March 1, 2023

Change is inevitable. It is always occurring, every day, every second. All around us. Plants, insects, people, business, economy, government, weather… You name it, it’s changing. Every. Single. Day.

So, how do we handle that? What stops us from wanting to change? What causes us to be bad at navigating change, and how can we handle it better? That’s what I want to share with you in this episode.

Here’s the link I mention in this episode:

Grab “the”The Thrive List” PDF and template here, including links to all 10 Episodes in my Thrive Series from early 2022.

Let me know how you enjoy this episode, and if you want support, book me for a clarity call here:
https://israelsmith.com/coachme

With love and gratitude,
Israel. xo

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LINKS:

WORK WITH ME – Israel Smith – Life Coach for Men
I help successful high-achieving men (like YOU!) enjoy a happier, more fulfilling, purposeful life.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the Illuminating Lives podcast. I’m Israel Smith mindset and performance coach for successful high achievers. Just like you, we want more meaning and purpose in your life without the stress, burnout and overwork. I’ll share how you can make simple changes to your mindset, habits and choices to stop those racing thoughts or angry outbursts and create more time, more energy, more balance, and a lighter, calmer head and heart.

This podcast is for you. If you’re ready to learn how to thrive in our uncertain world. Prioritize your own well-being and mental health. Improve your relationships with your partner and kids. Rediscover some fun, and just get back on track to living your best life every day. I’m stoked that you’re here.

Hello and welcome to the Illuminating Lives podcast. Welcome back. It’s Israel and I am very excited to talk to you today about change. Today’s episode how to handle change like a boss, like a legend, powerfully and peacefully. So here’s the thing about change. I was going to dive straight in. No preamble, all killer, no filler. Here’s the thing about change changes, Constant changes inevitable.

Our entire world, our entire society, our entire life changes. Moment to moment to moment. Things grow, things decay. New things are born. Things die. Our people that we interact with come and go. Our experiences at work are always changing. Our experiences in our family are always changing. Our children, our parents, ourselves, our partner. Everything changes. This is unavoidable.

It is mandatory. It is compulsory. It’s an inescapable part of the system of life that we live in. Change is inevitable. It is always going to happen now, knowing that we are presented with a choice. How can we best prepare ourselves to handle that, to manage that change, to thrive through that change? And what are some of the factors that stop us from wanting to experience change?

So I’ve given quite a bit of thought and planning to this. I’m going to work my way through. So if you see me referring to notes on the video or if you hear paper shuffling on the audio, that’s why because I care about you and I want this to be thoughtful. I want this to be really useful. Now, there’s two types of change.

I want to sort of draw this distinction at the very outset. There are changes that are thrust upon us, circumstances that just shift without our control. And then there are changes that we choose that we make ourselves. Bottom line here is there’s not much tangible difference in terms of how we best handle those different types of change. But I will distinguish that there are sometimes things that we just simply have no control over.

Stuff just changes natural disasters, economic things, things that happen in terms of laws or businesses or, you know, family members changing or what have you got? No control about any of that. But the stuff we do have control over the things that we choose to change ourselves. Holding that steady, keeping that in our minds, that there are those two different types of change.

I wanted to just sort of point out a couple of things. Certainty is an illusion, so a desire to avoid change is like this desire for certainty. We want things to carry on going the same as always. Now, I’ve spoken about this on the podcast before, but it’s been a while. Put your hand up. If you were here when the world went through a global pandemic.

Now 100% of my listeners are going to put their hand up because unless you are born in the last couple of years and suddenly you’re listening to this, you are at least old enough to be present and aware of what was going on over the last two, three, four years in the world, right? Since 2020 onwards. All that did as an experience was highlight how little certainty we have every single day, because everything changed almost overnight.

The world shifted almost overnight. And for all of the commentary, that was like, Oh, there’s so much uncertainty. The reality is we would we’d always be we’d always we had always lived with uncertainty, but we just didn’t pay attention to it. We believed we had this illusion that things carry on the way they used to, that that tomorrow was going to be kind of like today and nothing too dramatic was going to change.

But those days are past. The world is changing. The economies are changing. The nature of our interconnected global population, the nature of our environment and the climate on this planet. Everything is changing at a much faster pace. Certainty is an illusion. We need to accept this. We don’t have to like it, but we do need to accept it.

