It is a common misconception that coaching is all about goal-setting. Put more comprehensively: helping clients figure out what they want, getting them to make an action plan with SMART goals, and then providing accountability as they implement that plan, step by step. While that’s not wrong, it’s not the whole story either. Yes, clients do often contact a coach because they feel that something is “wrong”, or “off”. They feel stuck, or simply like they could be doing better, and they want help making a structured plan for change. However, in my experience, when clients start working on what they would like to improve about their lives, they almost inevitably have to go through a phase of realising and appreciating everything that is right before they can fully identify where action is required.

This was the case for Peter, a client who came to me saying that he was unhappy that his life hadn’t turned out the way he wanted and that he now felt stuck in a situation that wasn’t what he’d planned. On my way home from our first session, I pondered Peter’s issues and the long list of ways in which he felt life hadn’t delivered what he’d expected. Unexpectedly, I found myself thinking about a touching scene in a TV series that I binged a few years ago: Only Murders in the Building. A misfit group of podcasters solving suspicious deaths is an odd place to find inspiration for personal growth, I know, but let’s go with it.

Spoiler alert

Sparing you extraneous details, the scene is question goes like this. Charles is tasked with organising his friend Oliver’s bachelor party. The groom has demanded three things: whisky, A-list celebrities (he’s an unsuccessful but endlessly optimistic theatrical producer) and naughty secrets; in short, he wants something big and glitzy. What he ends up with is a lunch with his one close friend, a glass of good scotch (tick), his picture surreptitiously hung next to that of a famous director on the restaurant wall (the naughty secret), and the unexpected appearance of that same director (an A-lister!). It is definitely not what he had in mind, but my overwhelming feeling watching the scene was that he gets something wonderful anyway – true connection with his best friend and a surprise reconnection with an old friend, and he clearly loves it.

Appreciating what is

I was struck at the time by the thought that sometimes the key to enjoying what we have lies in letting go of what we wanted. While I am all for knowing what you want in life and taking action to make it happen, it is possible to be so focused on how we intended things to be that it is almost impossible to appreciate how good things actually are. If we could just let go of “the plan”, we would find so much joy in the reality with which we have been gifted.

Over the months I worked with Peter, he set goals, made action plans, and took brave steps towards making some of the dreams that he had put aside come true. However, the most powerful session we had was the one where, independently of my thoughts and almost out of the blue, he came to the realisation that, while he wanted to change certain aspects of his life in the medium to long term, he could improve it immediately simply by choosing to appreciate what he already had. When the lightbulb went on, he started to see that, although his life was different from the one he’d imagined, there was much to love, enjoy and value in it.

Pursue your dreams but hold them lightly

By the time we’re in our forties (indeed, even before), most of have at least one or two parts of our lives that have ended up far from how we imagined when we were in our twenties – often despite our best efforts. I have a friend who always thought she’d have a large family but who, though circumstances beyond her control, has a beautiful only child. Another had plans to tread the boards but is now a much-loved primary school teacher. I know I have aspects of my life that, on a bad day, can make me want to stamp my foot and shout, “but this wasn’t what I ordered!” For you, it might be a career that’s more corporate than creative (or vice versa), a blended family rather than the traditional one you imagined, or a caregiving role you never envisaged. Or, on a smaller scale, it might be rain on your wedding day, a child-free weekend where you have to cancel your romantic dinner plans in order to rest a sore back, or a family Christmas where lunch ends up being fish and chips on the sitting room floor after the kitchen roof starts to leak.

Wherever you see a gap between your theoretical, planned life and the real life you’re living, the incontrovertible truth is that the more we focus on what didn’t work out, and the more time we spend mourning the lives we are not living, the harder it can be to see the beauty, joy and value in the life that we are living. And the quicker we can let go of our attachment to how things were supposed to look when things clearly aren’t coming together as planned, the sooner we can find gratitude for and peace with what is. Ultimately, that was what struck me most about the scene between Charles and Oliver, who so desperately wanted his big, glamorous bachelor party. When Oliver realised that he wasn’t about to have a star-studded night of debauchery, he very quickly pivoted to appreciating what he was experiencing instead. Therein lies a major source of ease, contentment and happiness.

There’s a real art to balancing proactive and empowering pursuit of your goals and gracious acceptance when life has other plans for you. For me, a major key to happiness lies in how quickly and smoothly you can pivot from the grief, disappointment and frustration of “this wasn’t what I imagined/wanted/planned” to seeing the value of and enjoying the way things actually turned out.

Would you like to find a way to pursue your dreams yet hold them lightly? Do you want support to set goals and make an action plan to improve your life while tapping into greater gratitude for and recognition of what you already have? Working with an experienced and empathetic coach who is making that same journey and supporting clients in theirs can help you make changes both for the future and for the here and now. Contact me to find out more about working together.