Embark on a journey of self-discovery with Sean, a performance coach and battle-tested combat veteran, as we tackle the pivotal moments of personal and professional reinvention. Feel the pull of transformation as we reveal the layers of resistance that often bind us to the comfort of the known, despite the suffering it may entail. Through the lens of Sean's extensive experience, we uncover the role coaching plays in overcoming the struggle for change—highlighting its power to be the catalyst you've been searching for. Prepare to be challenged to let go of the past and make way for a new, thriving self, as we address how ingrained behaviors can both serve us and hold us back.
As we unravel the essence of true transformation, Sean illuminates the significance of identifying your personal 'why'—a beacon for sustained change. We confront the fear of the unknown, the discomfort that accompanies growth, and the reevaluation of boundaries that comes with it. This episode is a call to arms for anyone feeling unworthy of a better situation or who finds themselves adhering to beliefs that no longer serve them. Sean offers a guiding hand to those ready to shift their lives, inviting you to look inward, believe in your right to seek more, and possibly take that first step towards profound self-evolution with the support of a trusted coach.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Embark on a journey of self-discovery with Sean, a performance coach and battle-tested combat veteran, as we tackle the pivotal moments of personal and professional reinvention. Feel the pull of transformation as we reveal the layers of resistance that often bind us to the comfort of the known, despite the suffering it may entail. Through the lens of Sean's extensive experience, we uncover the role coaching plays in overcoming the struggle for change—highlighting its power to be the catalyst you've been searching for. Prepare to be challenged to let go of the past and make way for a new, thriving self, as we address how ingrained behaviors can both serve us and hold us back.
As we unravel the essence of true transformation, Sean illuminates the significance of identifying your personal 'why'—a beacon for sustained change. We confront the fear of the unknown, the discomfort that accompanies growth, and the reevaluation of boundaries that comes with it. This episode is a call to arms for anyone feeling unworthy of a better situation or who finds themselves adhering to beliefs that no longer serve them. Sean offers a guiding hand to those ready to shift their lives, inviting you to look inward, believe in your right to seek more, and possibly take that first step towards profound self-evolution with the support of a trusted coach.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Welcome to the reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. All right, today let's go ahead and jump right on in there. And this episode is inspired by a number of conversations that I have had over the years with the various men and women who end teams, I guess, for that matter who have been attempting to overcome challenges in their life or their work or their existence, whatever. Now, with coaching, when we are looking at somebody or a team of somebodies who are thinking about hiring a coach, there's a pretty straightforward setup for whether the coach is warranted, and that is that the people or the person that go to the coach. They hire the coach when they want to change something in their life and don't feel that they will be able to manage that on their own. So I would argue that every single person on the planet and every team on the planet, at some point in time, has wanted to change something about their life, or the way that the team works, or the way the company is flowing, et cetera, et cetera, and that in the majority of those cases, rightly or wrongly, those individuals choose to do it on their own. They feel that they have the capacity, they feel that they have the know-how and they feel that they have the drive to see it through. In which case, great more power to you, and I hope that it has gone well. All I'm saying is the individuals that show up on my doorstep, my virtual doorstep, are individuals who have tried that and who have not been able to get to where they want to go on their own, and it's, in all honesty, typically after they have had multiple rounds of trying it on their own, and typically there's been some sort of peak or crescendo moment where they've recognized that they're going to be able to do it on their own, and I think that's the point. Yeah, probably need to get some help in here. So what we're going to be talking about today, the subject of today's discussion, is how we stay subscribed to the status quo, even though we have told a coach how desperately we want to change things my clients, I am also a client of coaches, and I've had many coaches over the years, sometimes specializing in a certain area, sometimes having more of a general approach.