We need to accept this so that we can move forward powerfully in our life. Now, I want you to be able to handle change because it is always going to happen. It’s unavoidable. It’s a natural part of existing. But before I get into the steps on that, I want to also talk about what causes us to resist change, what causes us to crave certainty.

One of the things is when we don’t have any tools to powerfully navigate change. So that’s the one I’m aiming to address with this podcast episode. A fear of change is very common. Now, why do we fear things changing? Well, because we don’t know what the other alternatives are. We don’t know what the future might hold. If things change.

We worry that things might get worse. We worry that we might lose something or someone. We worry that we won’t have the resources or the, I don’t know, the control or the power or the whatever. We just worry that we will be lesser after the change. And so that induces a kind of fear, right? That that afraid unless we can also resist change because change has meant bad things in the past.

Change may have caused relationship breakdowns or business failures or injury, physical or emotional trauma, right? Change may have led to some of those things, and it’s normal to associate a certain resistance to change because that’s what it represents in your own mind about the that’s the link. All of these things are more or less based in a fear response.

I’m afraid of change because the the reason might vary, but ultimately, at the root, a resistance to change is usually a fear of change. We’re afraid of the unknown. We’re afraid of things being different. Now where does that come from? Well, it comes from our old friend, the ego. Now, for those of you who haven’t come across this term in the way I use it before, what I mean when I talk about ego is I believe we have an ego and we have like a higher self or a more divine inner wisdom, right?

Those sort of two parts of our psyche, our ego is the part of us that pushes people away, that wants to protect us, that says the snarky thing, to sort of get back at someone. It’s the part of us that we look at in life and death situations. That’s the part of us that keeps us alive, right? It is literally our protector.

It is the part of us that keeps us safe. But the reality of our existence is that for the most part, when not in life and death situations, but our ego is still present and it takes some time to learn to recognize our egos and it takes some time to learn to put them aside and to transcend our ego momentarily at least, and operate more from our divine self, our higher self.

So when I talk about ego, I talk about that part of us that is literally trying to keep us safe in life and situations, but it’s also the part of us that resists change that, you know, wants to keep people away, that wants to isolate us from everything, that wants to keep a small and alone and comfortable. Because to that part of our brain, so much like our lizard brain or like our amygdala, that little tiny piece of the base of our brain that existed when we were all on four legs as lizards running around.

That was the thing that controls fight or flight, all of the kind of immediate responses. It controls habits. It has a very basic way of viewing the world. Our ego is kind of, in my mind, at least equated with that. Similar to that, when we operate from our ego, what it’s doing is saying stay where you are, better the devil you know and what you don’t.

Don’t get uncomfortable. Don’t go anywhere near what what you’re afraid of or what scares you. Stay safe, stay comfortable, stay small, and you’ll live longer. Now, there is a part of that that may have been true in the past, right? Like in human history, For the bulk of human history. If we didn’t take that approach, if we popped our head up over the trenches in the Second World War, we’d get it blown off if we left the cave without being very, very fearful and very, very careful, we would get mauled by the sabertooth tiger or the grizzly bear or the whatever.

If we went wildly into new populations of people without some hesitation, we may have picked up some life threatening disease that we weren’t immune to in our entire evolution as humans. Healthy fear was a good thing. That’s what led us to be the surviving factors from our ancestors, right? Like there are plenty of ancestors who died because they didn’t have healthy fear.

Our ego has evolved to sort of fill that space, but life gets interesting when we get uncomfortable. Life gets exciting. We come alive. We express our innermost selves when we ignore our ego, when we try and operate from our divine self, from our higher self, when we try and serve, when we try and show up as our biggest, brightest, most illuminated and most present selves, all of these things are sort of that distinction between ego and higher self.

Ego is about keep us small, keep us safe, don’t get uncomfortable, don’t risk anything, stay just as you are. And obviously change is completely the opposite of what egos trying to do. Ego is trying to get us to avoid all change at all costs. So fear and ego really are driving our resistance to change. Acknowledge that is the first step to being able to bring awareness and then move past that.

Right? So if we can look at our fear response, our ego saying stay small, stay safe and go, you know what? I totally understand why that part of me is reacting in that way. I totally get why there’s this primal need to avoid change to keep everything the same day after day after day. And I’m willing to put that aside.

