Why do clients procrastinate their action steps?

They want to do better…

…cause they want better results…

…but they don’t do what they know they need to.

What’s up with that?

Something deeper is going on, and it’s called the subconscious.

Your conscious mind is all about decision making, critical thinking, etc.

Your subconscious mind keeps you alive by forcing you to breathe, sleep, and have a heartbeat.

But it also does this sneaky thing where when you try to do something new, it goes “that’s not the way we do this”, and swerves right back into how it’s always been.

Kinda like this:

So as a coach, whadaya do?

How do you consciously outwit the subconscious?

On a scale of 1-10, if your subconscious strength is at an 8, you need to meet with with conscious effort at level 9 or 10.

And how do you do that?

Idea #1: Have them report on their progress more often.

The longer a client is left to their own devices, the easier it is to start slipping. However often you have them check-in, it’s time to increase it.

You might have them check-in daily.

I’ve even had clients who checked in both morning and night.

Heck, you could even do 3x a day if necessary.

There’s nothing shameful about needing to check-in more often. Instead, it shows how committed they are to change.

Idea #2: Get 10x more clear on action steps

One of the other reasons clients will drift away from doing action steps and back into old patterns can be because they either don’t see clearly what the action step is, or it feels too big.

So get super clear on what they action step is. Have them explain it back to you in great detail, in their own words.

Repeat this process till they have absolutely no doubt of what they need to do.

Idea #3: Simplify action steps

Sometimes clients may be embarrassed to tell you that the action step is actually just too big.

It’s like working on a house project and just being told to “renovate the whole bathroom” versus starting with the specific action step of “remove the baseboards”.

So if needed, cut the action step in half, or even smaller so that they next step is truly a bite-size one.

Some progress is infinitely better than no progress.

Follow these steps to support your clients in winning the battle with their subconscious and successfully creating new patterns in their life.

Quote of the week:

Song of the week:

- Kirk