Authors, Acknowledge Your Shift and Let It In: Admitting the Arrival
8 of 28 big ideas from the world of coaching to grow your author business
The eighth in a 28-part series on 28 big ideas from coaching for authors to coach themselves, adapted from my book, The Coach Within.
“Eureka! — I have found it!”
— Archimedes
This concept is short and sweet and just as important. Whereas the shifting we talked about in the previous lesson was about the movement to somewhere different, admitting the arrival is about acknowledging and letting in that insight. It’s knowing that you have reached a new place and pausing to value that fact — looking around, drinking it in, letting it wash over you, making it your own.
Consider a sightseeing trip of running around from place to place focused on ticking off as many landmarks as possible more than appreciating and fully experiencing each one. This is not that. When serving as your own author coach, make sure that when you show up in a new place (mindset, awareness, discovery, fork in the road) you allow time to welcome that and take it in. You have arrived.
What happens once you’ve shifted, arrived, and slowed down — it may only take seconds, enough to not gloss over it — to realize and cherish that fact? You can act. You can properly address your agenda and takeaway (Lesson 4) and make a decision about what to do next. For a simplistic demonstration, hop back to Lesson 6 (peeling the onion) and look at the examples. Once you’ve probed deeply enough and hit your aha, you have clarity, you’re no longer stuck, and you often know just what you want to do next.
Here’s a quick look at where we’re at as a session comes to a close:
· You’ve shifted.
· You notice that you’ve shifted and name it as such (the acknowledging sense of “admitting”).
· You receive the shift and let it sit with you (the granting access sense of “admitting”).
· You consider and choose the “What now?”
There are various ways to interpret What now?, but identifying what’s next is a crucial part of the arrival.
It could simply be owning a new piece of information.
Oh, that bothers me because I see myself as the type of person who doesn’t self-promote. How interesting to keep in mind…I see not doing self-promotion as a matter of identity and not simply a matter of behavior and action (or inaction).
It is often a specific action you want to take.
I’m going to start doing five things a day every day to promote my books and author life and see for myself whether that’s a practice that makes sense for generating momentum around my books.
It may require further thought or a brainstorming session.
Now that I realize I keep getting sick because I hate how my job is interfering with my author career, I’m going to have to consider what to do about that.
Coaching Yourself in Action
We’re almost through (one to go) with the components of the basic coaching model and from there we’ll be returning to more exciting, big-picture ideas with wide applicability. I’ve already introduced creativity (Lesson 2) and responsibility (Lesson 3). These broad concepts will allow you to expand your ability to coach yourself. They bring impressive results with repeated use.
⎕ In the meantime, practice, practice, practice the coaching model through the admitting the arrival stage. Run through the model with a new agenda item and takeaway up to three times in three ways (walking, meditating, writing), reinforcing the steps, but focusing especially this time on the experience of the arrival and deciding what’s next.
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