Episode 35: If Google or ChatGPT Were Enough... You'd Already Have Changed

In this episode, Katie Murray explores why, despite having access to overwhelming amounts of free information online, many people still struggle to implement positive changes in their lives. She emphasises the unique value coaching offers in bridging the gap between knowing and doing.

Main Topics:

• The common misconception that coaching is unnecessary because of free resources
• Why most people have an implementation gap - a disconnect between what they know and what they do
• The role of avoidance, self-protection, and emotional load in maintaining habits
• How blind spots and patterns are invisible from inside our own experience
• The power of coaching's real-time interaction to interrupt patterns
• Examples of moments where coaching can help slow down automatic reactions
• Why information alone isn't enough for change and why human connection accelerates transformation

Resources:

• KMC website

Connect with Katie Murray:

• Instagram
• Email: info@katiemurraycoaching.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome! This is to Our Core with Katie Murray, and this is the place where we peel back our layers to uncover who we really are at our centre. At our core. And think of it as a chat with your bestie, the one who can make you laugh until your belly hurts, who is ridiculously unfiltered, and will lovingly call you forward to help you cut through the noise and get real with yourself. Around here, nothing is off limits. And we are mixing this up with equal parts of humour and heart. So let's dive right in. Hey, I'm gonna start the episode with I think a thought that maybe a lot of people have thought, and certainly something that was articulated to me recently, and that is when a person said, I'm just struggling to rationalise the cost of coaching when I reckon I could just Google it or ask ChatGPT or some other AI platform. And honestly, let's be clear, I think it's a common and also a very fair thought to have, particularly if you've never experienced coaching before, because you can Google almost anything now. You can access strategies and frameworks and tools for free. You can listen to podcasts like this one, you can read books, you can save all the posts you want to. And yet I've got a question: why, with more information than we've ever had before, are people still feeling really stuck in their own lives? That's what I'm going to be talking about today, because I do not want to dismiss information because it matters. Yet I do want to explore why knowing something, having the information available to us, doesn't necessarily mean you'll make the change that you want to see in your life. So let's acknowledge this up front. We are living in a time where knowledge is incredibly accessible to us, literally often attached to our body through our phone at our fingertips. And that can be a really good thing. It can be great that people don't need to pay thousands of dollars to understand basic psychology concepts anymore. That you don't need to be part of a formal program to learn things like really healthy, effective habits and strategies, boundaries that you can put in place in your life, emotional regulation or nervous system strategies. These are incredible resources out there. Like I use resources that are available online to enhance the work that I do with clients. And if you are someone who has spent time reading and listening and learning, I think it's a really fair question to ask where coaching fits into this in terms of value. Because on the surface, they can look like the same thing. Someone talking, particularly if your go-to resource is YouTube, someone talking, someone explaining, someone giving strategies. So of course, the question might be for people is why would I pay for something that I can access for free? And if you have ever had that thought, I want you to know that there is nothing naive about that thought. It actually shows that you're thinking quite critically. Yet there is a missing piece in that equation. And I think that once you hear it, knowing the intelligent audience that I have here, you won't be able to unhear it. But the piece that is missing is this most people don't have an information problem. They have an implementation gap. Meaning there is a gap between what you know and what you actually do. And if we're being really honest, if you're being really honest with yourself, you probably already know a lot of what would help you. You know you need to set that boundary. You know you need to get off your phone earlier at nighttime. You know you need to follow through on the thing that you said mattered to you. You know you need to have that conversation. None of this is new information. It's not like you're sitting there thinking, if only someone would tell me what to do. You know. And yet there are still places in your life where you are feeling stuck, stuck in the same patterns, stuck in the same behaviors, stuck in the same thoughts, stuck with the same beliefs. And that's where you loop. And that's where you avoid. And that's where you delay. And that's where you distract yourself. That there is the gap. And no amount of additional information automatically closes it. So let's talk about why the gap exists. Because this is where people often turn on themselves quite viciously. And they the internal narrative might be something like, you know what, I just must not want this enough, or I must be lazy, or I just need to be more disciplined. You've heard me talk about this on the podcast before. Yet that's not actually what's happening. What is happening is much more human than that. The first point is avoidance. We are wired to move away from discomfort. And what comes with growth is discomfort. What comes with change is discomfort. What comes with the unknown, the uncharted territory is discomfort. So even if something matters to you, if it feels uncomfortable or exposing or uncertain, there will be a part of you that avoids it. Because you are human. And that is how your brain is designed to be for you. The second piece, it's self-protection. A lot of the patterns you're trying to change exist for a reason. And have probably served you very well at one point in your life. Overthinking, it protects you potentially from getting it wrong. Well, that's the story that you've told yourself. People pleasing, you've convinced yourself that it protects you from conflict or rejection. Procrastination? Well, if I just procrastinate and I don't do the thing, then that's going to protect me from failing at the thing. So when you try to change the behavior, you're not just changing an action. You are disrupting something that at some point felt necessary, at some point offered you safety, at some point helped you. And the third piece, it is an emotional load. Knowing what to do doesn't remove the feelings that come with doing it. You can know that you need to set a boundary and still feel anxious, guilty, or afraid when you go to do it. You can know that you need to follow through on the thing and still feel resistance, doubt, overwhelm. And most people don't struggle with the knowing. They struggle with staying present through this feeling. And this is the part that information will never solve for you. And then there's another layer. I know, it just keeps going deeper and deeper, doesn't it? And this one is really important. You can't always see your own patterns clearly. You can't always see your blind spots. They're blind for