Behavioral Change Coaching

Knowing what to do and doing it are two very different things.

Most of us know a lot.

We know we should have the conversation. Stop spending the money. Go to the gym. Eat differently. Apply for the job. Set the boundary. Finish that project. Make the decision. Put the phone down. Stop the scroll. Go to bed.

Knowing is rarely the complete issue.

So… why don’t we do the thing we want to do?

I have some thoughts about it.

When we don’t do the thing we know we want to do, we tend to make that mean something about ourselves. I’m lazy. I have no discipline. I always do this. I’m terrible at follow-through. Maybe I just don’t want it badly enough.

But those are just conclusions. They aren’t necessarily facts.

That distinction matters to me, and I want to help you recognize it.

Behavioral Change Coaching is where we slow the whole thing down enough to look at what is actually happening between knowing and doing.

I would love to say it’s because I have a secret trick that will suddenly make you want to do everything you’ve been avoiding.

Yeah, but I don’t.

And not because I’m going to hand you another list of things you “should” be doing.

You probably already have enough of those.

I want to know what happens when you try. I want you to start getting curious about your behavior.

What are you thinking? What are you expecting? What are you assuming is going to happen? What are you assuming about yourself? What are you telling yourself about the situation, about the other person? What do you do next? What happens after that?

I ask a lot of questions.

Sometimes annoyingly specific questions. It’s a knack.

Because you might tell me, “I have no discipline.”

And I might ask, “Okay. What does discipline mean to you… what happened?”

Not what you think it says about you. Not the explanation you’ve repeated so many times that it now feels like fact.

What actually happened?

Maybe you planned to work out at 7:00 and at 7:00 you stayed on the couch.

Okay. Fine.

Now we have somewhere to start.

What were you thinking at 6:55? How were you feeling? What did you expect the workout to feel like? What did you tell yourself when you decided not to go? Is this something that happens often? What have you tried before? What happened then?

That is very different from starting with, “I’m undisciplined.”

And this isn’t only about exercise. I’ve seen the same thing show up in food, relationships, work, decisions, money, goals, habits... the subject changes, but human beings are still human beings.

We think. We feel. We interpret. We remember. We anticipate. We develop habits and patterns. We avoid things. We repeat things. We make assumptions. We sometimes react before we’ve even realized what story is running in the background.

All of that can influence what we do next.

And sometimes the first real change is simply being able to see it.

Not judge it. Not immediately fix it. See it.

Because once we can get curious about what is actually happening instead of immediately making it mean something terrible about you, we have something useful to work with.

Then we can try something.

And this part matters too: I don’t expect every new choice to work perfectly the first time.

You try it. You notice what happens. We talk about it. Maybe it worked. Maybe it absolutely did not. Either way, there is information there.

What did you learn?

What surprised you?

What became easier?

Where did you get stuck again?

What do you want to do differently next time?

That is much closer to how I think about behavioral change.

It isn’t about becoming someone who never struggles, never has an uncomfortable thought, never procrastinates, and always makes the “right” choice.

It’s about becoming more aware of what is influencing your behavior, learning to distinguish what is actually happening from the story you’ve built around it, and having more ability to choose what you want to do next.

Sometimes that means changing a thought.

Sometimes it means acting while the thought is still there.

Sometimes it means recognizing that the problem you thought you had isn’t actually the problem.

And sometimes it means trying something, discovering it doesn’t work, and adjusting.

That’s not failure.

That’s information.

That’s the work I do.

Ready to get started coaching?

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Tell me a little about what’s going on, what you’d like to change, and where you keep finding yourself stuck.