“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
If you are someone who doesn’t think like everyone else in the room, then you might find that new and innovative ideas energize you. When you hear about Elon Musk tackling the transportation problem in America, or you meet a group of engineers creating portable energy for rural areas in Africa, or you can get functional skin created by a 3D printer, you enter into a world of possibility which pumps you up. In short, ideas get you high.
One of the things that new ideas can do for me is provide me with a type of escape. I can complain and moan about the state of affairs, or I can think about how I wish things could be. Then I can pile more ideas on top of those ideas creating a buzz of ideas that get me high and have me hoping for the day when all my dreams come true. To me, this feels like a position of power because it’s the opposite of the victim mentality. When I feel helpless, generating ideas lifts my spirits and I feel a buzz of energy. When I’m at the airport and standing in the ticket line, security line, food line or boarding line, it’s easy to become frustrated at the way air travel is being handled. If I can shift to all the things I would do if I could be ruler for a day, then I am having fun and being creative.
Jim, one of my clients, is working with me to plan his transition from his high level executive career to going out on his own. He is absolutely passionate about media and has really amazing ideas for resurrecting older forms of media in new and creative ways. During one of our sessions, Jim wanted to discuss how to start small with low risk. He had an idea that he wanted to explore, so we threw it on the table and batted it around. He had one idea that was simple, low risk and also had a low probability of getting him started in any appreciable way. After he proudly described his plan to me, I didn’t say anything, waiting for more. After an awkward interlude of silence, he said, “That’s it.” So I answered, “What else?” Another long period of silence ensued.
Once Jim was tasked with coming up with other options, he had to shift his mindset from safe and low risk to more risky options. It’s like I gave him permission to wade a little farther into the deep end. When he did, he came up with 10 other ideas for moving forward. Each new idea sparked more new ideas, and Jim was on a roll. I don’t think I spoke for 15 minutes while Jim tossed new ideas out like a pitching machine. Here’s the really fun part, Jim was alive. He was chock full of energy and possibility. When his fears popped up and he ventured back to the shallow end, I would gently redirect him to the deeper end. Jim was totally invigorated and left that session with a new-found purpose.
Eric, another client, is in the process of growing his lifestyle business. When we started working together, he was unsure about how to expand and didn’t have the self-worth and confidence to talk to bigger players in the industry. He was playing small, but he knew he was capable of playing a bigger game. In one of our recent sessions, he wanted to walk away with a clear direction of where to grow the business. He had a low-risk series of steps, like adding some new discounts to his offerings, sprucing up his website and looking into new certifications. I couldn’t wait to elevate his vision and pull the greatness out of him. In Eric, I saw someone who was transforming people’s lives and whose work was so important and impactful that it should be integrated into every hospital and school in the country. When he shared that his goal of reaching 1,000 people, I asked him what if he changed that goal to 1 million people. Silence.
To answer the question, Eric had to shift over to a different part of his brain, like railroad tracks changing. Once he engaged the idea generator part of his mind, he became unstoppable. Every idea he threw out, I acknowledged him and then asked, “What else?” It was delightful to watch Eric come up with idea after idea and witness his energy levels rise. He was completely thrilled by the end of the session and had a list of actionable items that would up-level and grow his business.
One of the things that a new idea can do is challenge deeply held beliefs and assumptions. For example, consider self-driving cars. I have an assumption that when my kids need a ride, I have to spend my time driving them. When I need to visit family for the holidays, I need to spend my time and attention on driving the two days it takes to get there. If I didn’t have to drive, what would that mean? My perception is shifted and the possibility gates are wide open. The idea can generate the shift. Likewise, the shift can generate the idea. For example, when I asked my client to shift his goal from 1,000 to one million people, the new ideas rapidly burst out of him. As Tony Robbins says, “Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
Another client, Wendy, has a deeply held belief that her current HVAC business cannot fulfill her. She hired me to partner with her to determine her purpose in the world. Her expectation is that her current business is in no way linked to her purpose. During a session, we explored what made Wendy feel alive. When she responded with all the things she had done in her life that filled her with energy and purpose, I wrote down the words that she used. I had a list of a dozen things. To shift her thinking from finding a new business out there somewhere to a current business that is right in front of her, I asked her how she could incorporate these dozen things into her HVAC business. She stalled and directed an expletive at me. Her brain was changing tracks. Click. After generating all sorts of new ideas for her current business, she sat back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest and said, “This is good.” Indeed.
