Are your goals getting away from you, leaving you feeling thwarted and disappointed?
If you’ve set goals for yourself, and you’re not making progress, try scouting the situation to gather different perspectives.
You wouldn’t paddle a challenging rapid without scouting
When you come to a horizon line on the river, you don’t typically charge over the lip without getting out to scout. Walking up the bank to get a different view of the rapid helps you to see the big picture, identify obstacles and choose the line that gets you to the bottom upright and having the most fun. It also allows you to scout from the bottom of the rapid and work your way to the top so you know where you want to end up before you choose your start point.
But, if the only view you get is from the bank looking down, you’ll miss key information. For one, waves tend to look smaller from above, and after you get back in your boat, the view from river level is completely different. It’s important to get down to river level to take another look.
Gathering viewpoints from different perspectives contributes to your success, your safety and the safety of your crew on the river.
Perspectives and your goals
When you gather different perspectives on your goals and how to reach them, you increase your chances for success.
If you’re failing to reach your goals try scouting your path from different perspectives. Ask questions including why is this goal important to me? Do I even want this? Ask yourself what is keeping you from reaching you goal, and is this the only path?
Asking questions can help you see things you have missed, and lead to new inspiration and action plans.
Scout together
Notice that you rarely get the best perspectives from scouting alone on the river. Collaborating with others on the scout can help with clarity, seeing something different, feeling supported and boosting your confidence.
That’s because if you scout on your own, although you’re looking at the rapid from different perspectives, the lens through which you’re looking is still yours. When you scout with your crew gain the advantage of perspectives through different lenses.
I love that part of my job as a coach and instructor. I get to help my clients get out of their own heads by offering a different perspective. The questions I ask help them get clear on their goals, and the path to achieving them. When obstacles get in the way I offer different perspectives on how to flow around them with action steps that my clients didn’t know they didn’t know.
The value of having someone help you identify your blind spots (what you don’t know that you don’t know) is why I invest in working with a coach. You expending a lot less time and energy trying to figure everything out on your own when you’ve got someone scouting with you.
Get perspectives from people who don’t think like you
If you really want to up your game in reaching your goals, seek out folks who don’t think like you, look like you or have the same life experience as you. Folks who are further along on the journey you aspire to walk or paddle. More of the same gets you the same results, but when you add diversity of ideas and experiences you can get to a whole new level of success in what’s important to you.
If you’re ready to get your scout on to reach your goals in mind, body and paddling, reach out to me and let’s get started with 3 months, 6 months or 12 months of coaching to get you to your next level of awesome.
