Louise Thompson: Ch-ch-ch-changes

The most powerful kind of personal change comes from a change in how we know and listen to our true selves. Photo / Thinkstock

I am all about change and growth. People come to a life coach because they want radical change - life is not feeling as it should and change is the first order of the day. However, the longer I have been coaching, the more my perspective around change has evolved. Often an immediate radical shift in life situation is not actually required, but a shift in perspective is. It's that perspective shift that opens up the gateway to a happy, passion-filled life.

Most of the time it is not that people need to change stuff about themselves, it's more that they need to connect with who they really are. It's less about turning into someone else, someone "better" and more about being more of who they really are underneath once you clear out all the expectations about how their life "should" look by now and how they "should" be spending their time. It's less about changing external circumstances (at least initially) and more about connecting to what's true internally. It's less about changing who you are and more about changing the way you think about who you are.

Finding your passion is less of a quest to find the answer "out there" in the world, rather a clearing of mental and emotional clutter that helps you hear the perfect answer bubble up from within.

Living a happy life is less about changing what you do and more about trusting yourself to make the right call. It's about backing yourself that you have the resources within you to figure it out, whatever happens. It's about cultivating a deep level of conviction within yourself. It's less about "making change happen". It's really about improving your relationship with yourself so much that change just naturally evolves and happens all on its own. It's not a forced process: it's a gradual unfolding of "rightness". Clients end up in career paths or relationships or living circumstances in ways that are so much richer and righter but which neither of us could have predicted at the start of their journey. They know and trust themselves on such a different level that change stops being scary and starts just being the obvious next move. Obvious like "Duh! Of course I need to quit and go retrain as a herbalist/vet/IT geek. Of course!"

The most powerful kind of personal change comes from a change in how we know and listen to our true selves. First an internal change, then once we have that down, externally changing the status quo in terms of job, relationships and so on becomes a natural pull forwards towards our best life.

If you are struggling to make a change on the outside - have a good look at what you can change on the inside first. Connecting more deeply with your strengths; letting go of perfectionism or people pleasing; allowing your passions to make themselves known; trusting you have the inner strength to handle whatever comes up - that's all an inside job. Nail that, and change on the outside is a breeze.