Spring: time to reflect, let go and be born to grow personally and professionally

Each season of the year gives way to a new cycle. The arrival of spring is the moment when nature resumes its activity. The sunshine and rising temperatures bring many plants and animals out of their winter lethargy. Everything around us is filled with life again, buds and flowers appear where there seemed to be nothing, animals become more active and people in general feel their energy and motivation renewed with this season when the sun’s rays are more encouraged.

This greater number of daylight hours and more pleasant temperatures cause changes in the synthesis of melatonin and serotonin, hormones that influence our mood. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps inhibit anger and bad mood. Melatonin, for its part, positively supports our immune system. That is why Spring is an excellent time to review our plans or open ourselves to new projects. In this sense, September can become an opportunity to regain momentum and focus on personal and professional growth.

Where to start? First, I suggest you review your goals and ask yourself if they are still valuable and important to you: What will you work towards them for? How will achieving them transform you into the person you are today?

Once you have reviewed your course and reaffirmed your choices, I invite you to evaluate how close you are to those goals in each area of ​​your life, and to identify what you need to achieve them.

It is important to reflect on the “distance” between what you have already traveled and what you still have to travel. What are you missing to reach your goal? What tools, knowledge or resources are necessary to advance on the path you set out to achieve? Based on the answers to these questions, you may need to work on different aspects, for example:

• Develop a particular skill or competence.
• Train yourself to enhance a skill or competence that you already have.
• Obtain some resource, whether material or intangible.

Now, what are you going to do to keep moving forward?

Many people find in a professional ontological coach a facilitator of their learning and transformation processes, and choose coaching as the discipline to develop themselves personally and/or professionally.

Sometimes, we humans have certain beliefs or limitations that we put on ourselves (for example, when asking for help), which become an obstacle when it comes to carrying out any plan. Reflecting on how asking for help increases your capacity for action and can expand your chances of achieving your goals. We all have relationships that we can ask for help from: a colleague who supports you, a company that sponsors you, etc. Letting go of these beliefs, which are often nothing more than fears, is freeing ourselves from what prevents us from flourishing and growing.

A coach can help you create a plan to meet these goals. They will invite you to design strategies to achieve them and will accompany you in the execution so that you can learn from obstacles, celebrate your achievements and measure your progress.

Any learning, development and transformation process needs appropriate support… and therefore the emotional factor is not minor. The emotionality of your process will be an important motivator to move forward, and a coach will ensure that the appropriate emotional states are present in your garden of emotions. “How will you feel when you reach your goals?”, “With whom will you celebrate it?”, are some of the questions that a coach will ask you. He or she will invite you to visualize the achievement, to express it in a concrete “vision”, to write it down, draw it, or create a “board” and imagine yourself achieving it.

But the path will not always be “rosy”. The map is not the territory, unforeseen events may appear, plans do not always happen as we imagine nor are the results as expected… just like when you plant the flowers of the season in your garden and the ants appear, who knows where from!

In that case, with the patience of an experienced gardener, your coach will invite you to work on yourself, on who you are going to choose to be and on acting in the face of those adverse circumstances to remove the weeds, take care of the garden and make the results of your plan flourish.

Finally, remember that achievements are very important, but the way you walk the path has to give meaning to what is important to you. The finish line is essential, but it’s not everything, enjoy the process too!