I’m willing to ignore that or to acknowledge and feel that, but to not let it take the wheel has a great visual that I had explained once to me, which is that fear is always in the car, but it’s up to us as to whether we let it take the wheel or whether we kick it to the backseat.

Now I propose that we kick the fear to the backseat. We acknowledge that it’s a passenger. It’s never going to leave, but it doesn’t get to take the wheel because we are bigger and better and worth more than being completely solely driven by our fear. I want to tell you a story that sort of helps sort of, I guess, bring metaphor to this idea of of change and no change, like our resistance to it.

Imagine it’s a stinking hot day. Humidity is at like 4,000%. It’s you know, for those of you who are on Celsius measure, we’re talking like high thirties, early forties Celsius. It is baking hot for those of you in the States or, you know, imperial land. I’m talking like 100 to 120 Fahrenheit, like outrageous heat. Imagine that. Imagine you’re in that.

It’s sticky, it’s sweaty, it’s muggy. It takes you kind of like what it’s like where I’m recording this today. It’s been very, very humid, hot lately. And imagine that you’re sitting on like a, you know, a poolside lounge chair, like a banana lounge or a deck chair or something. And you’re next to a swimming pool. And there are people in the swimming pool feeling cool, feeling refreshed, really enjoying themselves, managing the temperature, managing this experience right, feeling like, okay, it’s hot.

Yes. And I can handle it because I’m in the pool and the pool is nice and cool and what is lovely and it’s taking all the stickiness, alliances, helping me feel, oh, nice and refreshed and clear and chilled. And you’re sitting on the banana lounge lying on the banana lounge, sweating, hot, uncomfortable, sticky. To me, this is where we often are in our life when we are presented with the choice to make a conscious change.

Remember those two types of change? I’ve thought about the ones we elect to make. So when we elect to make a conscious change, we are sitting on the side of the pool. We have reached the point where things are quite uncomfortable in our life. We are dripping, our clothes are sticking to us, we’re fanning our hand and we’re just basically pushing hot air onto hot skin.

It’s doing nothing. It’s time to change our ego. We’ll say things like, Yep, the water’s going to be freezing. You’ve got to be joking. I’ve got to get up and walk across those hot pavers to get from this lounge to the pool. No way. We’ll burn our feet. That’s that looks like really, I’m. No, I’m going to stay here in my clothes.

I don’t want to get out of my clothes. I don’t have to change what I’m wearing to get in the water. I don’t want to move physically to go from here to the swimming pool. But here’s the funny thing, right? And this plays out in your life. And in my life we resist change even when the potential benefits are so obvious.

If you’re still picky and hot and feeling uncomfortable and all you’ve got to do is get up off that banana lounge, walk five steps and jump in the water, there might be a bit of a fall kind of shock at the start when you first get there, but then the quality of your life experience afterwards when you are in the pool feeling refreshed, feeling cooled down, not feeling hot and sticky anymore, able to splash water on your face, taking the relative temperature down ten degrees or more because you’re in a cold body of water.

That’s what’s available when you embrace the change, when you choose to powerfully make that change. The metaphor I’m drawing here is that there’s a lot of men I speak to who say to me, Oh, look, I’m doing all right. You know, I’ll look, I’m not super happy in my relationship or I’m really struggling to make time for myself.

I don’t even get personal time anymore or I’m just so busy with work that I don’t have time to scratch myself. And I’m always doing things for other people, but I’m all right. And I say, Well, would you like it to be better? Would you like to have a nicer, more pleasant experience of life? Oh, well, what is what does that look like?

That sounds scary. Or that I. I don’t know. No, no, I’m all good. You know what? I’m fine. Just as I am. Can you hear the parallel? Those people, those men, even women in uncomfortable life situations, in bad relationships or in dysfunctional business and working patterns, or not being present and being angry and emotional all the time with their children or not having any time to prioritize their own health and well-being because they feel so driven to put themselves last and put everybody else first.

All of these things are like sitting on the side of the pool, stinking, hot, uncomfortable, sweaty, yucky overheating, and I’m in the swimming pool saying, Hey, guys, come on in, the water’s fine. All you have to do is get up off the Banana Lounge, take five steps so the pipes are a bit warm. There’s a bit of discomfort.

