“Patterns .....They Shape Your Life”
Written By: Pam Goldschmidt
Life Coach and Strategist
Website: www.lifenet-strategies.com
“It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever--the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it.”
-Coach Vince Lombardi
Are you currently demonstrating who you want to be? Do you need to change your relationship with yourself and others or your intent in order to achieve a more powerful outcome now?
The strongest force in human personality is the need to remain consistent with how you define yourself. The only thing that creates permanent change in a person’s life is who they believe they are. If you simply start doing something, it becomes a part of your identity, and eventually you don’t have to work at it anymore.
Recognizing your patterns is the first step in creating lasting change. Read the following phrase out loud:
“To hit a fastball in the World Series....”
- In the time it took you to say the word “to”-about 1/10th of a second-a hitter must decide to swing the bat.
- It takes another 2/10ths of a second to initiate the swing.
- It takes another 1/10th of a second to complete the swing.
- The ball reaches and passes the plate in 4/10ths of a second.
Hitting a baseball is one of, if not the most, difficult skills in any sport in the world. Not only must a hitter judge the speed, location, and rotation (to know if it’s a fastball, curve, slider, etc.) of the ball, they must then manipulate their body in such a way as to get the bat to intersect with the ball’s path. And if that wasn’t hard enough, they have the added challenge of hitting a round ball with a round bat squarely. Even the very best hitters fail 70% of the time.
This is why the best baseball players in the world are experts at pattern recognition. They learn to recognize patterns in the pitcher-the position of his body, the look on his face, the way he releases the ball, etc.-and they decided whether or not to swing even before the ball is ever released.
There are three patterns that generally prevent people from getting what they want/need--patterns of physiology, patterns of language and patterns of focus and belief. The ability to recognize your patterns of behavior gives you the power to anticipate and meet your needs. Once you have identified what you really want and what specifically is preventing you from getting it, changing the pattern long-term is necessary.
How to Create Lasting Change:
- Diagnose what you really want and determine what pattern is preventing you from getting it.
- Associate the consequences of failing to change now and massive pleasure to the experience of changing now.
- Create a new and empowering alternative.
- Condition the new pattern until it’s consistent.
- Create an environment that consistently reinforces the new standard you’ve set for yourself.
Sounds simple, but without the support of someone to guide you through the process and hold you accountable, it's not easy to consistently hit those home runs.
Have you ever stopped to consider what makes a person truly successful? Is it the business they choose, the career path they follow, their special skills, or are they just plain old lucky?
The truth lies in some sort of combination of the above, coupled with that nobody ever really succeeds alone. Every successful person got there with the help of a series of people that supported their success. The most important person you can have on your team is a mentor or a coach. Many of the most successful people in our society actively seek out and utilize the services of private coaches.
You see it's very difficult to coach yourself to success because you are emotionally involved in the process. It's all too easy to make critical decisions more on your own emotional needs rather than on the facts. And being emotional is the fastest way to make mistakes in judgment that can literally cost you time, money and happiness.
Get a coach. Get a great coach on your team because it's the quickest way to help you identify and meet your needs in an empowering way, to help you discover your game plan for lasting change, and to guide you through the challenges of designing your "best life" and pursuing your dreams.
Look for continuing articles by Pam Goldschmidt on creating lasting change and the impact of doing what you know to create what you want.
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