Restlessness is Good

A client of mine emailed me today to say he was feeling restless after our last session. He didn't want to overanalyse it, but clearly something was brewing within. We'd gotten to the point in our coaching where we'd done all the work on who he is, what he wants from his work and what he can offer to a potential employer, and we were now exploring all the job/career possibilities that he was inspired by to ascertain which ones he'd like to explore more.

Whilst I've never heard it called restlessness before, I know from having worked with over a hundred people on these types of issues, that it's around the time that we really start looking at what you could do that most people's fears and limiting beliefs pop up and show their scary faces. It's all the if's and but's and the ‘who do you think you are' or ‘it's not realistic anyway' that begin to engulf us like a huge tidal wave. And it's at this point that I believe most people give up. They succumb to their fears and all the things that are standing in their way to actually doing something more fulfilling in their lives. I emailed about this to my client, and his response was: "It's certainly crazy really to think that we put so many obstacles in our own way, when there are already plenty of other people out there doing it for us."

So how do you overcome them? Whilst sometimes outside help is what we need (and a good coach can usually help here), I actually think that we can do a lot of work on this ourselves as well. There are a lot of great materials on ‘limiting beliefs' and ‘overcoming your fears'.

The first thing you need to do is to become aware of what your fears are. If you don't think you have any, they are the little voices of justification in your head that feel very factual in what they say to you. Listen to what they say. Write it down even. Then start to explore what it would take for you to not think that way. What would it take to shift your belief to a more empowering one? Beliefs can be shifted you know. You choose what you believe in. But more about that later.

So why on earth did I title this: "Restlessness is Good"? Because even though this phase doesn't always feel pleasant, when you begin to feel restless, you know you're on the right track. Change requires a bit of pain, and this is the pain that you need to overcome to get to the other side of your shift/escape process. As a coach, this is where I feel I can be of great value (sometimes even most value), and it's what I love to help people with - to help them get out of their own way. It's the reason I hire coaches for myself. When I know there's something that I need to overcome to move to the next level/phase, but I also know that for me, the external support is invaluable.

To finish, if you don't have it on your bookshelf yet, and even if you have an aversion towards self-help books, get this book, you won't regret it: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. It's a goldmine of methods to learn to resist your fears (because as Mark Twain so aptly put it: "Courage is the resistance of fear, not the absence of fear.")