Ep. 20 Coaching Lesson 6: Willingness: Do you have what it takes to change?

Learn how to get motivated. Get unstuck and start envisioning your life the way you want it with just a little bit of willingness! In this coaching episode from the Get Me Started! online course, learn how the simple act willingness will kickstart every lasting change that you want! Step by step.

TIMESTAMP:

0:00    Welcome
0:58    Recap Lessons 1-5
2:29   Willingness and personal power
5:04    You've got this!
6:04    Resistance
7:57    Creating lasting change - 2 facts
9:00    Fear and trust in change
12:32  Consequences of staying stuck
14:49  Closing

BOOKS (by Vonne Solis)
Lessons in Surviving Suicide – A Letter to My DaughterDivine Healing Transforming Pain into Personal Power – A Guide to Heal Pain From Child Loss, Suicide and Other Grief
The Power of Change

 RESOURCES (Blog, Course & Meditations)

COURSE Discount

COACHING EPISODES:

Start at Lesson 1: Regrets: Letting them go! Audio or YouTube
Go to previous Lesson 5: Acceptance: Leaving Your Stuff Behind! Audio or YouTube

Subscribe to the podcast! Share your favourite episodes! Connect with Vonne on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Transcript

Vonne Solis  0:00  
Welcome to another Grief Talk Coffee Chat episode. I'm your host, Vonne Solis.

Vonne Solis  0:13  
So welcome again to coaching Lesson Six of the "Get Me Started!", Beyond Bereavement series in my online course. This is of course Grief Talk. Everything you want to know about grief. I am your host, Vonne Solis. So welcome. I'm so happy that you're with me today. 

Vonne Solis  0:28  
If you have been following along on these coaching episodes, we are at Lesson six, which is the final lesson where I offer an accompanying PDF mini-personal growth journal that you can follow along in these coaching episodes and do some exercises. And there is a link to the free download in the description. So I do invite you to do that if you'd like to own your own personal mini growth journal that accompanies this course. 

Vonne Solis  0:58  
Today we are talking about Lesson Six "Willingness - Do you have what it takes to change?" Now in the first five episodes for anyone that has not seen them yet or listen to them yet, we covered in order from Lesson One through Five Regrets Letting Them Go. Failure: Your Friend or Foe. Self-forgiveness - You Need it to Change Your Life. Hope - are you ready to change? And Acceptance: Leaving Your Stuff Behind. So in this episode, Lesson Six, the whole idea behind the course to begin with, is to work with anybody who is coming from loss or adversity and wants to change their life in a very guided practice. Which does require a certain amount of introspection, for sure, but it is gentle. It is a compassionate approach. And you can certainly take all the time in the world you need to make the changes you want for your life.

Vonne Solis  1:57  
The whole idea is to tap into your personal power. And as a bereaved mom for 17 years, I designed this course in my effort to rebuild my life, and understood that for me anyway, and for anyone else out there that these messages may be impacting you in the same way, I discovered I needed a very, very gentle process. And one, that although interchangeable in the steps, does require some steps and focus. 

Vonne Solis  2:29  
So getting right into this lesson Willingness - do you have what it takes to change? One of the reasons I asked that question of myself and invite others embarking on this journey with me to ask it of themselves is because all change starts with willingness. The moment you have just even the smallest amount of willingness to say, I don't want this anymore. I want that or I don't know yet what I want, but I for sure know I don't want this. That's when change starts to happen. 

Vonne Solis  3:03  
Now I've said in previous lessons, that's when change starts to happen. And it does in every single one of these steps. Whether you're letting go of regret all the way through to understanding what you want to and feel ready to leave behind, every one of the steps builds upon the next and, as I said, are interchangeable to give you the ability to tap into your personal power to design the life you want and feel ready for at every stage of the game. 

