“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.”

–Reinhold Niebuhr

The “Serenity Prayer” is about gaining clarity around the things we can and cannot change and learning to accept the latter. Sometimes the change we cannot seem to make is within ourselves. We try; we fail. We then assume that we simply cannot change. We stop trying. But maybe we just don’t know how to change. We don’t know who to ask. We don’t want to ask because that will make us feel inferior or vulnerable.

We look at others and see how capable and together they seem. We don’t want them to discover our flaws. Or, we see the flaws of others all too clearly and judge them sternly. We don’t want to draw the same magnitude of judgment we so unconsciously lavish onto others.

The process of change begins with humility. It means being willing to let go of the attachment to proving that we are good enough. We are on a constant treadmill, racing to be good enough and fearing lapsing backwards into the doldrums of not-good-enough. The mind without humility sees itself as either one or the other. When humility enters, we no longer engage in the game of good-enough/not-good-enough. We are on another playing field altogether. There is more space. There is grace. Our energy is freed up to pursue our goals and live from our values.

There is a ketch-22 that comes into play when we ask for change in our lives. We do not want to recognize the power we have to change our own lives. To acknowledge this would force us also to acknowledge the time we have wasted not taking action and the damage that has been caused by our resistance. Grief and forgiveness are parts of the change process.

Most people seem to need to experience a certain amount of pain before they are willing to step into their power and take responsibility for their lives. It is when the pain of going on with life as usual surpasses the perceived discomfort of change that we step into the void. One of my mentors liked to say, “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” It is when we are tired of the same result that we choose to try something different. We usually have to wait until we are very, very tired of the way things are before we will really be willing to seek change. We can no longer pretend that someone or something else is going to fix things for us. We can no longer pretend to be helpless. Or perhaps we are helpless and we have come to the point that we need to ask for help! This is the point at which many people seek out a life coach, when they need someone who can hold up a mirror and show them the power they have.

Perhaps the most difficult part of change is learning to welcome it. Welcoming change means welcoming the uncomfortable. Once the resistance starts falling away, positive change can happen at an accelerated rate. A really skillful life coach or therapist can help support us through the process by normalizing our expectations around change. I find that letting my clients know that the discomfort they are feeling means they are moving forward is really helpful. I usually have to remind them often. It is no wonder most people are not able to make changes on their own if, whenever they feel uncomfortable, they take it as a signal to stop venturing beyond their comfort zones.

The beautiful thing that working with a life coach can do is give us an entirely new experience of ourselves. We learn that we are more competent than we had thought. We learn that we are able to be more intentional in our lives and how to override our automatic pilot who would have us stop at the first sign of danger. We make choices every day that we are not even aware are choices. We make choices about how to think and what to expect of ourselves and others that we simply do not question. Life coaching can help us become more conscious about these choices and help us to use our minds instead allowing our minds to play good-enough/not-good-enough with us.