Speaker 1:But I do find that coaching and in some cases I've also had therapists and so I think that these different helping modalities, these different helping professions, can be very, very appropriate and very powerful in helping us work through things. And they actually, you know, sometimes people get a little offended when they say, well, you know, I could, I could if I wanted to work through this on my own. Yeah, you probably could. And there's a coach that I used to follow on social media and he would say that nobody needs a coach, but you can want one, and that desire can be very, very powerful and very logical, because what coaches can often do is speed up the process, make it more efficient and effective. As opposed to you kind of stumbling around on your own, you go to a person who, as a routine matter of their business, helps individuals work through the issues that you are facing. It streamlines the process so that you don't actually have to have as many bumps and scrapes and bruises as the other person. So recognize that I am not not coming at this from a position of superiority. I'm not coming at this For many other headspace been wanting you to be aware if you are considering hiring a coach, because this is an issue that I face quite frequently. Actually, and I have a lot of quote unquote come to Jesus conversations with clients because they continue to subscribe to the old patterns. They continue to subscribe to the things that they've always been doing, even though they keep telling me how painful that is, and they're genuinely emotionally distraught oftentimes when we have our sessions.
Speaker 1:So, fundamentally, if you are thinking about creating transformation in your life, whether you are doing this independently or whether you're doing this with a paid professional, what we're going to talk about today, I think, is valid and relevant in both instances. And there's a fundamental question that you have to ask yourself how will you transform yourself and your life if you keep doing the same things you've always done? If you want to have the new life, the new you, then the old life, the old you must die, or at least some part of the old life the old you must die. It is actually childish to believe that we can have this new, better way, way of life, way of being, whatever you want to call it, magically show up without us having to create that transformation for ourselves without us having to somehow create space for that. And that space is created by letting the old fall away or, if you're into more dramatic language, as I said before, die.
Speaker 1:Something has to give way for the new to show up, and oftentimes, when I speak with prospects, they often tell me about how the way that they are got them the success that they currently enjoy. Now, sometimes I'm willing to challenge that and say, well, maybe you've been successful in spite of yourself, but that's not actually the topic of today's discussion. And so if we take at face value that their current level of success is attributable to the way that they currently are, well, then so is the pain that they're experiencing, the suffering that they're going through. Else, why are we talking? And whether you frame it as, hey, I've got problems that I want to solve or I don't have problems, but I want to go from good to great, either of those setups creates an expectation that you want something to be different than it currently is. Then your current status quo which again means no matter how you're framing it internally and yeah, I guess I would probably opt for the more abundant, focused framing of I want to go from good to great, but in either case, we still have to create room for new and ostensibly better. Now, if that's the case and I have all these individuals coming to me talking about how they want to have something new and better why, oh why, do I end up in so many conversations that are more of this? Come to Jesus tone.
Speaker 1:Where is it that I end up in these conversations repeatedly asking individuals, clients hey, you said you wanted X, and yet it seems that you are doing nothing or very little, so little that it's not effective to actually get to X. And what you are doing, how you are filling your time, your, your attention, your bandwidth, is with the old way. You're doing all the old things. You're keeping all of the old mindsets and inner narratives about all the things that you quote unquote have to do. So why is that? Why is it that they are saying, hey, this, this way that I'm being right now, or the situation that I find myself in is so painful and I suffer, and I suffer and I want something new and better, and then they don't go anywhere and they just stay on the merry-go-round and it just goes around and around and around and around in circles and we just end up talking about how stressed and sad and frustrated they are, instead of actually digging in and saying what are you going to cut from the status quo in order to create new and better?
Speaker 1:Why does this occur? It occurs primarily For, I think, three categories of reasons. We have to confront these three primary areas. There's probably more, but these are the ones that come up most often In order for transformation to really truly begin. Because that is the game. The game is transformation. How will you, in a positive direction, transform yourself, your mindset, your life, your relationships, your fill in the blank? So the first category is identifying your own selfish. Why capital W? Why what is the real reason that you want to transform?