When you change, you have to move. You might have to take off a couple of layers of clothing to get near swimmers and come in. But once you’re in my God, life is so much nicer. We can handle things so much better. That’s what I see going on Now. I implore you, if you are listening to this, if this is you, if you are sitting in discomfort in your life, if you are on the sticky, sweaty banana lounge of life, I’m going to trademark that the sticky, sweaty banana lounge of life, if that’s you right now, for the love of God, please listen to me.

When I say it is possible to change, it is possible to move things forward. It is possible to get a better experience of life. There is always, always without fail, always a way that we can improve our life and life. Coaching the coaching I provide, the work that I do with my clients that has some of the case.

I’m not going to say it’s the silver bullet. I’m not even going to say you need coaching, but you definitely need to learn to embrace change. You need to choose to change if you want your life to get better. So pause the little ranty pants. I’ve illustrated that metaphor, right? You’re either on the sticky banana lounge in the sun, hot, frustrated, fed up with life as it currently is, or you’re in the pool frolicking around, enjoying the sun and enjoying the colors and having a lovely life.

They’re kind of the two extremes I’m painting right now. You get to self-identify which one you’re in and what I’m about to tell you of how to navigate change, how to handle change will hopefully give you a little bit more preparation so that you can actually get you brought up off the Banana Lounge and start moving towards the swimming pool.

Here are my tips. I suppose my what I six steps of is it’s always a number. There are six things I wrote down here. There might be seven, there might be 12, there might be three. I don’t know. These are just six things that I felt really were important and valuable to help us handle change. Like a boss, to help us be a legend, navigate our change powerfully.

Okay, you ready? Number one, build your resilience. Our resilience is our ability to handle change. It’s our ability to thrive. When things are not certain, it’s our ability to know that we have our own back, that we are able to cope, that we will be okay no matter what life throws at us. How do you build your resilience?

Let me refer you to my Thrive series. From the start of last year 2022, I did ten episodes of the podcast. I will put a link in the show notes to a particular PDF that I want you to download and work your way through them bit by bit. All ten of those are accumulative process to build and increase your own resilience, your own ability to thrive despite uncertainty.

That’s part one. Build your resilience. All those Thrive habits are a critical piece of that. Learning to be more self aware, learning to feel, acknowledge and process your emotions. That also helps build your resilience because your emotions are local signposts on the road. This isn’t working. There’s an emotion coming up or Oh, this is really, really working. There’s a different emotion coming up or I’m feeling a bit more and there’s a different emotion coming out there.

Our emotions are like little guideposts along our journey through life, and we need to learn to listen to them or read them like they’re a map habit, awareness and habit literacy. And what do I mean by that? Well, being able to make resilience a factor in our lives requires as doing the little micro steps every single day that are going to make our life better.

And that requires an understanding and an awareness and a literacy about habits. I’ve done some some some podcasts called Learn How to Speak Accounts and Podcasts in the past about habits. I’m not going to rehash it now, but I do want you to recognize that habits play a pivotal role in making your life better and in being more resilient.

And another key piece of your resilience is remembering your past successes and reminding yourself of them regularly. Have you navigated change before? Have you survived? Have you made it through difficult circumstances? I guarantee you the answer is going to be yes. Life is suffering. The human experience is filled with pain and discomfort. We overcome it. That’s what puts us into the position wherein that’s why we’re still alive.

We have survived through the worst that life has thrown at us. So far. Remember that you have in-built resources, you have in-built resilience already. You’ve just forgotten you had it. So this is all sort of subheadings under piece. Number one of build your resilience, build your own inner strength in our capability to handle differing situations and change. That’s the first bit.

The second bit about navigating change powerfully, it really helps to have a vision, to have some idea of what we want the future to be like. We don’t have to get swept along in the ocean current. We can actually choose our destination and we can start to gently but firmly direct our life toward that destination. I didn’t wake up one day and say, I’m going to live in paradise in a small town, run a business of my own, surf every day, live on a couple of acres with kangaroos right through and have a magnificently blessed life.

It just didn’t happen. Like I woke up one day and I was able to click my fingers and it just came true. It required crafting over a number of years, making lots of usually simple but very difficult or challenging or unorthodox decisions. But I had a vision. I had an end goal of where I wanted to be, and I keep recreating what is that I’m aiming for?

