Hello there, this is Ajit Nawalkha
and today we are discussing three reasons
why your clients are finding it hard to take action.
The three very specific reasons I wanna talk about today
that seem to stop most people to be able to take action.
And if you understand these three reasons,
if your clients in life or in business
are struggling to take action
you will be able to turn them towards taking action.
So let's get right into it.
There are three reasons,
and these reasons are all psychological
that usually stop our clients being able to take actions.
And if you're able to direct our energy rightly towards
and ask the right coaching questions,
give them the right insights, tell them the right stories,
we'll be able to turn them from inaction to action.
And to be able to do that,
firstly, we need to understand what are these things?
And then why did they happen?
So we can find effective strategies
in context of what your client is currently experiencing.
The first reason that happens very commonly
with the high performers is they tend to not take action
toward certain tasks that they know they need to get done
because of boredom.
High performers find it very difficult to be able
to do a task that does not challenge them.
You see, we think that
when we are at a certain level in our lives
we should be able to automate so much
and be able to become so good at something
that it's just like autopilot for us.
And while that is a great ambition to have,
every single time a high performer
ends up in a situation like that,
where the task is easy for them to do,
is something that they can do it at the back of their hand,
is on autopilot for them, soon you would find them
not actually being able to do the task.
And that has very little to do with anything else,
but because it's boring,
because it's not exciting,
because it doesn't challenge us at all.
You see, our minds are wired in a way where
when something is not challenging at all, is too easy for us
we tend to avoid it because there is no excitement
to achieve that particular goal,
to achieve that particular task
or complete that particular task.
And so we tend to just not wanna do it.
Especially when we are somebody
or we have always been somebody
that is looking for new and exciting stuff.
Somebody was always focused their energy
in creating something new in life,
in creating something exciting in life,
which happens to be high performers very many often.
So what is it that we can do to avoid boredom?
Especially when you're working with high performers
always question the goal
that they have set themselves to do.
You see high performers also tend
to want some sense of security
because there's a lot at stake.
When you are really successful everything that you do
people expect it to be a certain quality,
certain caliber, and certain size.
And because of all those expectations we tend to it safe.
We tend to go, what is it that I can do?
What is it that I know
that I can do that will create a particular outcome
and fulfill the expectation of the world outside?
While it may fulfill the expectation of the world outside
it doesn't satisfy the high performer that sits within you.
Which is why when you're working with a high performer
every single time they state a goal ask them,
is this really the goal that you wanna chase
or can we go a little bit further?
One of the ways that I like to do this
is by asking my clients to set goals based on something
that I learned from Raymond Aaron.
I learned this strategy long time ago.
Raymond Aaron is a coach himself.
And he suggested the idea of setting goals as minimum target
and outrageous, he calls it the MTO goals.
The reason why MTO goals are so important and exciting is
because when you're working with a high performer
most of the time when they have set themselves up for a goal
they have set themselves up with a goal
that they can surely achieve.
Let's call it the minimum that one has to do.
If you push your high performer just a little bit
and say, "Hey, listen, if your goal is X,
what if we add a 10% to it?
So X plus X 10%, would that be a little bit of a stretch?
Does this create a little bit more excitement
than the goal you're already set out to do?"
They might come up with a rational explanation
of why it's a little bit too hard and so forth,
but they would intuitively tell you
that they can still get it.
And that's good.
Let's set that up as a target,
as the main thing that they're gonna chase.
But let's not stop there.
What I really like about MTO goals is the outrageous.
Outrageous is where you say, this is a crazy idea.
This is a crazy goal.
This is really difficult.
But if we put it out there and start to plan
and hope that you will create the outrageous outcome
it will build a lot of excitement in the high performer,
in the client's life.
And that is why MTO is so exciting.
You still celebrate if you hit your minimum,
you still got the goal.
But if you hit the target
the celebration becomes a lot more exciting.
And if you do outrageous, oh, it's gonna be a big party.
It's gonna be a big celebration.
What we're really doing with these MTO goals
is we are stretching the challenge,
the goal further than the client
may have imagined until then.
This stretch of 10% and then maybe a little bit 10% more
will create a level of excitement
that will bypass their current fear
of not trying something different.
It will bypass their boredom
because they are now going to try something that's exciting
and that's different.
It's not the same as which gives them the joy of creating
and gets them out of boredom into a state of creation,
in the state of something new.
And that is one of the reasons why a lot of high performers
tend to not do what they really are setting themselves
out to do or tend to not take action,
even when they know they should be taking action.
The second reason why a lot of high performers
and individuals don't take actions
is because they get overwhelmed.
You see, we live in a world
where we have a lot of media coming at us all the time,
a lot of strategies coming at us all the time,
a lot of ideas coming at us a lot of time.
So world is changing so fast.
Everything around us changes so fast that if we take all
the input that the world is offering right now
we can get overwhelmed,
we can get overexposed to all these ideas and strategies
and action steps and things to study
and causes to back that we can feel overwhelmed.
And when we get overwhelmed as individuals
we go into the state of inaction.
