It’s Valentine’s Day so I’d be lax if I didn’t post something all sweet and mushy. I’m grateful to my wonderful husband of 10 years for all that he has done for me, all the love he has given to me and all the support and strength he has provided to me.
But YOU aren’t here to hear about my mushy love story. YOU are here to learn and grow. We’ll stick to the theme though and go with some great YOU coaching tips that YOU can learn from LOVE.
Stages of Love
Each love relationship we enter into goes through stages. At first we have the hot and heavy passionate stage. Then we move into the phase of perfection where the partners see each other as doing no wrong and we become oblivious to all imperfections. This is usually followed by an intimacy phase or a true getting to know the other period when we come to honest terms with who our mate is. And finally, if we are really fortunate, we get to unconditional love/commitment.
Most of us can identify these stages of our love relationships both past and present. However, these same stages play out in all of our major life decisions. Take, for example, a decision one of my YOU coaching client had to make in regards to a new career choice.
Joanne (name changed) was currently working a direct sales business. She was tired of what she was doing overall but felt a lot of responsibility to stick with what she was doing. After evaluating these thoughts, we were able to uncover a hidden passion that Joanne had and how she could turn that into a business. Once she came to that realization, she immediately entered the passionate stage of her new career/business. She began to pursue it with eagerness. As she progressed, she struggled to see any obvious challenges with her new business. It was perfect for her so what could be wrong with it? At this time, Joanne has moved into the intimacy phase where she begins to see the ups and downs of her new profession and uncover the long term benefits as well as all the challenges she’ll be faced with.
When YOU know your life decisions will involve these stages, YOU can go in with better expectations of the process as a whole.