Speaker 1:External pressure from a spouse, a business partner, a boss, a parent, a team, whatever, is generally not enough. It might be enough to get you in the door of the coach's physical or virtual office, but it's not enough to actually sustain transformation, because the client, if they are doing it out of pressure, external pressure, doesn't have a clear enough sense internally of what do I want out of this? And in my particular process I actually have all my clients write objectives of what they want to accomplish and the ones that are really truly not connected to their internal sense of why struggle Struggle. So much actually that not only are the first several drafts of their OKRs all about other people, but eventually it becomes clear that there's really nothing in there that they can identify for themselves. And in some cases what that points to is that they actually are living their life for other people. And I don't mean it in that feel good sense of fulfillment, life of service kind of way. But they have been so conditioned through early experiences in their life that there is no strong enough sense of self to be served that whole got to put your own oxygen mask on first. They don't have a sense of self to actually put that metaphorical oxygen mask on. So that first hurdle is identifying. Yeah, what do I want out of this? For me, not to be a better husband or a better boss or a better mom or a better son or daughter, husband, wife, sister, brother, etc. But for me, what do I want out of this?
Speaker 1:For me and so many of my clients have struggled with this notion of healthy selfishness, again largely based on early childhood conditioning that to be selfish is evil and wrong. And how dare you? You will burn, being a little dramatic there, obviously, but some people that I've worked with have really intense feelings about this notion of being selfish. But I think that selfishness, when held in its proper proportion and communicated in a healthy way, is actually quite good for us. It helps us understand the desires that we have as individuals. Even my clients, who are the most attuned to being a part of something bigger than themselves, still have some sense of where do I or where does me fit in? We, so there is a healthy expression of self that we can achieve, and it doesn't mean that you become some sort of narcissistic prick where all things in the universe have to be laid at your feet. But we can be understanding of and compassionate with ourselves about.
Speaker 1:We have certain desires, and I'm intentionally not using the word need. Oh gosh, how much I typically am turned off by the characterization of need. Is it okay to have needs? Yeah, I think it is. That's not actually where my resistance shows up to that word. My resistance shows up to that word because what it tends to do is it tends to make want a second class citizen, and my proposal is that if we elevate our desire to its true place of importance and we make it okay to have desire that I want certain things out of my life experience. Not everything has to fit under the stringent criteria of need, and so what ends up happening quite frequently is we try to, we end up conflating need and want, or want with need, instead of just owning our desire and saying, hey, this is what I want out of this experience and I don't have to justify my desire.
Speaker 1:Now the other person or the other party may not agree and may say, okay, well, you can want what you want, but I'm not down for that. I'm not going along. I'm not going along with that. In which case, fine, find somebody who will, or find some other counterparty that will. But before I get too distracted on you can tell this is like a hot button topic for me. So before I get too distracted on that, being connected to that selfish sense of why do I want this, why do I want to make change, why do I want to transform myself, for me is very, very important because that actually serves as the foundation that will steady you, that will ground you when you are going through the difficult process of transforming. And it's tough, oh my God, it is hard. So having that solid base is really important.
Speaker 1:The second category, I guess, that we generally have to confront in order for true transformation there you go, say that 10 times fast. True transformation to begin is connecting with your sense of deserving something different and better. This is very much connected to the first one. The first one is identifying okay, what is it that I want out of this? The second piece is actually feeling like you deserve it. And so frequently, especially the individuals that I mentioned, where they essentially live their life for somebody else, they are somebody else's tool or doormat. Those individuals generally have a very, very, very intense sense of lacking when it comes to deserving something better. They may say it out loud oh no, I definitely deserve better.
Speaker 1:But here's the funny thing when you are doing this type of deep inner work, the truth comes out, and I don't mean the thing that you say to yourself, I mean the true belief. You know, as I've talked about previously in other episodes head, heart and guts, intellect, emotion and intuition, belief, essentially and typically, belief trumps everything else. People tell me all the time about what they quote-unquote know, and then they do things that are counter to what they quote-unquote know, and that is because there is a deeper entrenched, often unconscious, belief that is behind the scenes running the show, and anything that is counter to that belief will not last. So we very much have to get to confronting these beliefs. And if you have a deep-seated, typically unconscious belief that you do not deserve something better, then you will not go get something better.
