Having aspirations and goals are important to drive self-development and keep us motivated in life. Doing new things and learning gives us energy and stimulates our minds. But when these things prove harder to get through than we expected do we give up, or keep going? 

I recently started a new evening course. As a coach I help my clients to move forward, to find new pathways of thinking to drive through positive change in their lives. To give myself another angle to my coaching practice I decided to sign up to a counselling course, hoping this skill will give me skills to also support clients to deal with whatever experiences in their lives has led them to today, acknowledge this and then work on the change experience which they want to achieve. This all sounded sensible to me. What I didn’t expect was that learning more about counselling made me look deep within myself and I discovered some hard truths.

My approach to life has generally been, if there’s a problem, let’s fix it. If there’s a challenge, we will sort it out. If there is negativity in my life I will deal with it so I can feel OK again. So far, so good. I felt proud of this. I’m goals orientated and I DO things. 

This approach has worked well for me for over 40 years; my career has grown at my desired pace, in my marriage we have been managed through some challenges over the 20 years we’ve known each other; when we had our two boys we worked as a team to get through the baby and toddler years. When my brother died of cancer I sought help from a bereavement counsellor and felt better.

When I started my counselling course in April, I was quite confident that I would learn quickly and be pretty good at it. So it came as a bit of a shock when, after 3 weeks, I was on the phone to the course leader asking if I could get a refund and leave the course. What happened was, I found the course extremely hard and there was no quick fix - and I wanted out. 

Friends of mine told me, if you don’t like it, just leave - don’t feel miserable. When I realised that the course fees are non-refundable my heart sank. I had a long chat to the course leader who urged me to hang in there. It’s tough for everyone, she said.

I kept going to lessons and sent in my course work. The tutor feedback made me feel inadequate, hurt and angry. The comments on my coursework asked where all this control came from, what was this need for knowing everything. My emotional reaction was ‘how dare she!’ and ‘why is she so mean?’. 

One evening, reading the tutor feedback on the previous week’s work I felt the same. And then, very clearly and quietly, a penny dropped. My tutor was absolutely right. I do like being in control, I hate uncertainty and I like knowing everything.

The question was - did I want to carry on staying that way, or deal with it and change? 

That night I decided to stick with the course. I started viewing the tutor feedback differently - it wasn’t an accusation of my faults in my personality, it was a true reflection of what I am like. By accepting that this is me I was able to absorb the feedback and consider it before reacting defensively and putting on my emotional suit of armour. 

My learning experience isn’t over and I am fairly certain I will discover many more areas of my personality which I can improve and change - it’s reminded me of two things: 

• The power to change is entirely within you - you have all the resources within you to change, you just have to choose to change



• There is no time limit of self-improvement - learning and change takes time and this carries on throughout life. Accepting that we can change ourselves at any point in life gives enormous power and freedom
  

In this scenario I decided to stick with it and carry on. It took some soul searching and much consideration to make this decision, and it felt right when I got there. Carrying on isn’t always the right answer - when I decided to give up a new puppy that was the right answer for me, at the time. Getting through the decision making process is a challenge in its own right, and a journey to endure. Trust your instincts to make the right choice, for you. 

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