Episode 17: How To Change Your Life

Have you ever felt like you need to make some changes in your life, but the prospect is incredibly overwhelming, so you don't?

The state of feeling stuck, knowing you want something else, but not knowing where to begin is awful.

I know, I've been there.

You can't fight the deep desire to create change forever and once it's taken hold, it'll force you to act eventually. 

It's the reason most of my clients come to me for coaching.

In this episode I dive into the various stages of change and how, if you're feeling stuck, you can find a starting point and begin your journey.

Episode highlights:

• What a deep desire for change really feels like
• How to understand what you want so you can change your life direction
• Understanding and recognising self-sabotage
• How your beliefs drive your behaviour
• Why the results rarely arrive on time
• How to move past the point at which you want to quit
• Seeing setbacks as opportunities
• The skills you need to successfully navigate change

You don't have to walk through the fire of change alone.

Download a FREE PDF to help you navigate change here.

Book a discovery call to discuss life coaching here.

Procrastinators, this will change the way you show up for yourself and help you make serious progress in just 7 days.

STOP putting your progress on the back burner

LEARN how to set effective boundaries

MAKE more progress in a week than you have in the last month

Get instant access to STOP Procrastinating in 7 Days here.

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If you know you want more from your life or career but you're totally stuck about where to start, I invite you to book a complimentary strategy call with me here.

We'll uncover what's holding you back from the goals you want to achieve and you'll leave the call with actionable steps to get you moving in the right direction.

For the tea on me, how I work, who I coach and the packages I offer, please visit my website - www.emmaobriencoach.com

You can also connect with me on Instagram @emmaobriencoach where I share an abundance of tools, strategies and brilliant content, you might also see the occasional dog.

Transcript

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Emma O'Brien: Hi folks, a very warm welcome to season. 3. Episode, 17 of the lemons and pineapples podcast with me, Emma o'brien in today's episode, I am going to be sharing with you how to change your life.

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Emma O'Brien: Change is

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Emma O'Brien: pretty much the only reason I have clients coming to me and hiring me as a coach, because they come wanting something to change.

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Emma O'Brien: I think. Really, that is the reason anybody exists as a coach, either. You want to change something you don't like or improve upon, something that you do like.

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Emma O'Brien: Mostly I'm dealing with the former of people who are coming to me, and they're saying

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Emma O'Brien: I want something more. I want something else. I want something different, and I know I need to change things. But I don't actually know where to begin.

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Emma O'Brien: This is the reason I ended up on this coaching journey myself is, I hired a business coach in 2016 to help me with my photography business because I knew it couldn't continue. As it was.

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Emma O'Brien: I knew things needed to change, but I had absolutely no idea where to begin what to change, how to do it, and it was completely and utterly overwhelming. I think this is a lot of the time why people end up feeling stuck and being stuck and being stuck sometimes for years in situations that really don't work, don't serve, don't

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Emma O'Brien: don't support a life of being happy and fulfilled. But if we don't know how to begin with a process of change, and we don't know what to do. It's actually easier to just kind of stay where you are in the comfort zone, and sometimes a comfort zone can be so racked with suffering and deep unhappiness and unfulfillment. But if you don't know what the 1st steps are to shift out of it.

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Emma O'Brien: It's impossible to move.

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Emma O'Brien: So I wanted to share with you this kind of a a 5 step process that I see with the whole process of creating change and facilitating change. And it's something I see kind of quite regularly with clients, and it's something that

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Emma O'Brien: I've also been through as well. I mean, I've been through a huge amount of of change in my life, and I've navigated it

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Emma O'Brien: sometimes. Well, sometimes it's it's really really challenging. It's frightening. But if you want something better, you kind of have to go through the fire to get there.

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Emma O'Brien: And I think the 1st thing with change is actually recognizing. You want something to change, and this

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Emma O'Brien: tends to come as a slow drip of dissatisfaction.

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Emma O'Brien: So very rarely does anybody wake up and go. Oh, my God! I hate my life!

