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After listening to Matt Fitzgerald’s book on endurance athletic sports, How Bad Do You Want It, I started thinking about perceived effort when it comes to life off the field, track, or pitch. His book dedicates ample time to the idea that human beings often underestimate the amount of effort it takes to scale the change they seek. Whether it is change in career, change in life, change in health, change in business, or any other change.
It is an athlete’s perceptions of effort, not their physical limitations, that ultimately limit athletic performance. The ability to withstand increased perception of effort can be trained, just like physical capacity. Some interventions can reduce the perception of effort – as the limit of perceived effort moves to a new place, the physical performance is increased. The maximum level of perceived effort an athlete is willing/able to tolerate depends on their motivations for doing so. Or, as described in the book: “Physical fitness determines where the wall that represents your physical limit is placed. Mental fitness determines how close you are able to get to that limit in competition. Mental fitness is a collection of coping skills – behaviors, thoughts and emotions that help athletes master the discomfort and stress of the athletic experience, mainly by increasing tolerance for perceived effort and by reducing the amount of effort that is perceived at any given intensity of exercise.” In life, as in sports, perception rules. When your perception limits your ability to change, it’s time to hire a coach. A professional coach can help you gain new perspective and create a plan to develop your perceived effort toleration. We help you focus on your mental fitness when it comes to the change you seek and the perceived effort to get there. “One of the best ways to see ourselves clearly is to ask others to hold up a mirror. ‘Top athletes and singers have coaches,’ surgeon and author Atul Gawande reflects in Option B – Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. ‘Should you?’ Sports teams are recognizing the importance of looking for players who can learn from their failure. In sports, taking suggestions from a coach is the whole point of practice. The ability to listen to feedback is the sign of resilience, and some of those who do it best gained that strengths in the hardest way possible.” You’ve probably had a coach at some point in your life. Maybe it was for your little league soccer games, college swim meets, or violin practice. They taught you new skills, held you accountable, made you a better person, and (hopefully) were a super supportive mentor. But then, you grew up and found yourself out on our own. Some of you may be lucky enough to have awesome family and friends, but they’re not going to listen tirelessly to your problems or hold you accountable to learn new skills. So, you settle for less than you deserve in your career, love life, and all-around happiness. A professional coach is an objective, confidential mentor that can support you in the change you seek. As a coach, we aren’t going to let you keep talking about your problems, we are going to help you solve them and kick fear to the curb by taking action. We all have free will to change. But often we don’t change because it’s easier not to. We perceive that our current situation is better than the unknown. It’s easier to go to work every day at a job we don’t love than it is to figure out our passion and pursue the unknown. Let’s face it, if it was easy to change and obtain the life you want, you would have done it already. Coaching will help you value what you think about yourself more than what everyone else thinks about you. You’ll start taking actions you never thought you could. And by using a professional coach, you can achieve the success you seek, but you don’t have to worry about that annoying whistle you may have hated as a child on the soccer field. You ready? Head over to FromWithinCoaching.com and schedule a complimentary exploratory session with one of our professional coaches to learn more about how we can help YOU, take the next step to making the change you dream of. -Coach Amy This morning while reading the Society for Human Resource Management’s daily communiqué, I was drawn to an article titled “Why CEOs Should Have HR Experience.” Have to admit, having been in the HR field most of my professional career, I’m a pretty strong advocate for this point of view.
The lead paragraph states “A CEO’s most important responsibilities typically include maximizing employee performance, setting values to define the organization’s culture, overseeing the company’s return on investment, and making sure the talent pipeline is full of needed expertise for years to come.” So true. As many leaders have found, if you can’t get the people part of the organizational puzzle figured out, there’s a high likelihood success will not follow. One of the experts quoted in the article states HR leaders bring a trait to the corporate table that may not be fully developed in their colleagues: “People-Centered Leadership.” At the end of the day, it’s the organization’s people that are going to drive and champion business strategies and a leadership style focused on the value of human capital will go a long way to ensuring that happens. So what does this have to do with coaching? Coaching is a tool to help develop a leadership style that is more people-centric. If you’re not inspiring your teams to achieve the results you know are possible or are avoiding conversations you’re certain could lead you and your organization to greatness, it may be time to call for support. As coaches, we know you have all the answers; we’re just here to ask the right questions. And there’s no wiggling out of responding since we hold you accountable (unlike those highly creative ways you avoid these conversations with yourself). As an Executive Coach, I pull leaders toward the development of Courageous Cultures, those in which authenticity is paramount and employee engagement is at its peak. If you’re interested in creating that sort of environment and becoming a more people-centric leader, it’s time to book a free exploratory session. Who knows, your next step might be CEO! -Coach Lu Setnicka It’s true. Our decisions determine our future. They influence our achievements, our sense of purpose, and our overall happiness. Even the seemingly small decisions that we make every day—what to have for lunch? what time to go to bed? what movie to see this weekend? post it on social media or not? —are building blocks of our future selves and ultimately of the quality of our lives.
Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly choosing to either seize an opportunity for growth or make an excuse that allows us to remain within our comfort zone. Most of us are hardwired to stick to what we know. Why risk our sense of security for something bolder and brighter when there’s a chance it might not work out? It’s a good question. But reframe it. Instead of listing all of the things that could go wrong (i.e. making excuses to “play it safe”), dream up all of the things that could go right. The challenge then becomes justifying why we wouldn’t give up safety and predictability to take a chance. When we allow ourselves to envision all of the opportunities that exist outside of our comfort zone, the possibilities for who we can become are endless. We are the limits we create for ourselves, after all. Not so sure? Does the name Bethany Hamilton ring a bell? Oscar Pistorius? How about Jason Lester? The competitive surfer, sprint runner, and endurance athlete respectively, are world-class athletes who have earned international recognition for not only excelling in their sports, but for doing so despite having suffered the loss of a limb—in Oscar Pistorius’s case, two limbs. These athletes risked privacy, humiliation, and their own comfort zone to pursue what lit a spark in them. And they did so by refusing to put limits on what could be achieved; they chose the brilliance that comes from choosing opportunity over excuses. -Coach Alexandra Hughes Fear is a universal emotional response to a perceived threat. Our ancestors passed down to us the instinctual type of fear that protects us from danger and plays an important role in self-preservation. Core fears, however, are the deep-rooted fears that live in our subconscious and are the result of childhood conditioning or trauma. These fears are the inner voices and thoughts of “I am not good enough”, “I don’t deserve” or “I am not loveable.” They often appear when we are faced with a choice of trying a new activity, like joining a group, speaking in public, or even speaking up for ourselves. They swirl madly in our minds and reach deep inside of us to encircle and clench our throats, chest, and gut and warn us with “You might fail,” “You might look stupid” or “You might say the wrong thing.” The result is that we stay quiet and small, and constrained.
We are automatically triggered by the unpleasant thoughts and feelings these fears produce and our pattern of reactions to these dictate how we live our lives. Many of us will cope with these unpleasant feelings by avoiding situations, numbing with food, alcohol, or technology. We exist on “autopilot” and are held back from living fully, from loving freely, and from living to our fullest potential. What if instead of automatically pulling back or reacting with old patterns when these fears emerge, you instead leaned in a bit and saw these fears as an invitation to make a different choice? What if you were able to sit with the uncomfortable feelings they produce and get curious about where they came from and about how they are keeping you from achieving your goals and dreams? What would you step into and what would you do if you weren’t held back by these core fears? Who would you be? What actions would you take? What would you achieve? As a Clarity and Life Transformation Coach, I help clients become aware of and understand the origin and meaning of their limiting core fears so that they can break free from living a life in reaction to them. Once free, they are able to live a life directed by intention and full of peace, joy, and created success. What would you do if you were free? -Coach Augusta  For most of the East Coast, today was a huge day for celebration. The temperatures shifted (especially in Vermont) from -20℉ to 20℉. (That is 40 degrees, people!) After 15 days of bitter cold, it suddenly felt warm. Yesterday, it was rumored to be colder in some places on Earth than it was on the planet Mars…you know, the planet that is known for its COLD weather? Yes, we beat its temperature low by at least 20 degrees. That is cold. But seriously, we celebrated 20℉ today? Uhm, 20℉ is cold, there is no way around it, but feels warm compared to what we had been experiencing. This perception made me think about how human beings can assimilate much easier to change and discomfort than we think we can. It took us only 15 days to become acclimatized to below-zero weather. It was not until the brutal weather lifted that we realized how, although it wasn’t easy or comfortable, we got used to feeling a certain way: COLD. We didn’t love it, but we got used to it. What else can we get used to faster and with less discomfort than we imagine? Job change that might require a slight salary decline, but that offers more fulfilment? Leaving a relationship that is not serving you anymore, but you feel too scared to be alone? Starting a business based on your passions, but being so unsure where to even start, you are paralyzed? Change often brings discomfort. But discomfort is not death. Discomfort is short lived when you keep moving forward through the change. When we try to anticipate the discomfort of change, we often underestimate our ability to acclimatize to it. So, if you found yourself celebrating the giant temperature swing today because 20℉ felt warm, ask yourself what else you could do this week to make a change that in 15 days could feel so much less fearful. Perhaps all you need to do is put on the proverbial set of extra mittens to start your change…trust me, in 15 days, any discomfort that you felt on the first day, will soon be long gone. As Mark Twain reminds us, it is up to us to explore, dream, and discover. What’s stopping you? -Coach Amy  |
AuthorThe authors of these blogs include incredible Coaches and Writers at FromWithin Coaching who are inspired to share their thoughts, ideas, comments, and possibilities with YOU, the reader. Archives
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