) than to set grandiose personal goals and not achieve them.

We need to start keeping our commitments (for action) that we’ve made to ourselves.   The physiological and unconsciousness affect is tremendous.  If we keep breaking our word to ourselves, then when we REALLY want to achieve something our unconscious will not believe it and provide distractions for us.  When, however, we keep our personal commitments, then we put the power of our unconsciousness mind to work for us. When we are in the habit of making and keeping our personal promises, then when a bodacious goal is in front of us and we don’s have a clue on how we’re going to get it…our unconsciousness mind is there to help us…because we have kept our word in the past and taken action.

Everybody wants to feel great and to move forward to achieve their personal goals, but if the action taken is not inspired and comes from within, the chances are the action will be short lived or misdirected.  Inspired action is a key to reaching your peak personal performance.

I’ll be continuing this topic tomorrow.  Until then please share your thoughts in the comments below

If you’d really like to make fast progress towards realizing your full personal power and potential as well as develop the mindset of confidence, request your Introductory Consultation today!

Roland Gilbert

Roland N. Gilbert is Vice-President and founder of the Perennial Consulting Group a management consulting, coaching and sales force development firm that focuses on overcoming fear and other limiting beliefs and creating empowering solutions so that individuals can live out their passions!