5 November, 2021
the deep dark secret of the coaching industry
There is a deep, dark secret that impacts pretty much everyone in the coaching, self-development, and transformational industries:
It’s the fear that you’re not delivering true transformational results for your clients.
It’s the knowing that you could be co-creating much better outcomes with your clients.
It’s the realizing that your work basically looks & feels like EVERYONE else’s in your industry.
It’s the concern that your ideal clients aren’t satisfied enough with your work to re-sign and to tell their friends about it.
It’s the wondering when you see testimonials on other people’s websites or Facebook feeds if your own clients feel as great and excited about you.
Because here’s the thing:
When you know in your heart that you’re delivering a superior product (in your groups, retreats, workshops, 1-on-1s), then EVERYTHING changes. You don’t have to use manipulative marketing, you don’t need to embellish, and instead, you’re in a place of truth, confidence, and ability to grow your business in big ways.
There is a psychological and energetic freedom that comes when you know 100% in your bones that you’re not faking it…that you are creating kick-ass transformation.
The way to create kick-ass transformation is through MASTERY of your skills (& of yourself), which is what I’m on a mission to help you with.
There are dozens of skills you want to have in your skill box, including Foundational Skills like – Energetics, Container Setting, Deep Listening, Reflecting Hard Truths, Honoring what Is, Celebrating, Breakthrough Questioning, Visioning, and Strategizing.
And including more advanced skills like – Handling Triggers & Projects, Navigating through the Resistance Archetypes, Befriending Fear, Rewiring Negative Thought Patterns, Getting off the Wheel of Self-Sabotage, Demystifying Perfection, among many others.
Today let’s toe-dip into one little sliver of navigating resistance that can make a huge huge difference:
LEAN INTO RESISTANCE
In nearly any group you’re facilitating or any client you’re working with, you’re going to encounter resistance at some point in the process:
- Resistance to staying consistent with their actions
- Resistance to exploring a particular topic
- Resistance to an idea you’ve introduced
- Resistance to doing an exercise with full presence & buy-in from your group
Client resistance when you teach, facilitate and coach is totally normal because at the heart of resistance is fear.
Fear that they won’t achieve their goals. Fear that they will achieve. Fear that they’ll have to become someone they’re not. Fear that it’ll be too hard. Fear that it will disconnect them from loved ones. On and on.
While resistance is normal, unfortunately, most practitioners get stopped straight in their tracks when client resistance comes up. They want to brush past it or ignore it or rationalize with it.
When you brush resistance aside or rationalize with it, it just gets stronger.
When you as the practitioner resist your client’s resistance, you drive them further away from flow, ease, groundedness, and action.
Instead, try leaning into the resistance.
Leaning into the Resistance means embracing the resistance vs. running away from it. It means creating enough safety and trust in the conversation to address it. It means knowing how to hold transformational space for the Resistance. It means honoring the Resistance, and loving the resistance, and being able to support your client to go deep with it and harness it.
And, of course, this all requires not only having impeccable transformational techniques under your belt but also YOU to be comfortable with your client’s resistance and fear in the first place. Not only comfortable with it but actually love on it. (YOUR energetics are always bar none).
Let’s work together to make this industry as transformational as possible, to raise the bar, to move beyond the secret of not feeling we’re doing our best work.
This is all done through the trifecta that we journey through in Sacred Depths:
Mastery of Transformation Skills (learn, practice, and master the transformational skills)
Mastery of Human Behavior (in order to know when and how to use the skills, you must deeply and intimately understand human nature)
Self-Mastery (the transformation skills are only as effective as the self-evolution & energetics of the practitioner themselves. Doing the inner work as a practitioner is KEY).
Let’s co-create better outcomes with clients and hold more sacred & transformational space for clients.