There are so many times in my own life when a shift in perception allowed a new idea to break free, and when a new idea caused a shift in my perception. It’s a chicken and egg phenomenon. If you are an out-of-the-box thinker, your big, bold ideas have the power to shift perceptions, and your different perspectives have the power to initiate big, bold ideas. Whether you begin with the idea or the shift, my hope is that you begin.
Accountability is helpful when trying to reach goals. There’s something about having to answer to someone else that drives us to complete the things we say we’ll do. It’s common for people to seek out life coaches for accountability to keep them on track, be better and do more. There is a distinction that I’d like to point out. If the vision isn’t big enough, then accountability plays a major role. If the vision is big and bold and inspiring, then accountability will play a small role. My job as a coach is to elevate someone’s vision until it is so big and juicy that nothing will get in their way.
I was having a session with my coach, Rich Litvin, and he was challenging me about defining my target market. I hemmed and hawed and said I wasn’t sure. “I’m getting close and it’ll become clear to me soon,” I rambled. He shared with me that another client of his says he coaches the smartest people in the room. “Who do you coach, Allison?” I responded very matter of factly that I coach the person in the room who doesn’t think like everyone else and finds themselves saying, “It doesn’t have to be that way.” Rich replied that’d be a great title for a book, and then asked if I wrote that book what the chapters might be. Then he asked if I could have anyone in the world write a foreword for me, who would it be. Duh, Oprah!
After our call, the idea of writing a book was bouncing around in my mind and I couldn’t quite shake it. A half hour after our call, Rich posted a fake book cover with my title, my name and a quote from Oprah in our closed Facebook group. Once I saw it, I wanted it so badly. It was too delicious and juicy to pass up. This very book is the result of Rich elevating the vision with me. I will finish writing the book in 4 months, and I never needed someone to hold me accountable.
When I have initial coaching conversations with potential clients, I love to listen to the thing they want and then get curious about why they want it. Then I take their want and ask them what it’d be like if they could achieve it on a scale so much bigger than they ever imagined. For example, I was coaching an executive in a large housing business. He shared lots of pain points of his current position and said he was seeking coaching to overcome them. I told him that his vision of our work together was boring. I asked him to tell me more. Then I asked him to tell me what he’d do if he were ruler for a day. His energy went up and he sat taller when he shared he really wanted the organization to treat their employees better. So I blew his want out of the water and asked what if his organization became a place where turnover was non-existent, where employees loved coming to work and evangelized about it, and where each employee was given the opportunity to make their own dreams a reality. Tick-tock and CLICK. His brain was shifting tracks. He sat back in his chair, looked at the ceiling and smiled. He responded that it would be super. Once he saw the elevated vision, he couldn’t undo it.
Our own assumptions can really get in our way when we are trying to solve problems, live a wholehearted life, and find purpose and meaning in our work. We can quickly shift from being empowered to being a victim. We may want something with all our heart and soul, but we may not be able to do it alone. It can be a game changer to surround yourself with people who will magnify and amplify your visions, support you through the process, and challenge you to shift your mindset on a regular basis. When I saw the fake book cover that Rich created for me, I hired a book coach the next day! I don’t know how to write a book. Heck, I barely know how to write. I am an engineer, remember? My book coach believes in me more that I believe in myself. Without her, this book would just be a thing that I want, rather than a dream I am realizing.
If you are an out-of-the-box thinker who never runs out of ideas, then you know there is a dark side. Your list of to-dos can become long and exhausting since it’s difficult to know when to stop. This is where visionaries get stuck. For example, I want to create a course for the local university, create a leadership program for teens, coach amazing clients, create a coaching event and write a book. Oh yeah, I also want to change public education, raise wonderful children, cultivate a great marriage and train for a 50K with my best friend. Oy! When you think in big ideas, you can easily drift into the land of overwhelm which is where we can suffer from one more-itis. This is where we can always do one more thing. Just like the fat man in the restaurant in the Monty Python skit, just one more wafer after a gargantuan meal caused him to literally explode.
