Dealing with Change
I have been reflecting on change recently, my first instinct or learned response is that change is scary - the unknown lurking out there and waiting to make itself known by impacting your life. Some changes are terrible, gut-wrenching events that can haunt you for years - affecting decisions you make and throwing blocks in your way that you don’t realise are even there.
Other changes can be less dramatic, a known change, an ending of a relationship, a new job or a decision to change one’s life.
I thought about the process of tempering in blacksmithing, heating the metal to break bonds and form new stronger one, then quickly quenching, locking that structure in place. Steel tools that have not been through a process of change cannot hold an edge and are not fit for their purpose. Steel cannot do what we ask of it without experiencing and responding to change.
Experiencing change is how we move forward in life, how we change in ourselves in relation to our lives is almost more important than the changes themselves. If you’re experiencing something new and struggling, what are the changes that you are making within yourself consciously to respond to that change?
If you’re experiencing change at the moment, here’s a quick thing to try
Take a moment and write down
What the change is?
What are the changes in yourself you see?
How you would like to feel in the future?
Now take some time to reflect, how can you change now to have those feelings in the future?
A small example of this from my own experience is when I first started coaching, I wanted to be a good coach but I found myself inward-looking and nervous. I thought about what it meant for me to be a good coach and decided that I wanted my clients to feel safe.
Moving forward in my sessions, I approach them from a sense of how I can bring that feeling of welcome and safety to my clients, and you know what - I forget to be nervous!
If you’d like to know more about coaching through change, please check out my Tempering coaching
A technical note, the process of tempering steel has been simplified for story-telling reasons - please do reach out to me if you want to talk about thermo-cycling!