Take Your Time

I was recently coaching someone who had an issue she wanted resolving-fast! But actually the issue was not something that could be quickly resolved and my advice to her was ‘stop putting pressure on yourself to solve this’.

The pace of life today sometimes lulls us into the idea that everything can be done quickly and that there must be an answer.

Many of the problems to do with our lives have taken time to develop and the quick and easy answer is often only transitory and ultimately unhelpful. And some things we experience are part of the human condition. You cannot short cut grief, for example, and a loss of any kind produces a grief reaction in us. And we need to honour that time before rushing to fix ourselves.

So my advice to you today, if you are facing a difficult problem, is to let yourself off the hook for a while. You cannot be happy all the time and you cannot know the answers all the time (yes, even coaches, maybe especially coaches!). Sometimes the best and most restorative thing you can do for yourself is to accept what is happening and give yourself space to simply accept it, before you try to move on.

And you will be all the wiser for it.