Changing Our Perceptions of Change (continued)…

We spoke during my last post about changing our perceptions around change in order to improve upon outcomes. You can find my previous post here.

There were a few other points my coaching client mentioned were game changers for them, a couple of which I wanted to share here.

 Change your beliefs

We can influence our frame of mind by inserting new beliefs in the place of existing ones. For example, the belief “If I don’t try something new, I won’t fail” can also be interpreted as “If I don’t try something new, I will never succeed.”

Just think about the belief that Kernel Sanders had when over 1000 restaurants rejected his chicken recipe… His belief was likely “my recipe is so bad no one wants to sell it,” instead he adopted the belief of “I need to dedicate a restaurant to selling my chicken because it is so unique.” He replaced his beliefs with something that led to his success, rather than giving up and succumbing to a negative belief.

Setting a Change Agenda

There are two kinds of change. Those changes that happen to us (have an impact) and those changes we initiate (pursue a desired outcome). The more we focus on the later, the less the former impacts our life and priorities.

I had my client perform the following exercise which he found extremely useful. I encourage you to try it.

1.     Consider that you only have 3 months left to live, what would you do with that time?

a.     What type of activities?

b.     What kinds of events?

c.      Would you seek new friendships or rekindle old?

d.     What would your personality look like?

2.     Ask yourself, would you embrace each day, or just sit and wait for the inevitable?

3.     Lastly, with your list in hand what are you waiting for? Why aren’t you instigating change to take control of your life?

The pace and complexity of change is not going to subside, so isn’t it better you take control of change rather than wait for it to happen?

© Shawn Casemore 2013. All rights reserved.