Where am I going in my life? What’s the vision? How do I get there? What are the steps I need to take? But holding that vision means that I can start to make those conscious choice changes and understand that if circumstantial changes turn up, I can still course correct and work with them or around them to get back to my vision, my own destination.

But having some sort of big picture and some sort of little picture, a big picture is like the broad brush strokes. Where do I want to live? How do I want like, you know, how do I want my house to look or whatever the micro things are? What kind of relationship do I want to have with my kids?

How do I want my morning to go? What things am I going to say to my partner tonight when I knock off work and come home? Important to have an understanding of the vision across all of those elements, right? That becomes our motivation. It becomes our sense of why? Why are we doing this? Why are we navigating change?

Why are we building our resilience? It’s for this end vision Number three really, really helpful preemptively to work out what are some of the barriers, what are some of the resistance points that we spoke about quite a lot of the resistance is to change in broad terms. A lot of them are fee based, but it’s really helpful for you to work out.

Okay, well, what are your fear points? What are your barriers? So, for instance, a change that I wanted to make personally was I wanted to get fit. I’ve spoken about this on the podcast. I wanted to lose a bit of weight and I’m proud of myself to say that I have gone from 100 and 102 kilos down to consistently 95, 96, and I’m still gradually chipping away at that.

But I’ve made that change in the last couple of months just through discipline, micro habits and making those subtle changes myself. Now, as I started to set out on this process, I started going, okay, well, what are the habit? What are the barriers to me making this change in my life? One of the barriers to this change was feeling like I had to get it perfect.

And as soon as I gave that up, I mean, I’ll. I don’t have to get it perfect. I just have to get it moving. Then I was able to do 5 minutes of exercise. It started with like 20 squats and five push ups. That was all I did is my exercise. It started with letting myself maybe have an extra hour before I breakfast in the morning, building up to like a 14, ten or a 16 eight kind of intermittent fasting pattern.

Those little tiny things helped me overcome those barriers by lowering my expectations. But then maybe other barriers, there may be other resistances, there may be other discomfort. I want to do this, but I don’t like exercise. Okay. Well, what’s something that you can do that is enjoyable? Is it? Just go for a walk by the beach, which is what I did for my exercise this morning.

Is it just stand on the grass and touch your toes ten times. Is it kneel on a yoga mat and do some cat cow stretching to loosen up your back. Like whatever. Simple, easy. But just reduce and eliminate the barriers. But to do that, you need to really list them out and be thorough. What’s going to get in the way?

What do I wear? What clothes do I put on to do my exercise? When can I do it so that I’m not going to get distracted or diverted or avoid it? How do I make it something that I’m committed to? All of those things right? There are internal and external challenges here, by the way. Right? External challenges. I can’t go for a bike ride because I don’t have a bike.

Internal challenges. I can’t go for bike ride because I don’t believe in myself or I don’t feel worthy. You tell me some of those things might apply, some of those might, might not. But all of those things are barriers that are going to stop you making change smoothly and powerfully and stop you navigating it. So that’s number three.

One about where’s the resistance? Remove as many of those resistance points before you embark upon the change are really important. Number four acknowledge change is scary. There is that ego part of us that is going to go, Oh hell no, I don’t want to change and it’s going to throw up irrational, illogical resistance and fear every single step of the way different to the stuff about Will.

In fact, it’s probably related, actually. Now think about it. Other things about, well, what I wear before I do exercise. It’s our ego playing tricks on us. When we find ourselves negotiating with ourselves, that’s our ego popping up, blocking us, or resisting the change. There’s fear, right? And there’s going to be discomfort. Going for a vigorous walk requires our lungs working hard or our heart working harder, our muscles moving more and working a little harder, or maybe being a bit out of breath or maybe getting a bit hot and a bit sweaty.

That’s just what exercise looks like. And I’m using exercise an example, right? But, you know, if you’re navigating change in your business, if you have to acquire new customers in a new marketplace, there’s going to be discomfort about that. If you are readying yourself to have a very hard conversation with your intimate partner about the future of the relationship and what you need versus what you’re currently getting, there’s going to be discomfort, there’s going to be fear, and that’s normal.

