Simmering like a pot of vegetables right on the verge of a boil, Grace knew something had to change. She was stagnant, nothing was moving. People had made promises yet situations had not changed. She was frustrated. She was clearly not in the driver’s seat and was tired of waiting for shifts to happen that needed to happen in order to get where she wanted to go.
In a flash of a moment, she made an important decision. Instead of allowing the anger she was feeling to turn into a quagmire of depression, she chose to be righteously angry. In doing so, she was able to steer away from her frustration and use the anger to empower herself, instead. In doing so, she used the anger as fuel instead of using her anger as quicksand.
With her main goal as her target, Grace focused on creative solutions. She was not content to stand by the sidelines anymore. She spent an hour in active contemplation, brainstorming alternative pathways to get to her target.
In the following 15 minutes, she had a “Top 10” list of actions to take to reach her goal that she had never before considered. In another fifteen minutes, Grace had taken action, making two phone calls and written a note to three parties who could partner with her in a solution.
In 90 minutes, Grace went from being completely stuck to being on the road to freedom.
The steps she took were both simple and significant. They can also be easily applied to any challenging situation.
1. Grace noticed and accepted when things were not working. Instead of continuing to punish herself for being wrong, or not enough, she shifted her anger from frustration into action.
2. She took responsibility instead of continuing to wait for others to act responsibly.
3. When she moved into action, she carefully contemplated and sought out a variety of solutions. This way she remained open to a variety of options instead of seeing only one way to her target as she had previously. She knew this was foundational to her lack of success before, so she chose NOT to have history repeat itself.
4. Upon taking action, she furthered her “Menu Approach” by making several significant contacts one after another. The momentum she created in doing so further energized her towards reaching her ultimate goal.
In doing so, Grace moved from a place of complacency to a place of power. Her power came from the possibilities her goal represented, from the intensity of her desire, from her own realization that passivity was getting her further from her vision and closer to despair daily. The more she sat inert in passivity, the more she was buying into the beliefs of her dream stealers. It was as if a collection of all the negative people in her past were sitting on her shoulders telling her the ways she could not POSSIBLY be who she was meant to be or do all that she desired to do.
Grace chose to use that intensity, that passion, to bring her closer to her goal. The end result is bound to be greater than she imagined, as she will reach not only her initial goal, she will also be propelled with more strength and sureness than she had possessed before her shift.
She took to heart Henry David Thoreau’s words: “He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.” Where she had been stuck COULD have been an insurmountable obstacle. Grace shifted that obstacle into her own brand of power. She steered her way around and passed it, sailing clearly into her future.
Julie Jordan Scott is a Co-Founder of We Coach People Network: a Community for Coaches to Create a Webpresence and Methods for Achieving Coaching Success without Breaking the Bank. Find out more about this new site now: http://www.WeCoachPeople.net Visit her website: http://www.5passions.com