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Emma O'Brien: We might, but it will probably have been a process of slowly feeling, less and less enthusiastic, slowly finding less and less satisfaction. Maybe the job that you trained to do that you absolutely loved

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Emma O'Brien: bored you.

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Emma O'Brien: and it won't have bored you overnight. It'll be a slow accumulation of frustration. And that's what happens. And I think then sometimes there is a day where people wake up and just say, actually enough. I can't anymore. I actually refuse to live like this anymore.

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Emma O'Brien: It's time that's often when people come to me and they go. I'm done.

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Emma O'Brien: but I don't know what to what else to do.

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Emma O'Brien: So it's that kind of little knock of dissatisfaction, and it starts to knock slowly.

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Emma O'Brien: and if you ignore it, the knocking gets louder and louder until you listen and acknowledge. Okay.

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Emma O'Brien: I need to shake things up now.

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Emma O'Brien: The next step, really, after you've kind of had your I need things to change epiphany. That's a hard epiphany to have. I just want to hold a bit of space for the fact that that is a really uncomfortable and unpleasant place to sit when you wake up and you look around and you say.

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Emma O'Brien: I've got this life. I've got these people in it. I've got this job. I've got things happening. And actually, it just doesn't do it for me anymore. I want something else. I think it brings up a lot of a lot of big feelings, and that's also something that

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Emma O'Brien: I spend time with clients processing through. You can end up feeling guilty. You can end up feeling ungrateful, and all of those things that come up, and we kind of tell ourselves. No, no, I should be happy with what I have.

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Emma O'Brien: I should suck it up. Other people have less than me.

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Emma O'Brien: Other people have it worse. So do you know what? Even though I feel unhappy, I should just suck it up, and I'm going to tell you. No, you shouldn't.

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Emma O'Brien: There you go. You got permission to not suck it up, because you think you should. If you're feeling unhappy and dissatisfied. That is a sure sign that something needs to switch. You need to do something differently.

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Emma O'Brien: Our feelings, especially negative feelings. If you can see them as signposts that something needs to shift rather than trying to shut them up and shove them down.

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Emma O'Brien: You'll find they're less difficult to to deal with.

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Emma O'Brien: The second bit is starting to think about. Okay, maybe I don't really like what I've got. I don't want this anymore. What do I want instead?

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Emma O'Brien: And that's that's a big thing you need to think about. If if you don't like your job, for instance, anymore, what do you want to do instead?

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Emma O'Brien: What do you want out of a job that you're not getting out of this one? The same goes with a relationship or a situation you're in.

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Emma O'Brien: What would you what you want instead.

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Emma O'Brien: And I think this is a really good opportunity when this comes up as well, to start having a look at. Is this a pattern that's repeating. Have I found myself here before?

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Emma O'Brien: That's been deep work that I've been doing

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Emma O'Brien: in terms of relationships and noticing that I'm finding myself in the same. I found myself in similar scenarios over and over and over, and you know what? There's a common denominator, and it's me. And sometimes we have to self reflect and say, Okay, what role am I playing in creating my own dissatisfaction? Again and again and again? How do I break that pattern. What do I need to do differently? So that is a really good thing to reflect on is, if I don't

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Emma O'Brien: want this, what do I want? And what needs to happen

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Emma O'Brien: for that to be a reality.

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Emma O'Brien: The 3rd step that starts to occur.

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Emma O'Brien: So if I'm coaching clients and we've gone through kind of they've recognized. They want some change. And we start to have a look at. Okay, let's get into strategy. I love strategy. I am the strategy Queen. I love strategy.

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Emma O'Brien: But what happens is I'll have a couple of sessions with a new client, and we'll talk about what they want, and we'll start to put a strategy in place.

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Emma O'Brien: And then, when the strategy becomes a reality, because they've got a path and they've got a route, and they know where they want to go, and they've got the steps they start to throw themselves under the bus. It's when self sabotage comes in, because there'll be a part of you that goes. Hold the phone.

