September 11: Is It Time To Re-Design Your Life?
Henrietta Harrison, M.A., L.M.F.T

Every one of us in America lost someone near and dear to us on September 11th even if we didn't know anyone who perished in the Twin Towers or aboard the ill-fated planes. We each lost our innocent, naïve self…that part of ourselves which felt secure and comfortable in the expectation that life would be safe and predictable…and that we'd live to a ripe old age.

The events of that morning so completely shattered our illusions of safety and predictability, the episode has become an indelible demarcation in time for an entire generation much as we individually have personal demarcations in our lives ("before/after I got married", "before/after my child was born", "before/after my mother/father died").

So now we all mark time by that date: Before September 11th versus After. Life can never go back to how it was. So if we can't go back; we must go forward; but how?

As you watched the Twin Towers crumble and you realized the lives of the people inside were being snuffed out at that instant, did you for just a nanosecond wonder "What if it were me? What if I were in that building? What if my life was over at that instant, would my life have been everything I want for myself?"

If you answered "Yes", don't bother to read any further. Congratulations. You've made it. You're living your dreams.

But for all the rest of us, it's time to re-design our lives. Time to "Just do it!" Time to "Go for it!" If you don't know what "it" is, then it's definitely time to find out.

Figuring out what we want out of life can be surprisingly difficult. Some of us have gotten so caught up in the all consuming, often overwhelming, routines and responsibilities of daily life that we've lost the ability to dream when we're awake. We can't visualize a personal fantasy of what would make us happy. Or, if we can, we simply lack the spark to go after it and turn occasional fantasy into daily reality. Or, we have dozens of reasons why we can't: "I have too many responsibilities", "I can't afford to", "People like me don't do that sort of thing", "I wouldn't know how to go about it".

That's a big part of what coaches do when we coach our clients. We help them to figure out what they really want to do with their life and then help them make it happen. We help them to re-design their life or part of it.

Coaching is a relationship of mutual trust. Coach and client work together as a team. The coach challenges the client to change and grow; but also provides support and encouragement along the way.

Coaching is a way to create a vision for the future, design a plan of action to realize that vision and then follow through to completion. A coach is like a personal trainer for your life. You work with a personal trainer to tone up and re-shape your body. You work with a coach to tone up and re-shape your life.

Coaching is about attaining what seems unattainable on your own, whether it is physical performance or life enhancement. It's a way to create a high degree of focus, to marshal strengths and resources to face and conquer challenges, and to accomplish the possible. Life strategy coaches help clients make life changes they haven't been able to make on their own.

Very much like a sports coach working with an Olympic athlete, we help them to IDENTIFY THEIR DREAM (win the gold), VISUALIZE THEIR DREAM (the perfect dive or fastest 50 meter sprint), CREATE AN ACTION PLAN (where, when, how to train), IMPLEMENT THE PLAN (train, train, train some more), and STICK TO IT even when they want to quit (motivate, challenge, support), GO THE DISTANCE WITH THEM and be there to CONGRATULATE OR CONSOLE them ("Zowie! You won gold!!!" or "Okay, let's use what we've learned here to do better in 4 years").

The people I coach aren't typically training for the Olympics (at least, no one yet). Usually they're navigating a major transition in their life like figuring out what to do after being down-sized, getting up the nerve to trade a regular paycheck for your name on the front door, swapping the daily commute for retirement, leaving a marriage, or getting diagnosed with a life threatening or degenerative disease (or being the partner of that person).

Transitions are unsettling. In transition, you're out of your normal comfort zone. You've left the zone of the familiar but are not yet established in the zone of the new. You feel like Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. Your coach supports you as you make this tentative, exciting journey from the old to the new, from the safe to the scary, from yesterday to tomorrow.

Life transitions are often thrust upon us by catastrophe, big or small, global or personal. For many of us, the events of September 11th are the catastrophe that has propelled us into re-design mode because we've been forced to consider in a new way (or possibly, for the first time) our career, marriage or lifestyle.

What we have now is suddenly not enough for us; but visualizing what we'd like better can be difficult, especially for those of us who've always lived by The Rules. You know…The Rules. What Everybody expects us to do: good grades, top college, marry the right person, move to an affluent suburb. Since September 11 The Old Rules don't seem to apply any more. Call it malaise or September 11th Syndrome. We need New Rules.

Here's a simple exercise I often use with people I coach to allow their imaginations to free them up from The Rules and what Everybody expects so they can start to dream about their new life.

"What If" Exercise

"If I didn't care what other people thought, I would
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"If I were sure I'd succeed, I would
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"If I had the courage, I would
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"If I could be certain it was the right choice, I would
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"If I were free to do whatever I wanted, I would
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Now pick one thing you wrote down and do it; or at the very least, take a tiny step in that direction.
Take the first step toward re-designing your life so it's the life you truly want for yourself. Because now's the time.