I fell off a cliff once and ended up in the hospital. It was a learning experience to say the least. I’d heard of people who fell off cliffs and read accounts, but you know, it just wasn’t the same as being there, flying (briefly) through the air, and then really touching base with mother earth.

I had a similar experience yesterday. I’ve been “involved” with the PEOPLE Academy, Inc, for about a year, I guess, and for a lot of that time I didn’t fully ‘get it.’ It’s easy to say that the PA Inc is a collection of HR and coaching tools that you can refer to whenever you run into a situation you aren’t sure about. Maybe you have a client who has control issues or a co-worker who dominates meetings. You don’t know what to do, what steps to take, so you click on the PEOPLE Academy’s website and find a video teaching what you can do. Or you find a bulletin that covers it, or a step-by-step workshop document that helps you work through it.

Yeah, I got that. Tools you can use. Everyday. Tools that are focused on your clients and tools that can help you to resolve pretty much any situation. I get it. No, I really didn’t get it.

Now, maybe I do. We had a meeting the other night and I mentioned to Toni that I have been feeling a little, um, disoriented or uninspired or maybe just plain lazy. I was feeling a bit of “what’s the point” to a lot of things that were going on in my life and I really didn’t know why. She offered to give me a bit of coaching.

She sent me a worksheet on “The Change Cycle.” I didn’t even know what a change cycle was. I ride a Harley, so I’m familiar with motorcycles, but change cycles? Huh?

So I’m reading through this and it’s all about me being laid off and the steps that people go through when they are in a state of change. I’m reading that this is imposed change rather than internally driven change and I am going to go through 5 steps. I sort of felt like I was Ebenezer Scrooge visiting the 3 ghosts, but these were  5 steps. (not 12 steps, but 5) 1. Denial 2. Defense 3. Discarding 4. Adapting 5. Normalizing

These each come with details and descriptions and even a nifty sine wave showing my level of self-esteem as it dips and climbs, and I realize that this stuff is really accurate and I am in the third stage and working toward the fourth stage. I also realize this applies pretty much universally, which makes me think that I am not alone in all of it.

Toni then calls me and we talk about the transition that I am in and it all makes sense. She took this existing tool and it applied to me and is helping me to move along. Wow. I mean really. It’s like reading about falling off a cliff and then actually falling, or probably more like reading about climbing Everest and then doing it, since I am moving onward and upward and am done with falling.

Then I have the aha, thinking this site is full of these guidances. (which is not a real word, but I am using it anyway)  These are all tools that can be used to either take you or your client from point A to point B.

I get it.