Speaker 1:I've watched it time and time and time again People telling me about, cognitively or cerebrally or intellectually, that they know that they deserve something better, but then they don't believe it, and so then they just fall flat. They don't schedule their coaching sessions, they don't do the thought exercises or homework they would cause them to dive deeper into understanding the blocks that are in their way, and they typically either fizzle out or, if they somehow manage to complete a year of coaching, the results are really lackluster. And again, this is part of why I'm recording this for you, dear listener. It's because if you are contemplating hiring a coach or a therapist or somebody else in order to pursue transformation, these are things that you're going to have to wrestle with, and if you honestly cannot get to a deeply felt sense that you deserve better, you are facing a very, very uphill battle.
Speaker 1:Now, one thing I will make abundantly clear here is clients in no way have to know how to get to something better. That is part of what unfolds in the coaching process, step by step, sometimes minutia after minutia and I don't mean minutia, I should have said minute step after minute step. Sometimes the steps are bigger, but ultimately the client doesn't have to know how it's going to happen. We just have to have the beginning, and that beginning is formed on having our own selfish why, and then, secondly, having some sense that we deserve something better. And the interesting thing is that there are times when people connect with that sense of deserving by seeing a better tomorrow and they're inspired by that. But if I'm being blatantly honest, most of the time it's because people are fed up with feeling like shit, or feeling like their partner doesn't support them, or feeling like their team doesn't understand them or doesn't value their contributions. So while it would be great if it was more of the former, what I've seen over the years of doing this is that it is typically the latter. People feel a sense of pain, a sense of suffering, and they're tired of that, and something inside of them says we deserve better. Getting it better just means getting to neutral, that's still better. In case that wasn't clear, that's still better. If you're in a place where you feel shitty, getting to neutral is actually better. And, laughter aside, I don't want to minimize that, because for some people, just getting to neutral is huge and that is completely legit. Now, obviously, what I hope through the coaching is that we actually get to not only good but amazing. But sometimes, starting with getting to neutral is where it's at Now.
Speaker 1:The last category of things that we have to confront before we can really truly get to the beginning of transformation is a pretty broad category, and that is fear, primarily fear of the unknown and fear of renegotiation. Fear of the unknown is pretty straightforward. Yeah, there are things about my life right now that I'm unhappy with. I don't like the way that my relationship is going, I don't feel that my career is headed in the right direction, I don't feel like it's a right fit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm good at it. Or, but I know my partner, or I know my team, or I know, I know, I know what to expect. Right, that old saying that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. And why is that? Well, I think, ancestrally, humans have, as with most animals on the planet, a pretty big fear of they don't know what's unfamiliar, and I think that ties back to really primal ancestry about, yeah, there could be something quite dangerous around the corner.
Speaker 1:But confronting this, confronting this fear of the unknown, and how you do it, varies. For some people, they opt to look at what are the potential opportunities that can also be around the next bend or the next corner. You know this whole notion that grass might be greener on the other side. For others and I think I probably fall more into this camp myself, recognizing that the unknown is inescapable, you are always surrounded by opportunities for the unknown and, in fact, even within your status quo, there is a whole ton of uncertainty that you conveniently choose not to see. When you close your eyes at night to go to sleep, there is actually no guarantee that they will open the next morning, or that, if they do open, that you're going to be the same healthy person that went to bed, or, if you're currently not healthy, that it didn't get worse in the night, when we in the United States at least, where we have electricity and you know indoor plumbing and et cetera, et cetera, because there are parts of the world where that does not exist. But in the United States, when we flick the light switch, we have this instinctive expectation that there will be light, and yet sometimes our expectations are subverted when there is a power outage, and then we are so grumpy and pissy because, you know, my router is down and I can't get to my social medias, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:So this fear of the unknown has to be confronted. We have to recognize, okay, yeah, yeah, there's going to be a lot that I don't know in terms of how this process unfolds, about the things that I might learn about myself, in terms of what I've been suppressing, sometimes for decades. And can we create space for that? Can we allow ourselves to get comfortable with that fear, get comfortable being uncomfortable? And I would argue that even the most luxury seeking person on the planet has, in various points in their life, had to confront discomfort of one form or another. And my observations and research would suggest that those individuals who make a practice in their life of seeking out discomfort actually deepen and widen their capacity to have equanimity in the face of discomfort and they become unflappable, and it's not to say that they wouldn't attempt to change an unpleasing or a displeasing sorry, a displeasing situation. They wouldn't try to make it better. It's that they don't suffer in the midst of their discomfort.