One of the greatest ways you can declutter your mind
and organize your mind is to take all the ideas
that one may have at any given time
that is overwhelming them
and write it down on a piece of paper,
write it down somewhere.
Writing down ideas already helps you
start organizing your mind.
Once you've written down all the ideas
ask your client to valuate which of these ideas are
the ideas that they're going to do first.
You see our clients will be very attached
to all the ideas they put on paper.
They would go, I cannot not do any of these ideas.
They're all great ideas.
And they are, but the challenge is not
will we do ideas or not.
The challenge is there is limited amount of resources
that we have to execute all the ideas.
If we had all the resources to execute all the ideas
and all the mental faculties to execute all the ideas
we won't be overwhelmed.
We are overwhelmed because the input
is greater than our capability of creating an output.
And hence, what we need to do is we need to control
that input that is coming into our system, into our minds.
And so we need to organize it, right?
So get your clients to write down all the ideas
that they may have that may be causing that overwhelm,
all the ideas that they really want to execute.
And then ask them not to ignore the other ideas,
but to choose the ones that they will start with.
It is like creating a starting ritual.
If you don't know what a starting ritual is,
if you find yourself procrastinating ever
give yourself a ritual that you would do
that will get you out of that state.
It's basically how Mel Robbins Scott calls it,
by giving yourself five seconds.
Count yourself down from five, four, three, two, one
and just do whatever you gotta do, right?
So it's kinda like that,
but in the scheme of a lot of idea.
This to say, well, let's pick one idea.
Let's just pick one idea and just start it.
And once the idea is in motion
us human beings wanna finish the idea, finish the task
that we have already picked ourselves for us to do,
which gets them from a state of overwhelm
to a state of action,
because now they've picked one of the ideas
and starting to run with it.
And because they are starting to run with it
there's commitment and follow through
that they will tend to do.
And that will get them moving a particular direction.
Moving towards a direction or taking action
will counter their overwhelm.
To beat overwhelm one must organize their mind
and to organize your mind
you need to write down all the ideas,
pick one of these ideas, and start creating momentum.
And as you start creating momentum you will see
that overwhelm will automatically go away
because there's momentum in one direction.
We've already made the commitment.
You're already traveling in that direction.
And you start to say, the other ideas can wait.
And you might need to remind that to your client,
you might need to do this exercise again
and again with your client,
but it will help them beat overwhelm every single time
the overwhelm is paralyzing them.
Which brings me the final reason why many of our clients,
even when they know they should be taking actions
won't take action.
And that is incompetent or not feeling competent
to do something that they've already signed up for.
Sometimes we as human beings tend
to bite more than what we can chew.
We tend to agree to actions and items and projects
that we can't really deliver to.
I tend to make that mistake very often,
where I would overreach and overstretch myself.
But a great way for when you feel like you are not competent
to do the job, when you are not ready,
when you're not trained well enough to do the job is
to remind ourselves that competence is built.
Competence is something that you can work towards,
that you can train towards, that you can coach towards.
You can build any skill if you give it enough dedication,
enough time, enough practice.
And that is what you need to remind to your clients.
You need to remind them
that they are not incompetent as human beings.
They are just incompetent or less competent at the task
that they've assigned themselves to.
And because they're less competent at it
they can get more competent at it with training,
with coaching, and with action.
And that is what we are going to invite them to do.
When you find out that your client is not able
to take action because they feel like they don't have
the competence and the skill to be able
to create movement in their life,
to be able to get the outcomes that they want,
to be able to deliver to the project
that they've committed to remind them that any skill
or any competence is built over time
with the right coaching, the right training,
and the right action.
Help your clients stay in action,
even if it feels like that they are not ready for it.
Staying in action will start the feedback loop
where they will start to build competence and confidence.
If they don't take action, they would feel not competent
and may create a wrong belief that they are not ready.
They're not ready for the big change.
They're not ready for the big raise.
They're not ready for the big movement toward the direction
and passion of their life.
Keep your clients in action.
If you can keep them in action
they will keep building their competence.
Another way to keep your clients in action is
to remind them that it's not about big, giant leaps.
It's about small baby steps.
Help your clients take small actions
and small steps to what's the direction that they wanna go,
where they can see that they are not trying
to become extraordinarily competent at the task
that they're not good at right now,
but just a little bit further, and a little bit further,
and a little bit further, and a little bit further
because as they take these steps
soon enough you'll find them way further
than where they were
and very competent at what they had signed up for.
Sometimes incompetence
or lack incompetence in a particular area
also shows up as fear.
And be able to take small actions building that competence
and taking away that fear.
Do you find yourself sometimes thinking about
that I really should take this action
and then you don't take it.
If that is the case, I would love to see
which amongst these three seem to be the pattern
that is coming up for you
right now as you're listening to this video.
Share with us what is it that comes up
and also how you've been tackling it.
I would love to hear any parts from you on ideas
on how we all can learn together
to get past these three horsemen
that stop us from taking any positive action.
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Thank you so much for watching.
This is Ajit Nawalkha
and you're watching this on Evercoach.