Avoidable vs. Unavoidable Pain
Here’s something I often hear from people:
I’m sick of working through the same problem again and again.
How can I fix this once and for all and then never think about it?
This is not a bad question — I know how frustrating it can be to feel like you’re always back in the same spot every few days, or months, or years.
AND it might not be the most realistic expectation to have. You can’t live a life 100% free of pain and problems.
Some pain is avoidable — you should aim to have as little of it as possible in your life going forward.
And other pain is unavoidable — you should expect it to keep popping up and your aim should be not to eliminate it but to get better and faster at resolving it.
Let’s talk about the difference.
The pain of discovering & resolving Should vs. Want conflicts is unavoidable.
You are going to keep running into Should vs. Want conflicts for the rest of your life.
Even if you go through a one-time effort to resolve ALL the Should vs. Want conflicts currently in your life, and you set up everything perfectly according to your Wants…
Your preferences change. Your priorities change. Your vision gets bigger. You value things differently. Something that was interesting to you becomes boring, or vice versa.
Your knowledge and insight changes. You learn more about what you want and what’s out there in the world. You discover a new piece of information or a new way of looking at things. Suddenly, the thing you wanted becomes something you don’t want anymore.
The world changes. Your company re-orgs. Your manager leaves. Your kids get older and need different things from you. Your spouse wants to move to a different country.
Every time something changes — in your preferences, in your knowledge, or in the world at large — you are likely to discover new misalignments in your life (aka new Should vs. Want conflicts).
Discovering a new misalignment is not super fun. It can be…
Confusing — “What do I do from here?”
Frustrating — “I don’t want to make all the pieces fit in a new way AGAIN.”
Scary — “What if this doesn’t work? What if I’m wrong?”
And even come with a dose of regret… — “Why didn’t I figure this out sooner?”
…or grief — “I’m bummed that the current way has to end.”
But because change is unavoidable…
And because each change creates opportunities for new misalignments and Should vs. Want conflicts…
The pain of discovering and resolving these misalignments is unavoidable.
But luckily, it’s temporary.
Every time you uncover a new Should vs. Want conflict, all you have to do is go through a one-time push of confusion and nervous experimentation as you figure out how to get everything you want in this new world…
…and when it’s done, you’ve laid one more brick in the foundation of the life you want to live.
This is not the kind of pain to avoid or get annoyed about.
This is the pain that moves you forward. Outwardly, toward what you truly want and inwardly, toward the realest expression of yourself.
This is the kind of pain to expect and get really good at resolving efficiently.
The pain of sticking with Should’s is avoidable.
Noticing a Should vs. Want conflict…
And then telling yourself, “I have to do what I’m supposed to do.”
And mistrusting and dismissing your own instincts…
And squishing yourself into a box every single day…
Without figuring out how to do what you want AND get the results you want…
And also without figuring out how to convert your Should into a Want… (Because calling something a Should or a Want is all in your mind anyway.)
That pain lasts forever. It’s not temporary. It’s not about figuring something out once and then being done.
You just have to get up every day and suffer through it again and again, forever.
This is the pain burns you out and makes you quit your job and blow up your life.
This is the avoidable pain.
This is the stuff I want you to have zero tolerance for in your life.
So if you’re wondering whether you should work with a coach.
But you’re afraid:
What if I do all this work, but it just doesn’t stick?
What if I end up back in the same place I always find myself?
Here’s what I want you to know—
Coaching is not about getting to an outcome.
Coaching is about learning a process.
I don’t mean that coaching isn’t results-focused. It’s tremendously results-focused.
The best way to learn a process is by applying it in the pursuit of a specific outcome.
So yes, you will absolutely get the problems that you bring to coaching solved.
AND that’s not really the main outcome of coaching.
Because all solutions to all problems are temporary.
Because change is unavoidable. The world keeps shifting around you. You keep shifting within yourself. So there always will be new problems to solve tomorrow.
And that is the exact reason you need coaching.
You don’t just need a one-time solution to the problem of the day.
You need that AND a repeatable process that you can run every time a new problem comes up in the future.
The end goal of coaching is not that you never have problems ever again.
The end goal of coaching is that WHEN the problems arise again (which they inevitably will), you handle them better, faster, more confidently, and more easily than you do today.
That’s what I’m here to teach you how to do.
So let’s get started today.
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