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Emma O'Brien: We've been in this comfort zone. We know the comfort zone. We might not like it, but we know it. It's familiar. And now you're doing all of these changes, and you've got these strategies, and you've got this coach telling you you know this is how to do it. I'm going to hold you accountable. There will be a part of you that goes. Nope.

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Emma O'Brien: we're not ready.

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Emma O'Brien: We're not ready for this. We need to do more. We need to just wait. We need to sort some more things out. Or you might start self-sabotaging by actually causing yourself problems. Self-sabotage is a really useful. It's not a useful behavior at all, but it's a really useful awareness to have. When you're self-sabotaging

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Emma O'Brien: happens to everybody. When you start to create change, you will find there's a bit of you that gets hold of you by the ankles and says, Nope, not today.

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Emma O'Brien: And therein lies the work of having a look at what are the underlying beliefs that you are running

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Emma O'Brien: that want to keep you where you are, that don't believe you should be somewhere else that don't believe you can have more or something for you, or a better relationship, or a promotion, or whatever it is. Those beliefs are where the really deep work is.

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Emma O'Brien: It's courageous work. It takes huge courage to do this work. I just would also like to flag that up. This is why being coached is not for everybody going on a self-development journey is not for everybody.

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Emma O'Brien: because you have to walk through the fire to get from where you are to where you want to go, and the process can be. You have to face yourself. You have to face the shadow aspects of yourself. You have to really step up for yourself, and you have to have the courage to keep going

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Emma O'Brien: when it feels hard, when things fall apart, when people are triggered by your change. So when you, as an individual, instigate some sort of change in your life and start moving in a different direction, you will find the people around. You will also start to quite unconsciously react to that. They'll start acting out. They'll start

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Emma O'Brien: behaving differently if they've been behaving badly for 20 years. All of a sudden you start making some changes, and they step up. And you think, Oh, God, I'm being gaslit here by this.

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Emma O'Brien: So it is. It takes great courage to walk a path of change.

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Emma O'Brien: The 4th thing that starts to happen when you've got past the self-sabotage you've worked on the beliefs, and you start to move forwards is, you take a lot of action and nothing happens. Nothing externally changes

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Emma O'Brien: the really tough bit with this is that often we have to do a lot of internal work

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Emma O'Brien: and allow that internal inner landscape change work to really to embody it and to sit in it

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Emma O'Brien: before we start to see external results. It is really frustrating. This is something that I find

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Emma O'Brien: can just be soul destroying to sit with it. And you think I've done all these changes I've put all this work in. I've shifted myself. I've worked on myself, you know. If it's a business, for instance, I've done all the marketing I've created the website. I've set all the systems up. I've been showing up online and nothing is happening.

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Emma O'Brien: Nothing is happening

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Emma O'Brien: totally normal again. To get to this point where you almost feel like you hit a wall. This is the point

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Emma O'Brien: where a lot of people give up on themselves. So whether that's creating a business. It takes time. You can do a lot of the stuff. It takes time for the external results to show up, and sometimes you have to just white knuckle through. It's the same with personal life change. So

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Emma O'Brien: you know, let's say you are in a marriage. You don't want to be in anymore. You get the ball rolling, you get the divorce happening. You think you know I'm gonna you know, I'm a great person. I've done all this work on me. I mean, I really deserve to be in a great relationship. And that great relationship just doesn't turn up the next day, which is what we all want, and it doesn't happen, and it's having the courage to then sit in the discomfort and trust that what you have done will pay off.

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Emma O'Brien: even though you're not seeing immediate results. I hate not seeing immediate results. So for anybody who's listening, who's like, Oh, my God! I feel for you, and I empathize with you enormously, because it's so hard when you put a lot of effort out. And, Donada Yay.

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Emma O'Brien: when you can get past the point of wanting to give up, and when you can get through the

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Emma O'Brien: discomfort of moving through and not quite knowing where you're going, and not quite knowing what's going to happen, and moving out into the unknown.

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Emma O'Brien: Eventually your persistence will pay off.

