My client said, texting me in between sessions: ‘Honestly, I feel discouraged’.

She had a long-standing desire and she felt like the change she wanted wasn’t happening. We had one session left in her coaching package.

Twenty years ago, that would have made me feel discouraged. It would have made me want to work hard to make sure that change was going to happen in that last session. It might even have made me doubt my work in the first two sessions. Maybe you recognise this, when a client doesn’t get the results they want (yet).

Now, my inner response is the opposite. I think: YEAY! Something interesting is happening. Something important.

So I replied:

“I hear you. And you know what, I think it’s a really good place to be. Because this is exactly what you’ve been coming up against, the pattern you wanted to break. The discouragement is a very potent portal into what can happen instead.”

And it was.

In the last session, that feeling discouraged led us to a wall that she had built a long time ago, to protect her from humiliation. The wall held her life force energy stuck in one place, separating her from others around her. So no wonder she often felt isolated, bored, very tired as well as discouraged.

In that last session, the wall started to crumble back into its source:, into earth. And there was so much life force moving through her system. She said: ”It feels VERY promising, it feels VERY good”, as this was continuing to happen.

We all have inner structures like that. Ways that we have protected ourselves, hardened ourselves from unwanted experiences. Often, we don’t even know they are there, because they are just so natural to us.

That’s why moments of our client’s stuckness, discouragement, anger, frustration, are forks in the road. They are portals into what really matters.

So there is no reason to fear them as a coach. Instead, welcome them, celebrate them – and then start to explore what the client’s system would like to have happen instead.

And learn to follow the breadcrumbs that take you to the structures and barriers that determine the client’s experience behind the scenes.

That’s where quick magic can happen.

The prior two sessions? The client’s system tried its usual approaches (and laid very useful groundwork) but then found itself stuck. They were needed to get to this point.

Is this it for my client? Will she finally get all she wants to experience?

We will find out.

It’s clear something very important has shifted in her system, and we know that will be rippling out into all the corners of her being. Maybe something else needs realigning. And maybe that freed up life force will be able to do that by itself, subconsciously even. And maybe this is the change that keeps on flowing (remember domino day?)

Time will tell.

And standing alongside my client, I’m curious to find out what happens next.