Vonne Solis  3:34  
Nothing is gimmicky about this process. Nothing is preparing you to go buy the car. To go buy the house. To create all the material, you know, to get that perfect partner overnight. None of that is what I am aiming to teach in this course. Rather, it is the ability to tap in to your personal power, so you always know that whatever hits you in life at whatever age and stage, you've got this. You know exactly what to do to get yourself out of any situation or to expand on what you've already fantastically built for your life. We're wired to change and grow, so anybody that does become stagnant is not challenging themselves enough.

Vonne Solis  4:25  
Getting right to it, what does willingness help you do? Right off the bat, it helps you develop a more positive outlook on your life and everything, really in general, and opens you up to possibility. So what does willingness make you feel? It makes you feel energized. It makes you feel confident. That you can conquer whatever is before you. It makes you feel eager to start these changes and it may even make you feel a little bit dissatisfied with where you currently are. 

Vonne Solis  5:04  
So what are some of the challenges that you face when you decide to become willing and really want to change your life? Well, largely, you can feel impatient to get things going. You can feel fear of the unknown. And you can also feel fear of who you could become. 

Vonne Solis  5:24  
The concept of becoming willing to do anything, if you were to just stop and think about it for a moment, yes, I'm going to do that. I'm definitely going to do that. I've got the courage. I kind of think that's where this really popular saying "you've got this" comes from, is to encourage the willingness in another person to step outside, you know, their boundaries. So it's natural to feel a little bit of fear and reticence and hesitation to want to push yourself. But the willingness will propel you to want to step outside your boundaries. 

Vonne Solis  6:04  
It's also natural to feel resistance when we are ready for change. And it's kind of an oxymoron, because on the one hand, we really want change and we're really excited about it and we're really willing to go after it. But then on the other hand, we become very resistant to what could be, and we can set up blocks for ourselves. And they can be any number of blocks. I can't do it. Because of this. I can't do it because of that. Whatever the blocks are, it's natural to resist change, because change makes us feel uncomfortable. But the good news is that the more you embrace the willingness you can demonstrate for yourself to do more today, the more willing you will become to take on even bigger things.

Vonne Solis  6:50  
So some things to consider when you commit to being a willing participant in your own life, is that changing your circumstances and evolving your consciousness takes work, and it takes commitment. But when you start to view your life as one that's transformative, as an adventure, it also can be a lot of fun. So the key takeaway in this Lesson six "Willingness - do you have what it takes to change?" is the fact that all change starts from a new mindset and what you are envisioning for your life today. And obviously, this changes, the more our mindset adapts. The more confident and courageous we become. The more we can see our future. The more we want to expand on what we're experiencing today. It takes a changing mindset, and one that is expansive, and allows you to envision those things for your life that can be hard to envision Because you just can't see yourself there yet today.

Vonne Solis  7:57  
So here are two facts. Creating lasting and authentic change in your life comes from being connected to your personal power that allows you to feel confident, strong and courageous. Fact number two, authentic and quiet personal power is not the same as power driven by the ego. The temptation when you become a willing participant in your life, is that it's easier to stay comfortable and blame other people or circumstances for where you are today. So what do you do when you do get stuck, and you are challenged by staying too comfortable? One, take responsibility for your own level of discomfort, and two, decide the changes you really do want to make for your life. Even if you can only embrace them in your mind today. Trust me, that is a fantastic first step in manifesting it into reality. 

Vonne Solis  9:00  
So of course, change is scary. And the two main reasons that people are afraid to change, in my view. There are others but the two main ones are that what they are desiring for their life, in terms of change, may negatively impact their loved ones. And the second of course is fear of the unknown. Everybody is afraid of the unknown. And it takes a lot of courage. It takes guts to go you know what, I'm going to not throw things to the wind, but I am going to seize this opportunity. I'm going to make this change. I am just going to trust that the decision I'm making today, even though I don't know what the outcome is going to be, I'm going to trust myself and I'm going to trust in some cases the universe, but I'm just going to trust whatever it is that you connect to that represents trust for you. It could be God. It could be you know, another religious deity. It could be the angels. Most of all, it's being able to trust in yourself and your personal power to not let yourself down. That whatever happens as an outcome from what you are deciding and creating, you got this. 