So what’s important is step number four and how to navigate change is acknowledging the fear, acknowledging the discomfort is going to happen. We can’t change without some discomfort.

Number five is about collecting your posse. Who is it that is going to support you through this change? Who can you lean on and say, I am struggling, I need a pep talk? Who is it that can lift you up when you’re feeling flat, that can remind you of your y of your end vision that can tell you how much they believe in you is an online community.

Is it your parents? Is it your partner? Is it your BFF? Is it your I don’t know, your squad out in the surf? Like, I’ve got this great group of guys and girls that I see out in the water. Is it Who is it? I don’t know. You know who is your posse? But these are people who you trust to share your desire for change with and you trust to support you.

What you don’t want is to choose people who are going to pull you down. And parents, God love them, God bless them. Parents often do this through their own fear. They want what’s best for us as a as as their children. And, you know, so like, I’m going to start a business. Why would you start a business? That’s terrible.

Don’t do that. That’s so scary. That’s risky, that’s so dangerous. That’s the parent fear talking, right? You don’t want to surround yourself with that kind of talk when you’re about to embark on a big change, like a life change of starting a new business or a new relationship, you want to make sure the people there have 100% got your back through thick and thin, right?

So collect your posse, collect your your what’s inside your ride or die squad. Collect the people who you can trust and rely upon to see you as your highest expression of yourself. Not to pander to your ego, but to lift you up and call you into your most powerful version of yourself. Collect those people. They are your allies.

They are the people who are going to ride shotgun with you as you embark upon change. And finally, step six in my non-exclusive, probably incomplete, but certainly a good crack at it. List number six. You’ve got to move forward. You’ve got to take the first right step. Doesn’t mean you have to solve the world’s problems in one go.

It doesn’t mean you have to make the big sweeping changes all in one place, all in one step. But you just need to take the smallest, simplest next right step you can take To me. I wanted to get healthy. I needed to pull it back to what is the bare minimum I can do and I can commit to.

I’m going to commit to 2 minutes of exercise every single day. And so far, 1st of March, I am ten out of ten, I am 100%. I have moved my body in some small way every single day this year. And it is a habit that I am embedding and I’m keeping to and it is paying off in terms of my physical dividends.

I feel physically health, a health healthier, healthier. I am lighter on the scales. I’m feeling my clothes better, I feel better, I’m sleeping better. All of these things because I’ve done that every single day. That was the next right step for me to make that smallest simple commitment and then get uncomfortable and do it. Even the days that I don’t want to do it, I do something.

That’s what taking action looks like. That’s the final piece of making change. We need to do the thing that’s going to change our lives for the better, hopefully. And then from that, the forward movement needs to be added to like adding little bits of fuel to the fire to build momentum and to turn this little spark into a blaze.

Right. That’s how we get somewhere in our life. That’s how we start to radically redirect. My wife and I packed up, sold our apartment in Sydney, rehomed our cats, traveled Australia with our two kids for two and a half years, full time, building a business. As we went figuring it out as we go. We didn’t do that in one simple step, in one big chunky step.

We actually broke that down into hundreds, possibly thousands of little micro steps over the course of close to two years. Actually, I think from when we first made the commitment, it was a bit over two years. By the time we finally got on the road. But what was the first right step or the first right step was committing, okay, we’re doing this and making that choice and then going right.

It’s going to be very uncomfortable. We’re going to do a lot of very unorthodox things. Are we going to be met with a lot of skepticism, a lot of well-meaning, well-intentioned fear and discomfort on behalf of other people. We’re probably going to have challenges and oh, my God, I could talk for 12 days about the challenges we had on the way to and then through our trip.

But all of those little things, it was just a case of find the single next right step. So I want to challenge you write the six steps. I’m just going to recap them and I want you to think about how you can apply them to your life. Recapping how to handle change like a bloody legend. Number one, Build your resilience.

Look at the Shownotes. Jump through the link on my website for all the details of the different tools I have available for free. That you can do this with. Number two What is your vision? What is the big picture? What is your motivation? What is your why? What’s the end goal number three Where is the resistance? Where are the blocks?

Where are the barriers? And how can you remove as many of those as possible before you even start? Number four acknowledge that change is scary. Acknowledge that change is uncomfortable and do it anyway. Acknowledge that fear, not acknowledge that discomfort. Number five Collect your policy. Get your support network, and number six, take the next right step and slowly build momentum.

