What comes to your mind when you think of ‘fresh starts’?
As a coach, I like to look at every single coaching session as an opportunity for a fresh start.
It’s unhelpful to feel we can’t initiate a fresh start at any time, or to feel trapped on a journey that can’t end or change trajectory. This limits our thinking, our hope, and our potential.
The truth is we can start afresh on anything, anytime we choose.
Sometimes the only thing that is holding us back is believing that change is not possible. Mostly, the biggest factor holding us back is ourselves!
Coaching helps us see that what we may think is immovable, unchangeable, or ‘set in stone’, is not. We are often just one decision, or one action away from making incredible changes in our lives.
Believing that ‘fresh starts’ are always available to us, helps us make positive changes, to get breakthroughs and to go to our next level. We can create a fresh start as often as we need to and it’s easier than you think.
Maybe you have a goal that you never seem to be able to achieve. It could be losing weight, getting fit, starting a business, applying for a different job, writing the book you are supposed to, asking someone out, ending a destructive relationship, building something new and incredible.
A fresh start can be all that’s needed for your goal to happen.
But first, we need to redefine what a fresh start is, seeing them more positively and why we need to embrace more fresh starts in our lives.
What is a ‘fresh start’?
‘Fresh’
Firstly, a fresh start, needs to be ‘fresh’.
One dictionary definition of fresh is, ‘not previously known or used; new or different.’.
So a fresh start needs to look and feel like something completely different to before. The kind of fresh starts that I have seen that work best is where there is innovation. This may look like a completely new way of doing something or a completely new vision.
If we’re trying to do the same thing again and again, in the same way, and are expecting a new result we may be deluded or insane, it is said. There is truth in this.
Many times, the vision or the plan needs redefining. Many times, the way we are going about achieving something needs changing completely. A complete fresh start could be the answer.
Those that succeed, don’t give up on a goal, they regroup and create new ways of winning.
The problem is sometimes we get too attached to our ideas and our plans. Then we don’t want to change too much when we need to.
De-tox
A fresh start means leaving behind what has been. This is so important.
On a practical level there may be processes, people, places which we have become attached to but which have not and will not work. We need to come to a place of being willing to rethink and maybe let go of some of these things.
On a belief level, in our heart and soul, we adopt certain limiting beliefs based on our experiences. These beliefs keep success away. For example, we may think, ‘it hasn’t worked before it won’t work again’, ‘I’m not able’, ‘people will let me down again’, ‘its not my destiny.’
To have a genuine fresh start, we need to detox ourselves of the negative and limiting beliefs we are carrying, which we are blind to.
Coaching helps with this. Sometimes I have ‘mind renewal’ sessions with my clients, where we simply uncover the limiting beliefs that are in the way and change them to empowering beliefs. Unless you detox and let go of what is not serving you well, whether it’s limiting beliefs or limiting process, you won’t achieve your dream.
So effective fresh starts include letting go and detoxing.
Start
Notice the phrase ‘fresh start’ also contains the word ‘start’. This may feel a little obvious but unless you put your new ideas, innovation and new beliefs into action, nothing will happen.
Many times people I have been coaching, have simply been waiting. When I quiz them of why, I hear things such as, ‘I’m waiting for the right time’, ‘I am waiting for provision’, ‘I am waiting for the green light from God’, ‘I am waiting on what to do next.’
Do you not have a plan? Does it not have timelines? Did you know that God directs our steps, not our non-movement?
How will you know it’s the right time? Could now be the right time?
Coaching helps significantly here, as having a workable longterm plan is vital. We are not talking about a plan just for the next week, but a strategy for the years to come. There is an initiation stage to get going but we must also know what happens after that, what is the long-term vision and how will we get there.
Fresh starts are not just for when things go wrong, they are for every day, they are for life, they are a wonderful gift we have where we can continue to grow and develop into becoming our best.
Fresh starts are not about feeling guilty or ashamed that we have failed, they are about being mature and grown up, realising that everything that has happened teaches us and guides us into better more wise and more successful methods going forward. (When things have not gone very well previously, this teaches us what not to do, we gain wisdom on how to make it better with a fresh start).
Fresh starts give us hope that we can, with Gods help, make the changes we want to, we can achieve our dreams. It’s never too late, whatever age we are.
Fresh starts, move us on from awful seasons, from bad decisions, from procrastination, from limited thinking. They move us towards blessed seasons, good wise decisions, feeling passion and motivation, and empowered thinking.
What fresh starts do you want to create in your life?