Stop telling yourself you can’t do something, it is literally preventing you from figuring out how to do the thing. Keep reading and I will show you the path to be able to DO the thing.
As I meet new and potential clients I hear the same or similar things over and over again. I want to share with you some of the most common things I hear and then I’ll share how I’ve helped my clients get the things they really want, that they once thought were impossible to get.
When was the last time you said any of these statements?
I can’t afford therapy. (Or I can’t afford…fill in the blank)
I can’t divorce. I don’t have enough money to live on my own.
I can’t move out, I have nowhere to go.
I can’t set boundaries, or if I do they won’t work because he won’t respect them.
One thing I know for sure is when you think like this about the thing you want, you will always be right. And you might be thinking, of course it’s right, I’m simply reporting the news when I say “I can’t afford therapy.” You think it is factual information you are simply passing along. And it may be factual, but most often there is only a little truth to the statement, and if you change the way you think about it just a little, you can turn it around and find a solution to the matter. I will give you some examples.
I had a consultation with a new client Tammy and she was working on repairing her relationship with her husband after infidelity. The two of them were working hard on repairing, but she wanted additional support. She was feeling frustrated because they only had money to pay for her husband to go to therapy, and while she was trying to read books, listen to podcasts and join online Facebook support groups, she was lacking real professional help. She heard about my consultation session and booked a call. She told me right at the beginning of the call she couldn’t afford to keep coaching and understood if that meant we couldn’t meet today, but she was hoping to just get a little help. I said “I’m so glad you told me. Knowing this we are going to work fast, and I’m going to be direct and we are going to use every single moment of our call. Are you ready to get coaching?” She was excited and we got started right away. 55 minutes into our session, with 5 minutes left she said “this has been so helpful! Like more helpful than I ever thought any kind of therapy or coaching could be. How much is coaching with you?” She had this firm belief that she couldn’t afford coaching, and yet she didn’t even know how much it was. Turns out she assumed it would be as much as her husband’s addiction recovery therapy program was, which was around $10,000 a year. Nope! Not even close. Much less than even half that. She also had that thought before she knew how valuable coaching would be for her. She had an idea in her head of what coaching would be like, or what therapy would do, and although she thought it might help some, she didn’t feel like the value of it was worth $10,000. So she thought she was reporting the news that she couldn’t afford therapy/coaching. Turns out, she could actually afford it, and her relationship transformed over the 6 months we worked together. She became a boundary setting expert, was so confident in her own choices and decisions and was genuinely happy again. She felt like she understood herself and wasn’t confused and angry all the time anymore. When we finished coaching together she said “I honestly can’t believe that I used to think I couldn’t afford this. This has been as necessary and life changing for me and my relationship as buying a house was. This was life improving!”
Let me give you some of the creative ways that my clients have paid for life coaching: using savings, got a part time job, asked parents to help, asked their boyfriend to pay for it, donated plasma, sold some items in the home they no longer used, started babysitting another child along with caring for their own child, canceled subscriptions and ate out less, sold stocks and more. Of course you wouldn’t do any of those things if you didn’t know there was value in the services you were going to get. This is why it’s important to book a consultation and decide if coaching together is a good fit for you. Booking this consultation call with me only costs about 60 minutes of your time. I can tell you that I have wasted time and money on way more useless things than an hour with a professional who can help me. And my goal is always for clients to feel like they got hundreds of dollars of value in that hour, and they only paid $0. So whether clients continue to work with me or not, they feel like they got value from every hour they spent with me. You should book your own coaching consultation HERE and find out for yourself just how much an hour of coaching can change your life!
Let’s look at another client who said “I can’t set boundaries because he won’t respect them.” And she was right, because she started her sentence with “I can’t,” then she couldn’t. I helped her explore possible boundaries by asking “what would you want the boundary to be if he would respect them?” She wanted him to do this, and stop that. I then taught her how to finally set really good boundaries. The key she had been missing was what the real purpose of boundaries is. Boundaries are for YOU, not the other person. A request or demand is for the other person.
I go into detail about boundaries HERE in this blog post, but put simply, setting boundaries is YOU deciding ahead of time what YOU will do if the other person does/doesn’t do whatever you have requested of them. For example “If you (other person) do or don’t do (thing I request), then I will do (thing you decide ahead of time that YOU will do in response.” For example: “If you don’t stop looking at porn, then I will not sleep in the same bed with you.” Or “If you ever speak to or contact the affair partner again in any way, then I will file for divorce.” It allows the other person to do what they are going to do, you make a request for changed behavior, and decide the actions you will take if they do or don’t do the thing you want them to. It doesn’t require them respecting the boundary, it actually requires YOU to respect the boundary. And this is the best news ever because it means that we can communicate what is and isn’t acceptable in order to be in a relationship with us, and then it only takes us to take action if the other person isn’t meeting the bar.
So once my client understood that the boundary was for herself, she changed what she was saying and said “I can totally set good boundaries, and they will work, because the boundary is for me!” That is much different than what she was saying when she said she couldn’t set boundaries because he wouldn’t respect them.
It’s important to inspect the way we talk to ourselves and make sure we aren’t sending the wrong message by saying “I can’t.” Instead start by getting curious with something like “I wonder how I’m going to…” or “I wonder what it will take to make (this thing) happen?”
One other suggestion I have for you is to really ask yourself WHY you believe you can’t do the thing. For example, when clients tell me they can’t file for divorce I ask them why. A very common answer is “because I don’t want my kids to grow up in a broken home.” I get that, I used to be there and it kept me in a bad marriage for way too many years. And if you stopped at that thought and didn’t explore the why any deeper, you’d likely stay. But I always help my clients explore all of the angles of any option. So next I usually ask them “what is it telling/showing your children by you choosing to stay?” This is when clients confront the other truth that if they stay their kids will grow up with an unhealthy example of relationships, that they will see their dad cheating on their mom, and that mom will be unhappy and exhausted emotionally all the time.
Staying and leaving are both options, and when you love your reasons for whatever you choose, then it’s a good choice. My job is to help you make sure that you understand ALL of the reasons you are staying and also to see all the options that are available to you. Because there are always more than 2 options available.
Take your power back by making sure that your brain isn’t lying to you. I would love to help you inspect these statements and help you get to a place where you believe that you can set boundaries, that you can afford the help you deserve, that you can heal after betrayal, that you CAN live a happy life no matter what you have endured previously.
Use this link to schedule a consultation call with me where we can discuss where you are, where you want to be, and if coaching together can help you get there. I promise that you CAN do more than you think you can. I will help you uncover your currently hidden potential and power that is inside of you.
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