Now, knowing all of these things, I also acknowledge that sometimes making change in our life is easier said than done. Sometimes we need a gentle nudge from somebody else. Sometimes we need some support or someone who’s gone through it before as a bit of a guide or a mentor or, you know, someone to help us navigate the path who’s riding shotgun or wingman with us.

I am a coach. I’m a life coach. My job is to help you change your life and make it better. This is literally what I do for a job, for a business. This is how I show up to support in the world. I can be part of your posse. There are plenty of people I’ve worked with who have very intelligent, very capable, very driven, very action oriented people who have still wanted to work with me because they wanted to surround themselves with people who will.

Like their A-Team like their Ride or die squad, and they perhaps couldn’t find anyone in their squad with the tools that I have about spotting limiting beliefs about challenging assumptions, about tools to better manage your thoughts better, manage your energy better, manage your mindspace, better, manage your health better, manage your relationship, be more present, connect with your emotions, and to process them. All of these things I can teach you. This is what I do as a coach. I don’t just work with men, but my belief is that the work I’m meant to do is to support men and lift them up.

But if you’re a woman, listen to this. I am so happy to work with you and to help you as well as it turns out, I’m one of those rare breed of men who is very connected with his feminine side, very connected with what it means to be a both and not an either or. I’m certainly not the alpha male.

Bang my chest, hunt, kill, be that kind of guy. I am. I’m much more I suppose I have a bit more range there, so I’m very, very comfortable working with men and women. But my primary focus is men because my belief is that we hold all the levers of power in the world or a vast majority of the levers of power in the world.

And it is up to us. We led the world to the current position social inequality, environmental degradation, injustice, US challenge, etc., etc. All of those things are largely driven by white middle aged men. Sad but true, and we’re also least likely to ask for help less likely to ask for directions if we’re getting lost and most likely to take our lives, most likely to be the perpetrators of violent domestic abuse.

I believe as men we got to take responsibility for our role in the current cluster that is going on in the world and start working for a better world for all men and for all women and for all children, for the whole of humanity. To the work that I do is to help facilitate that. That’s why I target men in what I talk about, because I believe men need more literacy with their emotions.

Men need more people like me saying, Hey, it’s okay to feel sad and cry. Hey, it’s okay to feel angry as long as you don’t hurt other people with that anger. Here’s how you process. Here’s how you change your life. Here’s how you improve your relationships. Because I don’t think that’s enough of a narrative. Anyway, I’m getting a bit ranty again.

Thank you for listening. I can be part of your posse if you want to figure out what that looks like. If you want to learn more from me about how I work, how you might be able to get what you want out of your life with me as your coach, that the trailer of the outro of this podcast has the details, but I’m going to give you the quick version now.

Go to my website Israel Smith dot com forward slash coach may see me one word No spaces, no gaps. Israel’s Mipcom coach me jump on there book a clarity session. Let’s talk about what your number one biggest challenges what your number one biggest opportunity to move forward and to change and improve your life is and what the number one next right step is.

That’s what you’re going to get out of you. Clarity. Cool. And at the same time, you will get an experience of what it’s like to work with me. And if you want to work with me, then I can tell you about how I operate, how I charge, what it feels like to be coached and supported and mentored by through changes in your life.

I’m sending you so much love, so much gratitude. I hope this has been profoundly useful for you on how to navigate change like a bloody legend. Let me know if you have any feedback. Visit my website. Israel Smith Bcom Slash coach me if you want to work with me or at least explore working with me, I will see you on the next episode.

Thank you so much for being here! Bye.

Thank you so much for joining me on this episode. Since you’re still listening, you’re probably the kind of person who loves to get the most out of everything in life. So let’s have a conversation about that. I want to invite you to book in a 30 minute clarity session with me where we can talk about what you want, what’s in the way, and what the next steps look like.

Plus, we can also have a chat about how I work and if we’re the right fit to work together. So take a minute now jump over to my website at Israel Smith dot com slash coach me and grab a spot on my calendar. Let me help you get the most out of your life, your work and your relationships in the first place to start is with a clarity session.

That’s Israel Smith dot com slash coach me I look forward to hearing from you soon.

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