The good news was that a client came to me with a referral. A referral is like gold to me.
The bad news was that the referral shot herself in the foot.
First step was to talk to referral. We will name her Joanne. We talked by phone: a little about her background, her back story. We did not talk about the price of coaching, nor duration, nor format—NOTHING.
Toward the end of the conversation Joanne told me that she could not afford coaching. How interesting I thought! She has no idea what it costs but she is sure she can’t afford it.
It was easy to see with Joanne how in my vocabulary, “she got in her own way”. What I would like to say is “get out of your own way!” I was not the obstacle. Price was not the obstacle. She was the obstacle in her way.
The important lesson here is not Joanne. The important lesson is what do any of us do that gets in our own way? How does our self talk stop us from doing something that we are entirely capable of doing?
There was no second step. In communication the answer to any challenge is to “chunk it”. To cut it into small steps. You may think you can’t walk a mile. You probably can walk to the mailbox . . . ten times.
You may think you can’t eat the whole cake. If you eat one piece a day, at the end of a week or ten days the cake is gone. Then you are saying, “I can’t believe I ate the whole cake”. You chunked it.
I have always admired people who lost a hundred pounds. It had to seem like such an insurmountable challenge. The only way to succeed is one pound at a time.
The next time you find yourself thinking or saying that you can’t do something, STOP.
Chunk that challenge into small steps and GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY.