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Emma O'Brien: Who knows? It took this? The universe has its own timeline, you know. Sometimes there's lessons to be learned along the way as you're going through the process of change. Sometimes you make a change. Realize. Actually, this wasn't quite the right thing to do, and you have to change the change path that you're on.

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Emma O'Brien: And I think it's being open to the process and being open to seeing something that might be perceived as a failure, more as a redirect.

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Emma O'Brien: It's seeing setbacks as opportunities. And I know this is really, you know, you listen to this and think this is, you know, great you know.

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Emma O'Brien: lots of setbacks, and nothing's working. Where's the opportunity in that?

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Emma O'Brien: And it might not feel like it in the moment. But there will be an opportunity in there, I think. Often when we reflect backwards on life, you can see that the things that didn't work

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Emma O'Brien: were the things that really showed up to serve you, because they pointed you to somewhere else. That was actually better. But again, it's learning to sit in that discomfort and be

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Emma O'Brien: be okay

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Emma O'Brien: in the waiting. Be okay in the unknown. And that's really really hard. That requires quite a lot of self-management and self-regulation. Emotional regulation, nervous system regulation. It's hard work. This is why going back to what I shared in the beginning, it's why so many people say, stay stuck for so long.

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Emma O'Brien: because the thing you want there's often quite a journey to go through to get to it.

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Emma O'Brien: which is really why people like me exist. Why coaches exist? Because you don't have to walk the journey on your own. You can walk the journey with someone who's walked the journey.

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Emma O'Brien: When I say change. I've been divorced. I've moved continents. I've set up 3 businesses.

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Emma O'Brien: I've moved house multiple times. I've been through a lot of change, and I understand how hard it is, and I think, having somebody walk the path with you who knows what it's like to

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Emma O'Brien: struggle in? The change is so important. You don't have to walk this journey on your own.

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Emma O'Brien: So with that in mind, I will wrap up this episode. But I wanted to share 2 2 things with you. So if you're listening to this and thinking that you know, actually.

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Emma O'Brien: this resonates, and I feel like I need to change some things. But I don't know what they are. I don't know what that would look like. You'll find in the show notes here. There is a link to download. Some free journal prompts to really help you reconnect to what it is you want. They're journal prompts to help you kind of reconnect with your inner purpose, your sense of

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Emma O'Brien: purpose, your sense of wonder, your sense of direction.

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Emma O'Brien: When we become disconnected from that, we become very stuck when we don't have a reason for getting up and doing things, we become very stuck. Purpose is so

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Emma O'Brien: closely linked to mental wellness. It is

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Emma O'Brien: the reason people are depressed. A lot of the time is because they lack purpose. Life has become pointless, and it's just a never ending hamster wheel of Get up, go to work, come home, go to sleep, and it's when you're on a treadmill, and when you're actually just existing, it is very hard to feel enthusiastic. It's very hard to find momentum to move forward and change.

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Emma O'Brien: because if you don't know where you're going, you're just driving around in circles, and you're never going to get there. So it's about taking a step back and reflecting on what is it I want? What do I want to create? Where do I want to go? How do I want to feel? What do I want my life to look like? And if you download those journal prompts they will help you work through that. And there's quite a lot of questions in there that you can reflect on. You can pick and choose the ones that work for you.

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Emma O'Brien: just to give you a bit of a sense of clarity and forwards momentum with your life.

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Emma O'Brien: And of course, if you have listened to this and thought, yep, I'm really curious about how you might help guide me, Emma. You can book a free discovery call. There's a link there to book, an exploratory call with me to chat about what coaching might look like how I might support you, and I'm always really keen and intrigued to hear people's journeys of where they are, where they want to go.

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Emma O'Brien: because if you can step up for yourself and take their 1st steps on the journey of change.

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Emma O'Brien: it will pay off.

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Emma O'Brien: Promise you you don't have to stay where you are. You're not a tree. You can always move.

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Emma O'Brien: Thank you for being with me for this episode. I will see you again for the next one bye, for now.