In the beginning of the isolation I wasn’t feeling so good. I was bonding with some good chocolate and some delicious food. But then I took action and now I’ve lost about five kilos! How did that happen? By taking action.

In coaching, one of the principles we use is that we end each session with something that gets the client to take action. We either use accountability, where you get your client to be held accountable to however they want to feel accountable, or we give them an inquiry, which is a powerful question that that the client can take away with them and think about.

There are two parts to coaching, and two parts to changing your life, that I want to focus on. One part is about being, about feeling the emotions, the thinking, the thought process, and the second part is where the change happens – in the doing. I think each of us will be able to relate to this in many different ways. Procrastination, for example – some of us are just wonderful procrastinators, where we think and think and think and think and think…but nothing changes.

 

The thinking part isn’t enough. You need to translate the thinking into doing.

 

The other day I was reading about gratitude and the science of gratitude, and I found something very interesting that I want to share with you. The research suggested that just thinking about gratitude and the things that you’re grateful for isn’t enough. The thinking part isn’t enough. You need to translate the thinking into doing. So, if you’ve got gratitude towards your family, change that thought from a thought and make it real. What can you do today to your family to actually show gratitude and behave in that way? It got me thinking about the parallels between that scientific study and what we do in coaching.

In my last blog, I shared with you this thought about renewal. What change can you make to your life that’s going to improve it? I would now like to take that one step further. Think about the changes you can make on a daily basis that could improve your life. Not just this future aspirational state that “one day when we get out of our restrictions, I’m going to go and do this”. What’s the change that you can make today? Tonight? What are you going to do different tomorrow that’s aligned with the bigger picture for your life?

If you’re thinking about the things that you’re grateful for, how can you actually express them in actions? I’m urging you to focus on those elements of ‘doing’ in addition to those elements of ‘being’.

 

Reflect on the things that you can do, and go and do them.

 

One of the things that many of you have already done is participate in the PreKureME Lockdown Edition, which is an element of doing. It’s finding something to do – a framework, a structure – that gives you the ability to improve your health and exit lockdown healthier than you entered.

The question I’ve got for you today is, how else are you doing that in other parts of your life? Make those changes. Reflect on the things that you can do, and go and do them.