Speaker 1:So how are you going to face your fear of the unknown? What is it that will work for you? And the other piece here renegotiation of what? Well, boundaries, relationships, expectations, and this is one that really comes forward a lot, which is why I saved it for last. People begin to make these realizations. They have insights about how they've shaped their life up to this point and the various unconscious forces that have been acting in the dark, so to speak, that have caused them to make certain decisions and brought certain people into their life, and they begin to see oh, that's a bad fit. This is especially challenging when it's a business partner or a marriage partner, wooyboy, because in those situations there's usually a lot of external scaffolding that has come with that relationship, additional correlated relationships, sometimes legal structures, legal agreements, a lot of complexity woven into a couple, different kinds of relationships Coupled, with one's social life often also being interwoven. And whoa man, yeah, buddy.
Speaker 1:This is tough, and while I'm attempting to inject a little bit of levity into this conversation. I do fully recognize how difficult this is, because I have also been in a situation where I've had to face recognition that, oh my gosh, this is a pretty core part of my life that I am now re-evaluating and I'm starting to really truly recognize that there are some things about how this part of my life is structured that are very ill-fitting to the person that I want to be and the life experience that I want to have. And how am I going to redo this? How am I going to draw new boundaries about what I find okay or healthy or acceptable? How am I going to communicate those boundaries to a person or to people? And how am I going to carry myself as this new person? And what will happen to my relationships?
Speaker 1:The people in my life are used to me being a certain way. How are they going to adjust to me being a different way, especially when this new way feels so new and foreign and I don't feel confident in it. I don't feel confident in my ability to hold on to it, and this is tough and for anyone who's facing something like this, my heart goes out to you because it is really really, really hard, and this is why those first two points about being connected to your selfish why and feeling really truly believing not just feeling, but really truly believing that you deserve something new, something better. It's why those two points are so important, because this work is hard, or at least it can be and the process of showing up in a different way, especially when you're so used to showing up a different way. I would argue that there are very few things that are more challenging.
Speaker 1:So I feel for you, and I want you to know, that it is possible to work with a coach or a therapist on things that are not quite so heavy hitting. Not everything has to be about deep transformation, but if you notice yourself staying stuck, you notice yourself continuing to be in a situation where you suffer, and that suffering merry-go-round is something that seems to be inescapable, then chances are transformation is on the horizon as something that would be ultimately to your benefit, because what you're doing isn't working, even though you're good at it, even though you've done it for a long time. Now, for those of you who have listened this far and might say well, I'm not suffering, great, send this to somebody who is, because all of this really just applies to the person that recognizes they have something in their life, they want something different and they don't know how to get there on their own. So hopefully this has been helpful for you. Ultimately, I do try to make these conversations useful.
Speaker 1:Most of the time I try to weave in some sort of practical application and I recognize that sometimes I stay in the land of the abstract and hope that you'll be able to extrapolate what you need from that kind of conversation. So, if you've been enjoying the show, I would love it if you would subscribe, like, follow, share, do all the internet-y things, but really actually, you know, primarily share, especially if you, with this particular episode, know somebody who's on the merry-go-round of suffering and who keeps bashing their head against the metaphorical wall, thinking that they can do it on their own. So how long do they need to stay on that merry-go-round before maybe they start to recognize that some help would be useful? I don't. It's totally up to you. Until next time, take care of each other.