“When you’re in a Slump,
you’re not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

The subject of Praxis came up when I was studying recently with my accountability partner. Have you ever heard of it? Essentially it’s aligning your belief with your behavior.  For me, self-study is one of the most important things that you can do for yourself, to get you out of a rut and take you to the next level.  And oddly, I was finding myself in resistance to it.  There’s a quote by William James that says, “Believe and your belief will create the fact.”  I love it because when you’re trying to institute a new habit or change some habits that really aren’t serving you, most people will go right to their behavior. They change their behavior, get frustrated or bored, and they’ll go onto the next shiny object.  They’ll get easily thrown off track.

Even though they are working on their behaviors, the belief that they can actually become this person that they want to be or the person who has implemented this type of habit, is something that they don’t believe on a deep, deep subconscious level.  But through self-study, we can peel back our many layers, like an onion.   I coach people and enjoy working with a coach for myself. But in the midst of being coached,  I have found myself in resistance.   I’m working with an accountability partner everyday, studying and having deep conversations about what does this material mean to us, how does it apply to our lives?  What I’m finding is that all of these feelings and emotions start bubbling up for me.  

How odd, right?  I’ve been in the military for almost 28 years which definitely requires discipline and yet here I am in the position of resisting it.  Discipline that served me for so long and it was a huge part of my day and now the thing I’m experiencing difficulty with.    Now that I’m on my own and an entrepreneur, I do get a certain level of success, but I do resist having that structure that may come with it. Not that structure is a bad thing. It can actually be a good thing.

The common denominator of success is those who succeed do the things that failures don’t like to do.

Maybe I’m resisting because I’m growing. This is a normal operating system for me and in my Facebook group, where we really dive into this material, peel back the onion and start to talk about mindset.  Not on a surface level, but on a really deep, deep level.

Even as a coach it’s not easy to do this work. Yes, I help people through their moments when they’re fearful and about to step through their fear and literally become another person on the other side because they were courageous enough to step through it, to get uncomfortable. But that doesn’t make it easy when I’m doing it for myself. Now that I’m diving into this, I’m realizing that I have an issue with being told what to do. Not necessarily what to do, but being told how to do it.

Here’s the thing, when you allow yourself to be coached, when I allow myself to be coached, I’m doing things from their perspective. They’re seeing me and watching inefficiencies or things that I could do better. I will only take myself as far as my level of awareness will take me, right? We all have that bubble around us.

We’ll only go as far as our level of awareness will take us. If we want to create better results, it makes sense to hire a coach.

If you want to get fit, hire a fitness coach. If you want to excel in your job, hire a coach that can help you get to the next level because they’re going to ask you to do things that are not comfortable for you. What’s great about getting coached for me is that I’m studying, and I’m getting into this personal development deeper and deeper, I’m starting to notice myself on a much deeper level. I peeled back the onion and I learned more and more about myself each and every day. That’s going to help me catapult to the next level. It’s also going to help me serve you better.