Ask Your Coach - Why can't I take action? (live coaching transcript)

Today's Ask A coach is a transcript of a coaching client. She is an entrepreneur living with chronic pain, which comes up a lot in our sessions. Shared with permission. Topic of your Question: I have tried everything, but I don't get anywhere

ask-your-coach-why-can-t-i-take-action-live-coaching-transcript

Ask Your Question: I can't take action. I've tried everything to get more clients and to run a profitable business. I know what to do, but I don't want to keep trying. ANSWER:

Coach Karynn: Okay. Then action is not the assignment right now.

What happens inside you when you even think about taking action?

Client: I create, I freeze, I question, I second guess, I'm perfectionist, I compare, I despair, I criticize, I regroup, I reframe, I block myself and I don't take any action. For 10 years

Coach Karynn: You are taking many actions. They’re just all happening before the point where someone else can see, judge, accept, reject, or buy what you created.

What do you believe will happen if you release something before you have questioned it into the ground? Client: Harsh criticism that I can't handle that will send me into a deep depression and freeze me even more

Coach Karynn:

What feels more dangerous: what another person might say, or what you know you would say to yourself afterward?

Client:

I've had experience with both and they're both terrible, but my own self talk is always lined with fear of what someone else thinks. People I know. Strangers. It all matters to me and I wish it didn't. I used to feel this way about my body until we started coaching, but now I don't so I know there's hope. I just don't know what to do to crack through the paralyzation.

Coach Karynn:

That matters. You already know this pattern can change because you changed it with your body.

When other people’s opinions about your body stopped controlling you, what changed first: what you believed about them, what you believed about yourself, or how you responded when the fear appeared?

Client:

We worked on what I believed about myself - I took teeny tiny baby steps. From "I am fat" to "I have fat". From "I have fat" to "my body has survived the worst conditions and conquered death". To "I love what my body can do for me and I love how it responds to me now, today, even if it's tired sometimes." I love MY body I don't have any other body so what's the point in loving someone else's body more than mine or even comparing it?

Coach Karynn:

You didn’t crack through it., you built a tiny path through it.

What is the creative-work version of changing “I am fat” to “I have fat”?

Could “I can’t take action” become “I am experiencing fear before I take action” or “I have practiced stopping before I can be criticized”?

Which sentence feels true without asking you to pretend?

Client:

I think part of me is afraid of pain, of being overworked, of being exhausted.

Coach Karynn:

If your actions worked, what are you afraid success will require from your body?

Client:

I am afraid I will have too much business that I can't handle without help. And I don't have help.

Coach Karynn:

So the fear is not only “What if I fail?”

It is also “What if it works and I become trapped inside more work than my body can carry?”

What would “enough business” look like if it were designed around your actual capacity, not around how much you should be able to handle?

Client:

To start, just one different client each week remotely or one small group of 6 - maybe every other month

Coach Karynn:

What if that is not “too much business.” What if that is a capacity limit you can protect?

If you knew you could close enrollment the moment one person booked, what is the tiniest invitation you could safely put into the world?

Client: I'm stealing that! I actually love that. "If you knew you could finally take action and see progress on your goal, what is the tiniest amount of time you could safely put in your calendar?"

Coach Karynn:

How does that feel - you found the opening.

The question is not, “How much action can I force myself to take?”

It is, “How small can I make the commitment so my body believes me when I say it will not become endless?”

Now answer your own question: If you knew you could finally take action and see progress on your goal, what is the tiniest amount of time you could safely put in your calendar?

Client: (after free-hand writing for 20 min.)

You've had the gym membership. You've invested in your wellness and you know what to do and even how to do it, but something is keeping you from moving forward. Even if you know what's paralyzing you, you want more than anything to DO what you've been dreaming to do.

This was me. I would get stuck somewhere in the middle of solving my problems and finding the solution. Why was I following someone else's path?

I had different abilities, different resources, and different support and access - their path could NEVER happen for me. My only way forward was to make my own solution. But I didn't have to do it from scratch. I cherry-picked from the stuff that would work and decided that I didn't want most of what I had been using in my daily routine.

This is what you're looking for. This is what you have been craving - your own navigation. The question is not, “How much action can I force myself to take?” It is, “How small can I make the commitment so my body believes me when I say it will not become endless?" This week we are designing our own movements so we can create a method that adapts to your body. Join us at the [redacted for privacy] Date, Time and Location

Coach Karynn:

That is the invitation.

You just created it without spiraling, perfecting, or building an entire business around it. You took the action. In 20 minutes, you invited people into one small, contained, customized home for their body.

What happens in your body when you imagine posting it exactly as it is?

...this coaching session continued for 42 more minutes and we did more deep dive coaching on the thoughts and emotions that kept coming up until we found a place that felt believable, where action was safe.

If you resonate with this and would like to be privately coached, book a free hour of coaching.