a reason. Because when you're inside them, those patterns, those behaviors, those thoughts, those beliefs, they can feel very reasonable, very justified, very true for you. Now's not the right time. I just I just need a bit more time. I'll do things when life is not so chaotic or busy, or the kids don't have this, this, and this on. I'll do it later. And those thoughts, they don't feel like avoidance often. They feel very logical. You can absolutely, with your reticular activating system, where you're filtering your brain, you can pull up all the evidence that supports that argument. And that's the tricky thing with this. You don't experience your patterns as patterns. You're not, oh, I'm running in the same pattern, I'm running the same behavior, I'm doing the same system that I'm always used, the same strategy that has always been the strategy that I've defaulted to. No, you're not thinking like that. You experience them as your truth. This is what's real for you. And that means you can stay stuck inside them for a very long time while genuinely believing that you're doing your best with what you've got. And this is where coaching is different. Not because it gives you better information, although I would argue when you hear what I do in coaching, there is better information because it's the way in which it actually asks you to pull the wisdom and the knowledge from yourself, not from some external source. It is different because it works in a completely different way. Coaching happens in real time. And when I mean real time, I am not just available to my clients in the one hour a fortnight that they have with me online in the coaching space. I'm available in email support Monday to Friday. They have an issue, they have a challenge, they send it through. My group program has daily access to me in a WhatsApp group chat. I am there for them in real time. It notices things as they're happening. It is me picking up on the hesitation in their voice when they speak what they're speaking about or the phrasing in how they say it, where they say a statement, I want this, this, and this, but, and then they follow it with a sentence, and then I say, you just added a but there, which deleted everything you said before that. And for someone that's like, Well, I don't really get how that works from a linguistic perspective. You know, when someone's apologizing to you and then they follow up with a but and you're just like, oh, fuck you. Like you're not really sorry. You didn't mean that because you followed it with a but. That is exactly what happens to your unconscious mind when you follow a statement with a but. It deletes it. And then the truth is spoken about what you believe in the sentence that follows it. Coaching is about picking up on the shift when you are moving away from something that you've said you want to do, that you wanted to move towards, that you wanted to take action around. When I see a client pivot, it allows me a space to notice that and reflect back the patterns that they might not be seeing. And it does something that is beautifully unique and rare. It stays with you in the moment. Coaching is there with you in the moment where you would usually check the fuck out. You would go back to the old pattern. It holds you in accountability to the things that you say you want and finds curiosity in trying to understand why it is that you're not acting in alignment with that. It is not about forcing you, it is not about pushing you aggressively, it is about holding space for you by gently and directly saying, Hey, this feels like a familiar place that we've been before. This is a pattern. What's happening right now for you? And that moment, those questions, that curiosity without judgment, that changes shit up. You ain't gonna get that from Chat GPT. It's not in the information that's provided that stands in the difference. It is the interruption of the pattern that you may not even see is happening. So let me give you a few examples. You decide to go and have that really hard conversation. And you think about it and you plan it and you even rehearse it, and then the moment comes and suddenly you know what? It feels too hard, and you retreat. Maybe you soften what you actually wanted to say so that you believe it's more palatable. That's the moment. Or you tell yourself, I'm gonna stop scrolling at nighttime. And then you're tired and you've had a really long day and you just want something easy. That's the moment. Or your child does something and you react in a way that you said you wouldn't, you wouldn't go to that default again of raising your voice, becoming snappy, or fighting back in the same way that they're fighting you. And you know, afterwards, you like justify it. Like they really just pushed my buttons and you minimize it. That's the moment. And most people miss it. Or they move past it really quickly, or they explain it away. Coaching slows that moment down. It helps you to stay there long enough to actually choose something different. When clients are coming to me and talking to me about the conversation they want to have, we rehearse it. So it's theirs to own, not something they have to win. They get to practice the reframes of the negative self-talk, how they can not only catch the thought, how they can not only challenge the mistruths that are in those thoughts, but how they can actually change it to a far more positive narrative. And then they get to bring it back to coaching and they get to ask or to explain how it went for them. And then they get more feedback, more curious questions, what feels aligned, what felt scary for you in that moment? Where did you pull back to safety and retreat? For what purpose are you doing this? How is this serving you? How is this aligned to what you want? Tell me what perfection looks like to you. So coming back to the original question or the original thought that I opened this episode with, why would you pay for coaching when you can just Google it or ask ChatGPT? Well, here's my answer. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using those tools. They can be incredibly helpful. Yet information alone is never enough. You wouldn't still feel stuck in the same places. You wouldn't still be circling the same patterns of behavior. You wouldn't still be saying, I know what to do, I'm just not doing it. And this is not about making you out to be a failure. It means that you are human. It also might mean you're not meant to do this part alone. We are better together. I am better working with a coach who can illuminate my blind spots, who can identify my patterns. We are better together. And that is something that is irreplaceable by online information. So I invite you start noticing where is the gap between what you know and what you do, and what happens right in that moment. Because that is where the work is. And then that is where the change begins. Thanks for spending time with me today on To Our Core. If something landed in your heart or gave you a much needed giggle, consider sharing it with a friend who also may need this as a timely reminder. And go on. You know you want to. Give me a five-star review so that this podcast can land in the ears of many, many more people. Because remember that life is too short to stay on the surface. Keep living, loving, and laughing all the way to your core. Go make life great. And if you want support around this, go to the show notes to find out more. Until next time, I'll meet you back here with more truth, laughter, and a whole lot of heart.