Pivotal Choices Coaching

Six Steps that Will Kick-Start a Tired, Stalled Project

The other day a caller asked if I had ever coached someone who had become stalled on a house renovation project.  My answer was no, but what came to mind was how similar all big projects are.   How difficult it can be to keep going.  How crushing the project can become. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Let’s say it was you who started the renovation project. You envisioned the changes you were going to make.  You put together a plan to accomplish those changes.

And you took on this project in part because of what you wanted to prove to yourself.

Following through on such a commitment takes courage and resilience.  I’ve seen someone with these qualities accomplish an amazing home renovation project.  The husband of one of my nieces almost single-handedly built a large room onto their house.  He’s an accomplished man, but he’s not a carpenter, nor is he an architect.  Nevertheless, over many months, the structure came together, and it’s a lovely addition to their home.

Completing such a project must be more than satisfying.  I would guess that the end feeling would be relief coupled with enormous joy in the accomplishment.

But if the renovation project is yours and if you’re stuck, re-starting takes courage and a willingness to look with new eyes at what this project will require from you.

Here are the Six Steps you have to take:

1.  You need a plan, the more detailed the better.  Without a plan, you probably won’t succeed.

2.  Make realistic, manageable goals each and every day or work session.

3.  When you accomplish the day’s goal, stop for the day—you don’t keep going.  Stopping when you’ve reached a realistic goal gives you the strength to come back another day.  If you go beyond the realistic goal, you make it much harder to return to the project.

4.  After you quit for the day, acknowledge yourself for the courage it took for you to take on this whole project, as well as for what you have accomplished that day.

5.  And give yourself permission to feel joy in meeting the challenge. 

6.  Draw on that feeling of renewed courage and the surge of joy to start your work another day.

Embarrassment, discouragement, and shame are likely to accompany getting stuck on a home renovation or building project.  Having one’s failure on public display can be brutal.  But the dread of being found out when a failure isn’t so visible is also hard to bear. 

Life’s too short to live in dread or shame.  You have a choice.  I say get started on that detailed plan . . . and then get to work!

Getting Out of My Own Way with One Small Step

A small step, one that you’ve overlooked or maybe just didn’t want to see, may be pivotal in making a change for the good.

Ever since we had some of our upstairs floors re-done, our basement has been overflowing with boxes of books, clothes, and odd accumulations that we had moved out of the way of the workers.

These boxes joined all of the other items from the past that had found their way to our basement.

I’ve wanted to rid the basement of much of this stuff and could imagine the area with only the essentials—the ping pong table, the couch, the bookshelves, the treadmill. 

But the reality has been that I’m hesitant to throw much of anything away , from my kids' elementary-school board games to their high school notebooks.

Today when I asked myself where could I take one easy first step, I knew what I hadn't wanted to see.  At issue were not my kids' things.  Nearly blocking the path into the basement are boxes filled with drafts from one of my long-ago writing projects, replete with Xeroxed copies of relevant and irrelevant articles.  What would it take to pull those boxes out to the street for the garbage collector?  Very little. 

So what has been stopping me from doing this before?  I suppose I have been thinking I would get to work on publishing something based on one of these drafts, but I don't need this physical reminder of unfinished business. It’s time to take this one small step to see where it leads me.