My friend, Dian, is a huge dreamer. She is a social rebel with big, bold ideas. Because she is so passionate about the needs of her community, she has launched several initiatives. Any one initiative would be a lot for a person to manage, and Dian has many of these to corral. She rises early in the morning and goes to bed late in the evening. She lives on caffeine and she doesn’t have time to take care of herself. She makes promises that she struggles to keep. She is late most of the time. For Dian, there is always one more thing she can do. While her heart is in the right place, she can be perceived as disorganized, flaky and irresponsible. This is the dark side of being a big thinker. Without supports in place to keep Dian on track, she runs off into the bottomless ditch endlessly.
Even with supports in place, we can run ourselves ragged. I have several coaches, a support group, a wonderful group of friends and family, and I still overextend myself. It’s all for naught if we don’t commit to taking care of ourselves. We have the best of intentions to eat well, exercise regularly, and sleep 8 hours each night. No support in the world can help you if you can’t resist the temptation to take on one more thing. When I have overloaded my plate, I find that being present is a great way to snap me back to reality. Taking a deep breath, closing my eyes and experiencing the present moment brings me away from becoming obsessed with the past or the future and gently places me in the here and now. We have to do a lot of things well in order to be at our best, and a good start is to remember to be present and surround yourself with remarkable people.
For those of us business folks who can always do one more thing, we need to build a team with people. If we pair ourselves with people, like an assistant, who can break down our big ideas and do the busy work, then we won’t get bogged down in the one more-itis. For us, busy work suppresses our ability to generate big ideas. When we can unload our ideas to someone who can break them down into bite sized pieces, then our busy minds can move forward. Because we all have a limited bandwidth, a support team can also keep us focused on 2 or 3 priorities at a time.
There’s another dark side to being a big thinker with bold ideas. When I am uncomfortable in any way, I can leave the discomfort and hang out in the world of possibilities and rainbows. When the reality of a situation is staring me in the face, I can turn away and think about how it could be. I never run out of ideas. It’s a gift and a curse. I can use my great ideas to create change or I can use them to distract me from my own discomfort (or both). What’s so bad about not wanting to be uncomfortable? I believe my discomfort is trying to tell me something. I don’t want to be uncomfortable, but the only way to get out of it is to acknowledge it. In other words, turn towards it rather than away from it.
I have a fear of what others think of me, and one way I deal with this fear is to charge a fee that I think a person will find reasonable rather than a fee that represents the value I bring. I have implemented some big, bold ideas in my coaching where, in addition to bringing my clients on an intellectual journey, I also bring them on physical journeys. These experiential field trips, as I call them, offer clients a new and powerful way to experience insights and growth. Yet, my fee is still the same. This makes me uncomfortable. So I want to turn away from it. What I realized is that I need to face my fears repeatedly in order to grow and build confidence. The insight that came forward was that I need to double my fees for one month. This ignites my fear, so I know I must be on the right path because my fear eventually changes into fearlessness. I’m then able to be more straightforward, hence, more productive with my clients. And myself.
One of my former clients, Karen, really wanted to embed professional development into her advertising business. Karen is a self-help junkie, and she loves to consider new and innovative ways to transform the people in her organization. During our time together, she would launch these terrific initiatives sometimes in an effort to avoid the discomfort of what she needed to do. At times, Karen could face her discomfort and really hit a home run. Other times, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Karen is human, and she gets to be imperfect and flawed like the rest of us. When our contract was up, Karen elected not to continue working with me. I still check in on her to see how she’s doing. Unfortunately, her business is not doing well. She has slipped back into her old pattern of refusing to relinquish total control and owning all authority. She is still launching new initiatives and dreaming big, but none of the initiatives are addressing her own stumbling blocks.
Humans are an amazing and sometimes predictable lot. We avoid pain, which makes sense and is logical. However, not all pain is bad for us. A pushup can cause pain, but it also builds strength. Making amends to someone we have wronged can be a painful experience, but it also relieves us from long term suffering. Even a vaccination hurts when it’s administered, but it prevents the agony of some debilitating or potentially fatal illness. The dark side of being a big thinker is that it can lead us to distract ourselves from things that may need our attention. Humans are designed to avoid discomfort. Creating a life where we have the ability to face our pains, be they emotional or physical, can pay big dividends to ourselves and the people around us.