Need to change? Not urgent, not important? Think Again!
Posted: Tuesday, September 15, 2009
by Douglas Cartwright
Living Words Coaching and Training
It was Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People who popularised the idea of prioritising according to:
Urgent and important (an accident, work deadline, labor pains etc)
Important but not urgent (some personal development, painting the spare room, visiting relatives, learning a new skill etc)
Not important but urgent (the ringing phone when you have said deadline, a child tugging at your leg asking loudly for the third bowl of ice-cream etc)
W hat do these quadrants have to do with you getting coaching?
People get coaching because they want to develop new ways of thinking and new behaviors that help them to go after their goals more effectively.
But sometimes we coaches give the impression that you have to have some crowd pleasing mountain sized change-goals like:
Starting a business
Changing career
Becoming a millionaire
Coping with a major promotion or new job
Those are certainly worth goals if you want to go after them.
However, sometimes we have smaller but no less significant changes that we want to make that perhaps we haven't considered:
Working to raise our self-esteem or raising our confidence
Getting more focused on our work or past-time
Changing a habit that we do regularly that interferes with our happiness
Stopping making excuses for why we haven't enquired after that new course.
Becoming more assertive with a particular person
Or lets think even smaller:
I want to stop snapping at my children when I'm tired.
I want to take five minutes more exercise than I currently do.
I want to add one more article to my web page.
These are goals that we could categorize as important but not urgent. So we put them off.
The problem is, if you keep putting off these changes because they don't demand attention NOW they eventually develop into bigger problems. And then we have to put more time and effort into dealing with the fallout.
Honestly, it takes someone with wisdom and foresight to look ahead and say: This is something I need to deal with now rather than later.
Ive had clients come in for some of the following reasons:
I want to spend more time with my children yet I find myself staying late at work.
I have trouble saying no to people.
I want to feel more powerful.
I want to be able to talk to my superior without feeling intimidated
I want to be able to connect with my emotions.
All of them came for coaching because things had reached such a stage that they felt the situation HAD to be dealt with.
Are YOU going to wait that long?
A book I've found really helpful is One Small Step can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer, Ph.D.
This book tells you to make changes that are SO small they seem almost insignificant but that add up to a painless change over time. The theory is simple but powerful. You can make a start yourself.
So what is a change that you feel is too small for a coach to work with you on?
If its important to you personally, would you not want to experience the freedom of having changed it?
Start with the book.You can get a copy atwww.livingwords.net/products.html
If you feel you need some professional help then contact me at www.livingwords.net
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