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Beautiful Shift Miracles
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One of my favorite parts about being a Coach is being a witness to the Shift Miracles that happen in the lives of my clients. I made up the term Shift Miracle in order to give this phenomenon its due. Shift Miracles are those shifts that take place in ourselves, oftentimes without us noticing. Although the little ones are so minute you might not be aware of them, these little gems are powerful beyond belief.
Let me give you a very concrete example of a Shift Miracle. When I was young, I loved being active - skating, biking, being in the pool for hours, running around with the neighbor kids playing all kinds of outdoor games. As I got older, team sports was stressed in the school I went to and those activities were not my strong suit. I decided I didn't like sports of any kind AND that I wasn't good at them. I was so convinced of this that one time, when I had to perform a running circuit and got a letter inviting me to join the high school track team because of my scores, I was sure they had made a mistake. I threw the letter away.
Years later, I got the urge to start jogging. I was sure that I wasn't a jogger, but for some reason I was called to try it. I found a training program that started off VERY slowly. I would walk/run every other day - increasing the ratio run/walk time gradually. I wasn't totally convinced in the beginning. It felt like hard work. And sometimes I focused on how little I could run without feeling exhausted. But for the most part, I focused on how much I COULD run each week. Obviously, it increased. And after a while, I realized I enjoyed running - I realized my body enjoyed it.
Since then, I have gone through stages with running. But what's important about this is that I see myself as a jogger. So partly, this was building myself physically so that my body got used to running. However, there is a whole set of mindset factors that go along with this too. It was gradual, but the process between me being someone who didn't like sports to me being a jogger is a large Shift Miracle - containing many tiny Shift Miracles along the way.
One of the main things that I do with clients is support them in strengthening their foundation - the core of our being that is us. So many times, a person's foundation is shaky. This might be because they are using someone else's values to live their life or because they haven't fully explored what they truly want or it could be lots of things. When we have a solid foundation, we can be that person we are meant to be. We can navigate the challenges as they come with much more ease, and we can experience more of the joy and peace and fulfillment that we want.
Recently, I was gifted by one of my clients (let's call her Margo) to the beautiful Shift Miracles. Margo and I have been working together for a while. When we started our time together, her foundation was very shaky. She was a bit stuck in the past and was experiencing a lot of struggle. We spent a lot of time looking at old patterns and at what she wanted. Sometime she focused on how far she still had to go, and when she did, it was my job to show her what she WAS accomplishing that was different than just a few weeks ago.
In the beginning, she had a harder time seeing the Shift Miracles. I saw them and pointed them out to her. That's the thing about Shift Miracles - they can be so small that they are difficult to notice ourselves. But as I said before, they are HUGE. When we are changing an old pattern or belief, every little thing we do differently is a big deal. First we might just notice the pattern that we want to change - we realize it is not serving us. We identify something else - a different thought, pattern, behavior - that we could replace the old one with. In the beginning, it might just be that we notice every time we do the old pattern. We aren't quite ready or quick enough to replace it with the new one. But slowly, we start using that new pattern every once in a while and eventually, THAT becomes our new pattern - our new way of doing something. If you have ever learned a new language, it feels like that - slowly adopting new words into your vocabulary until they come out effortlessly.
So, as Margo was speaking last week, I was smiling. She was talking about activities, behaviors, challenges in her life that were FAR from what we discussed a while back. She was engaging with people and life in a completely new way. Now, SHE could see and feel all the built up Shift Miracles and their power. These shift miracles have strengthened her foundation. As a result, more of Margo is emerging and that is a beautiful gift for me and the world to receive.
As you are experimenting in your daily life, be on the lookout for those Shift Miracles. When you notice them - in yourself and others - acknowledge them, celebrate them. These tiny shifts are what help to build that solid foundation. They are the steps on your unique path, bringing out more of YOU!
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