Two of my coaching friends are starting again. They have recently moved to new places to live. And after listening to them I got the feeling that they are having a hard time committing to what they are doing.
Both are working with what feels like a reasonable narrative. New start, new skills, new experiences. Moving some of their resources away from what they know works and dabbling in a new way of working.
Very few of us will ever go all in on a new venture. A new start for a new you. Rip it up to start again.
If you have ever created space in your house or garden you will know the vacuous space that you have created will be very quickly filled with unwanted crap. It is a strategy that seldom works.
Many of us prefer the no plan but plenty of gusto approach. Like a novice gardener who started somewhere near the back of the garden. Only to find that when they turned their back to start something else which had caught their eye. The garden quickly filled with weeds. The world has its own way of messing with us.
Of course, we could try to make a good impression on the new neighbours. The work which creates impact will certainly get you noticed. But what about the gaps in the house where the wind blows through? Nobody else will ever know, but when winter comes, you will.
Starting over is upheaval. It may feel like the right time to start again, go with no plan, impress a new group of contacts, or dabble in a new way of working but is now that time?
In permaculture, there is no time for dabbling and distractions. Your survival depends on you to create a sustainable life. And it all begins at Zone 0. The place you go back to, the platform from which you will go forward and create. Once your house is in order, then you build outwards.
The first principle of First Aid is to square yourself away. Then go look after the others. Checking in on sleep, nutrition, exercise and mental wellness for yourself and then extending that same line of enquiry to your inner circle of dependencies is good practise.
Fertile ground then for reflection. Prompts include. What are our standards for taking care of our physiological needs? What standards do we need to set to feel secure? Are we living with them? Are they clear and concise? Have we set upper and lower limits for what is enough? Do they have the desired effect?
Far too often we are in a rush to fit in especially when we start over in a new project, move or relationship. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs reminds us to take care of our physiological and safety needs before we satisfy our need to belong.
This brings me to the prompts I have curated for my coaching friends. To help them bring awareness to the skills they already possess as coaches. To help them build on the fabulous foundations they both possess.
So here it is:
First, draw a line.
Now above the line write out answers to the following prompts.
What comes easily to you?
What have you been successful at?
What have you created that energises you?
What are you most proud of?
What inspires you?
Then below the line write out the answers to the following prompts.
What hasn’t worked for you?
What holds you back?
What don’t you enjoy doing?
What distracts you from doing what you want to do?
There is nothing special about these prompts. Feel free to create your own. Just know that the lens required for Zone 0 is one which helps you to answer the question. Who are you?
Far better to be the stranger in town than to be a stranger to yourself.
You also don’t need to be in a mad rush to do anything with the answers. Let them sit with you, in reflection for a while. Perhaps, your awareness will be enough to change how you see yourself and how you show up for the people who already support you.
To wrap this up. We rarely need to rip it up and start again. As coaches, we need to see the whole picture, not just the bit that feels stuck, broken or malfunctioning. Coaches that are interested in people, not the distractions.
Because context matters. The order in which we do things matters. Crawl, walk, run is not the same as run, walk, crawl.