What is ‘Doing the work’ ?
Hey you - how is your life right now?
Want to know an inside secret? Here is my most asked question:
What is ‘doing the work’?
Whilst the real understanding only ever truly comes through firsthand experience (when you feel it in your body, see real shifts in your life and it isn’t just words in your head - that is when this will really make sense to you), until you have that firsthand experience where would the confidence come from to support this being something that can help you and your circumstances? So, as much as my words won’t meet the mark and give you the true picture - here’s my best attempt to explain the magic of the unexplainable -
Where Are YOU Right Now?
Already ‘doing the work’ and familiar with what it means?
Heard the term but not sure if you’re actually doing it?
Or no clue what I’m talking about - maybe you’ll go look at something else instead?
Wherever you are, you’re exactly where you are ready to be.
Why Coaching?
Before we define ‘the work’, it helps to understand what coaching is and what doing the work with your coach actually achieves.
At its core, coaching helps you see what you currently don’t - this unseen stuff will be there in the areas where you feel ‘stuck’.
The work is putting yourself in a position where you can see what was until that point unseen! It is called work because there is a direct link between the level of discomfort in seeing the unseen and the breakthrough that is available to you in that area. Sometimes it is genuinely uncomfortable to see how we are doing things, but if we don’t see it and we keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result - well, that is the definition of insanity.
The Moment it Clicked for Me
Detour with me for a moment. When I first went to UPW (a live Tony Robbins event) back in the early 2000’s his work looked like magic. Someone would arrive overwhelmed, anxious and unhappy. He would interact with them for 10-15 minutes, and they would leave lighter, clearer, happier. Not ‘fixed’ (because they were never broken), but freed from something that had been weighing them down.
Watching him firsthand at live events lit something inside of me that has never gone out. From the first event, I wanted to bring that light to the world, to lift and give people space to breathe, to step away from their suffering.
Long story short, I’ve been doing the work ever since. I felt that if I kept doing the work, then one day I would be able to have the confidence and ability to change the world. I thought I’d master it by 30, and here I am hurtling towards 50 still doing the work.
The Onion
If I could include a picture, it would be an onion.
I found every layer that came off was never the one where I suddenly woke up with the confidence to get on stage and rock a stadium of 60,000 people. It was the layer that took me closer to knowing, trusting, loving and accepting myself. Seeing the beauty and wonder in the simplest things. I didn’t become someone else, but rather more myself, with more peace and inner strength. It is as if the shedding of the layers take you a step closer to the version of yourself that you always were -full radical acceptance. Instead of becoming an alter ego version of yourself and conquering the world with this confidence, you become more and more authentically you. The strength comes from being entirely you, rather than trying to be a 2.0 version. When you peel off the layers, the trying to be something/someone evaporates and you realise you are already exactly who you need to be.
Finding that truth and power through my own work, has driven my obsession with understanding how to help others peel their layers.
What does peeling the layers look like in practice?
Take any area of your life that you do not feel complete peace and gratitude.
Maybe you feel:
Anger
Fear
Unfulfilled
Sad
Unresolved
In that area there where you want it to be different from what it is, it is likely to feel frustrating because it is as if there is a barrier - it feels like an invisible wall between you and what you want.
All suffering (any feeling of discomfort) comes from the gap between our expectations and reality.
Humans are wired to move away from pain and towards pleasure (comfort).
Here is an example to demonstrate - If you step on an upturned plug and it hurts, you take your foot off the plug. You move away from the pain.
Let’s try it with another life scenario - If you want to be a stone lighter or have a more muscular physique, then you recognise the pain of being overweight or less toned and you immediately go and work out a strategy and fix it don’t you?
Okay, let me ask you another way. Do you know anyone in your own life who:
Would like things to be different from how they are?
Has knowledge on ways to change how things are?
But does not use the knowledge to achieve the difference?
I am expecting that you know at least one person who says they want change but never seems to achieve it, even though they are a smart person and could work out the how if it was only down to gathering and using data.
But it’s not and that is where the work lies. Sometimes your partner makes a choice that seems to only cause pain, it is hard to understand why they would do the thing. Sometimes we are incredibly frustrated with ourselves and we can’t begin to understand why we are so stuck!
We do the work by asking questions to stimulate new thoughts around an area where we feel the discomfort but a lack of progress away from the discomfort.
How we approach emotional problems is not like the upturned plug. The emotionally painful problems can have pain in both directions, so we choose the one that feels the least painful. With losing weight we have the pain of being overweight, but there is the immediate discomfort of deprivation and then there is the intense pain of shame when the deprivation turns into overeating again. This is a very simplified explanation to demonstrate how we get stuck and why we have to do the work.
Why it’s Hard to do Alone
Where we are suffering and not able to find a way to reduce or end that suffering, there is something we aren’t seeing. That is why even though I am a coach, I also work with a coach. Because they are able to ask me questions I am not asking myself. They see what I am not and the best coaches know exactly when to ask you a question that will take a layer of the onion off.
“The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your thoughts and the quality of your thoughts is determined by the quality of your questions” - Tony Robbins
So… what is ‘the work’?
The work is in the questions.
The more uncomfortable the question, the more opportunity for growth.
When you get to love the work and you feel that discomfort, you know you and your coach are onto something.
As layers fall away, space opens.
Maybe one day that space is clear enough for you to:
Stand confidently in front of thousands
Speak honestly to the one person who matters most
Look at yourself in the mirror without criticism
Feel peace with the life you have and the one you’re creating
Sarah x