Vonne Solis  10:13  
Whether you're coming from adversity, loss, traumatic experiences a dysfunctional childhood, a broken relationship, financial loss. Whatever situation is driving you to be dissatisfied, it could just be that you've outgrown a situation. But whatever is driving you to feel dissatisfied today, and you want to make changes for your life, but you don't necessarily trust yourself to make the changes. You don't trust the the circumstances of the world. You just don't trust yourself enough or anything else that these changes can really happen for you. They might happen for other people, but you don't really trust that they can happen for you. It could be that you've had past patterns of behaviour and habits that have shown you over and over again that you really can't go after what you truly, truly want in your heart. You may not know what you want. Because it takes time, and it does take, in my experience and in my view, it can take some things that haven't worked out for us to show us what we don't want before we understand what we do want. 

Vonne Solis  11:25  
It's all about how you actually are able to handle and manage those things that are pushing you into your discomfort zone. But the consequences of being stuck and forcing yourself to stay somewhere where you don't really want to be, and the difference between people who are happy in the status quo and the people who are not, is you know when you are dissatisfied with where you're at, and you do really want more for your life. And some people are very, very, very content in the status quo. Sometimes for decades. Sometimes for the rest of their life. But if you are one of the people that are continually challenging yourself to grow and learn and expand your consciousness. Expand your life. To live as abundantly as prosperously, as joyously as comfortably as you can possibly experience and want to experience in your life, then you have to be that willing participant to make things happen.

Vonne Solis  12:32  
The consequences of staying stuck, it makes you feel, by and large, resentful, frustrated, and bitter towards those things or people that you believe are holding you back. And trust me, that's not a very fun way to live because that just produces all sorts of other blocking mechanisms to create the life you really want to be living. Freeing yourself to become the you, you really want to be, comes from a new and changing mindset that allows you to experience as much as you can experience in terms of change, at any given moment. This is not to say, you always want to be putting yourself in a momentum of change. No! That would be exhausting. Imagine if you always had something really, really big happening every single day or week, even every month. There are periods where we need to sort of plateau out and just enjoy the experience. That gives us time to recalibrate, rethink, reconsider, reimagine, and rest a little bit and have that space where we can just enjoy what we have created. 

Vonne Solis  13:49  
This is one of the reasons that I am a firm believer that timing is everything. And sometimes when change is happening, in fact, all times when change is happening for you and immediate loved ones that are going to be impacted by the change, timing is everything. Everybody has to be on the same page for the new circumstances to manifest. So rest enjoy the plateau. You don't need to be and nor should you want to be changing your life all the time. That would literally go against the whole idea of reimagining and actually taking the time to design the life you really truly authentically are connecting to. The second thing is freeing yourself comes from your ability to just enjoy the process. Just enjoy it. And the third takeaway from this, seizing the opportunities that feel right to you at any given moment. 

Vonne Solis  14:49  
If you do decide to download the journal, there are three exercises in there related to this lesson that can help you further get really, really clear about out what it is you want to change in your life and what you actually feel ready for to change today. Also, I'll put a link in the description below for anybody that is interested in learning more about my course with a discount offered, should you choose to sign up. Remember, as always, there's no rush. You don't have to compete against anybody else, least of all yourself. Just enjoy the journey. Have fun. View life as an adventure. Yes, there are going to be challenges and sometimes there may even be really devastating circumstances. But once you are connected and continue connecting on a deeper level to your personal power, you will naturally gain the confidence, the trust and the certainty that you really can design the life that you want. The life that you feel aligned with in your heart and in your mind at any given time. 

Vonne Solis  16:00  
That's it for today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Until next time,

Transcribed by https://otter.ai