What does it take to be a better you?
It’s an interesting question and one that I want to tackle today as it is a subject that it very close to my heart. In fact I have been trying to build a better me for the last year and it’s been a struggle to be honest.
You see as a coach people sometimes think you near “perfect” or indeed “perfect”, however perfection is something that is impossible to achieve and the reason is simple. If you are perfect then you have no room for improvement and that is a bad place to be in.
We are all human
I have talked to so many people, both clients, friends, coaches and even gurus and you know what we all have insecurities and lots of “hidden” problems that sometimes we don’t want other people to know about. In fact sometimes we don’t even realise we have these problems until we step back and …..
Reflect on life
With the pace of life we often don’t take the time to step back, put on the brakes, jump off the bullet train and take a few moments for ourselves to think about and reflect on everything that is going on. This happened to me last year when I was sent to work in the States for nearly 2 months. It was a great gig to be honest. I travelled to all the offices we had, from Atlanta to Raleigh, from Dallas to Minneapolis and then back to Miami, I saw so much.
The first thing I realised was that travelling takes a toll on you. From the physical travelling right through to trying to eat right. Yeah one thing I started to realise was that my will power when it came to food was not that great, after all I had to try a bit of everything! Then of course you decide to have a beer or two with each meal. This all adds up and can affect your health and your waist!
Of course while I was doing this I was not thinking much about all of this. I thought I was looking great and I had not put on a kilo. Then one day I looked at my reflection in the mirror of the gym and was shocked. Each extra helping, every extra beer was starting to show. It kind of crept up on me, slowly, but bit by bit those grams turned to kilos.
It was about a year ago that I was in Chicago and finally felt I had enough and I had to do something as my diet was skyrocketing out of control. I needed to find direction, I needed to find my North Star again.
On that Saturday in July I happened upon a Barnes and Noble – one of my favourite stores in America! And there I found something that would start to change my life. A book with a rather interesting title – Building the best you – a 2 year discover journey Wow 2 years of discovery, what a task.
You know most of us just can’t make a commitment, now imagine having to do it for one year. I thought heck I am going to give it a try.
18th July 2015 Chicago
On that day I decided to start my 2 year journey. It seemed quite easy, each day answer the same questions about how your day was, how you felt, how you let yourself down and then what you need to improve. The idea was to see how you had improved over the year.
Ok I am going to be honest. I started to see a pattern in my behaviour, and at the time I kept repeating this pattern. Each day I wrote, each day I mentioned something positive that happened in my day – sometimes there seems to be nothing positive but you have to try to find something. After 6 weeks there was a new different set of questions. Some where easy and some where really difficult. But it was a learning experience.
Over and over again I saw patterns emerging and I started to note what I needed to change.
Change is hard
Again let me honest and cut the bull. Change is hard, it is not a simple snap of your fingers and change happens, oh man no way. Many will make you believe it is but I don’t think it is to be honest. To change you first need to know what the issue is and why you have it. Then you can start to think of strategies to help you make that change.
So of course your next question is have I changed, let me address that.
Where I am now
I had hoped that one year on I would have seen a dramatic change, but I haven’t. However, what I have realised is where my challenges are and that I must tackle those challenges, so that is what this year is for. To look at where I was a year ago and make sure I am not there again, to make sure I am a better person.
What is holding you back? Let me know below.
And if you need some free help feel free to sign up for my free NLP report and newsletter below:
[grwebform url=”https://app.getresponse.com/view_webform_v2.js?u=V7184&webforms_id=4111805″ css=”on” center=”off” center_margin=”200″/]