Part 4-Coaching Solutions to Live By: Unlock Your Motivation
Coaching Solution Part 4 : Unleash Your Motivation to Live
Fear is not motivation: Clients may come to me knowing give all the hard, cold “facts” about their health condition. In a desperate attempt to motivate them, their doctor has hit them hard with the fear of what might happen if they don’t turn their health around. For example, to my client with Type 2 Diabetes, they know that this diabetes diagnosis will shave and average of 7 years off their life span and that the treatment for T2D is oral medication and then insulin.
I teach my clients that the problem with T2D is that they are already making too much insulin. They are insulin resistant and that is why they are struggling to lose weight and storing so much abdominal fat. And yet, they will be treated with more insulin—which is going to make them gain more weight, and it’s going to force their cells to accept unneeded glucose which will likely lead to the terrible outcomes of blindness and neuropathy. Insulin is not a cure, it’s a band aid. It doesn’t slow the progression of your disease, it manages it. Even with all of the treatments, unless you lose your excess weight, you are most likely going to die because of complications of diabetes.
Fear, force, and facts are not going to get you where you need to go.
While I can teach my clients some of the realities around having diabetes, I know that motivating them with fear, force and facts is not going to produce meaningful, lasting change. Fear of dying will motivate people for a time, but more often than not this hazy motivation will erode away with time.
Connect with what makes you feel alive: Uncovering deep motivation is the essential work of wellness coaching. It means we work together to discover what thrills you, what makes you feel alive, what you look forward to, and what you long for. This is how you fully unleash your power to live your life. This energizing force is your primary momentum that has been oppressed by numbing and waiting. Uncovering motivation that you haven’t yet tapped into is energizing and freeing as it simultaneously taps into the life-giving resources of your creativity and problems solving skills.
My biggest discovery as a wellness coach is realizing that people aren’t motivated by dying; but they are motivated by living!
Realizing you have the freedom right now to unlock your power to live well, both on the inside and on the outside, is a courageous proposition. Stop waiting and stop holding your breath. Commit yourself to your right to live in a way that is beautiful, healthy and even thrilling! Be willing to say “no” to things that are robbing you of your life and guard your ambition to live well as though it is your most precious resource. Get your heart and your head and your incredible body into alignment; all moving towards the same goal with a clear motivation and purpose. Accept that your power to change is inside you and stop looking outside for answers. Embrace that navigating the path forward is messy business with many ups and downs but with an incredible return on investment.
