"....And are you ready to make that change?" ~ Part 1

"I want to, I must, I'll give it a go, I need to, I'll run through it and see what happens, I hope to, I'd love to be able to, I have to, I'll try to, I'm going to give it my best shot because if I don't..."

Whether its in coaching or changework these are the types of answers that wave a whole variety of flags - and none of them are green!
Even "I will" doesn't really fit the bill either. And its all down to the language that's being used and what's presupposed in the answers.

So what do I mean here about their language and what's presupposed?

The Archetypes

There's the "hopeful tryers" from semi-committed to assertive;
there's the "away froms" who are going to do it because of something else;
there's "future placers", ones who place it into the future with I will.

The hopeful tryers are good at employing the safety net of limiting belief - "Well it might work, but if it doesn't then I'll be able to say I told you so which'll prove I was right all along which says I haven't really failed because I know myself and what I'm capable of."

With the away froms there's an implication that by doing Y or making a change from X to Y is to choose the lesser of two evils, because if Y was a good and worthwile thing to do then they'd already be doing it. Committing to something we don't like doesn't really embrace compliance and can always lead us back to "better the devil you know..." plus we're seduced by the uncomfortable comfort zone merely because it is familiar to us.

The future placers are like the workmen who'll "be round Tuesday to fix it" but who never say which Tuesday that is. By placing their "commitment" into an unspecified place away from NOW there's built-in lack of commitment, uncertain doubts about doing it, pre-ordained failure, etc.

And there's a recurring theme with all these types and their answers which is this:-
They haven't listened to, and therefore totally understood the question! Its not a trick question either, and so its always useful to repeat the question several times since this is a question full of keywords and phrases!

AND, ARE, YOU, READY, TO, MAKE, THAT, CHANGE, ARE YOU, READY TO, THAT CHANGE, READY TO MAKE, ARE YOU READY, MAKE THAT CHANGE...and so on and on.

The thing is, this is SUCH a loaded question!

A state of Readiness

When we're learning or practicing how to catch a ball there's a state of mind and body called "ready" or "the ready position". And readiness doesn't just apply to ball sports either, it's right across the sporting spectrum. And as in sport, so in life - there's a ready position for everything we do. This comes right down to being awake - which is a conscious state of readiness for thinking.

You ... Make That Change

Its you who's making it, and its something you are fashioning for your benefit. You are responsible for everything about it, so therefore it belongs to only you. Plus its not just an unspecified change either - its THAT one. Or it could imply that whatever you've been doing up to now, THAT is what you're changing.

Are ... Make ... Change

Everything in these words is in the present, the NOW. There's no ambiguous Tuesday here! It all about doing and doing now.

There's embedded commands such as are you ready, ready to make, make that change, ready to...change and more.

The other thing about asking the question several times is that you can place a different emphasis on different words and phrases each time using voice tone, tempo, pitch. The words are just the words and in the right order they are powerful enough - and when you enhance them with nuance they become enriched.
So - ARE you ready to make that change sounds different from are you ready to MAKE that change.

Whichever way you look at it, however it sounds, is nothing compared to how it feels - which is something I will be exploring in Part 2.