Insight vs Action

Have you ever had that experience where you get a new insight or level of awareness and you think, "Oh I get it now.", and you feel lighter and freer as a result? It's a great feeling. It feels like we are making good headway, that our understanding is opening the way forward and creating change in our lives.

The mistake that can sometimes come in at this point is our tendency to think that the insight is all that is needed for changes to really take hold in our lives. I have personally experienced this more times than I care to admit, and I've seen it repeatedly in clients. Insight and awareness opens the door and paves the way forward, but we have to actually step through that doorway and walk down that road in order to actualize those changes in our lives and make them a part of who we are. This is where action comes in.

Insight gives us clues as to where we have been stuck or what has been operating below conscious awareness that has been negatively contributing to our current experience. The key for lasting change is to take those insights and turn them into concrete actions that move us forward in a way that is aligned with our new awareness. This requires us to step into a mindset of curiosity, wonder, willingness to experiment and to try things out in order to figure out what actions will serve us best in moving toward our new understanding and our vision for our future. We know progress isn't linear and not everything will work, but inside of this growth mindset we can learn from what doesn't and use it as fuel to move us forward.

Here's an example of what this might look like. If we have the insight that we've been operating from a belief that we are not good enough, and that this belief has been holding us back, we can now get curious and ask ourselves, "If I believed I was good enough, that I didn't have to prove anything to anyone, how would I show up in my life? What would I be doing? How would I be interacting with others? What would I be saying to myself?" We can then use that information to formulate actions and ways of showing up that are in alignment with our new belief. Another example is having the realization that we've been playing small in our lives because that feels safer. We didn't want to draw attention to ourselves or risk negative feedback from others. Through this insight we realize that playing small is what has been keeping us stuck, keeping us from putting ourselves out there in the world, which keeps us from moving toward the life we want. We come to realize that failure and negative feedback from others can be uncomfortable but they're not fatal. We come to realize that we can show up for ourselves and turn toward ourselves with loving kindness and compassion, and that we can create room to start presencing ourselves and risk putting ourselves out there a little bit more. From here, we can create an action plan starting with small ways of doing that, including what we are going to say to ourselves as we do it, who we are going to rely on for support and encouragement as we navigate the ups and downs of being "out there" a little bit more. Then we start to take those risks knowing that we can create safety for ourselves as we do it.

By taking the actions that align with our new insights and awareness, we start to embody them. This is what makes the difference between something occurring in our realm of thought and it becoming a way of being in our lives. It is our actions and willingness to grow that ultimately lead to lasting changes.

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Candy Widdifield, M.Ed., Certified Master Coach

candywiddifield.com candy.thriving@gmail.com