NLP Life Coaching Technique: 4 Questions to Make Change EASY For Your Life Coaching Clients
It’s Wake Up Wednesday, sisters! Welcome back.
This week I’m sharing a classic episode that made a huge impact when I first shared it. I don’t want you to miss this!
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Today, I wanted to touch on a little something I think we can all agree upon:
Change can suck.
Especially when it’s unexpected and undesirable.
Like when the doctor told my dad he had to stop our Friday night family ritual of sugary decadence from The Cheesecake Factory because (surprise!) he was diabetic.
Or 5 years ago, when I realized I hated the lifestyle that came with the job I’d worked my whole life to get… and I was going to have to start over from square 1 with a new career.
Or the moment a client made a heartbreaking discovery that her boyfriend, who she lived with and planned to marry, was exchanging X-rated texts with his yoga teacher… all while she was in the middle of launching her business.
Health, career & relationship changes are common challenges people face, which is why they come to life coaches for help.
If you want to be the kind of coach that clients will love and rave about, you’ve got to know how to make change easy for them.
It’s also so important to simplify the challenge of change in your own life, so you can run your business and support your clients from a place of ease and flow.
The reality is this: all behavior, even very bad behavior, has some kind of positive outcome for your client. It’s why they keep doing it! {click to share 
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Otherwise, it wouldn’t keep happening, right?
It’s the reason my dad still eats cheesecake, the reason I stayed an extra year on the road to perform, and why my client chose to work things out with her boyfriend. There is a reward from making the choice not to change, even if it’s wrong.
That’s why today, I want to share a magical NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) coaching technique that will help you and your client uncover — and understand — these change-resistant outcomes, and how to reframe them.
It comes down to a simple, 4-question technique that you can ask your client in a session to make change simple when there’s an important decision to make, or it’s feeling difficult to take action.
Ready? Here are the 4 change-sparking questions.
Be sure to ask ask yourself or your client all of these, in this precise order!
Question #1: What are the positive things that this behavior?
For example, how does it does it feel to eat the cheesecake? Stay with the career? Choose to be in a relationship with a man you don’t trust? What are the up sides?
Question #2: What else do you get out of this choice? What are all of the benefits?
Keep asking this question until you’re sure you have a complete list of all the things you get from the behavior or pattern.
Question #3: Which of these benefits do you know you want to keep? Or, what are the benefits you simply can’t live without?
These are the outcomes you’re going to reframe. So pay close attention!
Question #4: In what other ways can you meet each identified positive need?
Here’s one way to flip it: if dad loves the Friday night cheesecake family ritual – maybe the new plan is Friday night movie night, with preplanned sugar-free snacks.
The truth is, when your client Refuses to change, they’re just trying to meet their own needs as painlessly as possible.
So, as you walk through the questions, create a list of other potential ways they can meet each need, without staying in the same negative situation. Help your client with ideas if they are feeling stuck!
Review the list, and select the new behaviors that they can adopt wholeheartedly to replace the unwanted behavior together.
One of the biggest mistakes coaches make with clients is not addressing what your client is gaining yb resisting change. Once you can reframe this, and hold them accountable, change will be super easy for your client.
Now, it’s time to dish, sisters!
Take a virtual step out from behind your computer screen, gorgeous. Coaches who are willing to be vulnerable have the greatest following. So practice with us!
I want to know:
- What change are you resisting currently in your life or business?
- What is the secondary gain keeping you stuck?
- What is the replacement you have just come up with by using the 4 questions from this NLP technique?
I’ll be jamming with your sisters in the comments section below and in our Wake Up Wednesday Sisterhood FB Group. Come join the party.
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Hey Coach Jey!
Per usual, the information that flows in from you usually aligns with something rummaging around in my brain. I did my first prospecting outreach to a cast member from my tour, my darling bus buddy and our nicknamed social chair, who is currently recovering from an injury off the road at her family home in CA. She broke her foot and is now awaiting to see if she needs surgery. Best outcome- she will be back with us in 8 weeks, worse is she will be off the tour, missing our International extension. She is one of our most outgoing and cheerful sisters, full of laughter and adventure, and is home feeling exactly the opposite- both her health and career took a change she’s having trouble accepting. This will most likely be discussed in her first coaching session and I want to be ready with healing reframing techniques and get her looking forward to each day again. I know if I were in shoes I would be struggling as well and would love to have some guidance before going into this coaching.
The best things to focus on she’s home with her loved ones, including her bf she is usually long distance with, but I know it’s killing her to be stationary and she is hating missing out on our journey. How can I help her cope with so much that is out of her control?
Thank you!
Tara great questions and your friend is so lucky to have your devotion during this time. First you will want to hold her in the highest light. See her as enjoying her time home, this time of rest and receiving insights and clarity around how this challenge could actually benefit her. If you hold her in this highest light rather then in victim role that energy alone will help her to create a shift. Next you want to see if you can really identify what there is to learn here and how this can help her to grow. There must be something this allows her to do. For example deepen her love and her connection with her lover? Let her come up with the ideas. What does she want to replace the sadness and discomfort of being stationary with? What would better serve her since that is only going to make everything feel so much worse. Also a great reminder and some time spent acknowledging that her career isn’t temporary, she’s in this for the long haul, she will get better and this will some day be a memory of the past. That is certain. So how can she make the most of this unexpected change and challenge. What is there to gain here? I would start there love! Good luck!
This is right in alignment with me right now. I have a sugar addiction and i just posed the question to myself, what is this need filing? I get a high, a rush from the sweetness. I love all the flavors and using my senses to experience candy, cookies and baked goods. I want to lessen my intake of sugar. To achieve that I will replace most sweets with fruit. When i do get to enjoy candy, cookies or cake I will pick high quality items and enjoy them fully.
I love this Stacey. I feel like a goddess when I eat fruit. Especially if you add put it on a beautiful platter, play some music and add some mascarpone cheese! Would love for you to share some pics in the Wake Up Weds Facebook group the next time you are enjoying your fruit over sweets! Excited for you and this small shift and it has inspired me to go make a platter of my own! 🙂
Love you!
Jey
Wonderful post on getting clear and re-organizing our priorities Jey : ) For me currently the change I am resisting has to do with stepping outside of my comfort zone with business plans. The secondary gain is comfort, safety, and ease. The replacement is asking for extra support from friends, family and sisters in taking this step and taking small steps/one day at time to create that feeling of ease and safety. Would love to hear your brilliant suggestions?
Thanks Love!
Orly,
Oh yes of course it is much easier to go with with our day to day then to take new actions that could render us seen or worse actually fail at something we went after with our whole heart. This is what we say in our heads that makes us play it safe but it is so silly of us. My suggestion is gathering proof of what these business plans, when acted on, can actually create in your life. Weather you need to build that proof from people who have done it or try one as an experiment and consciously track the results. If you do this you will naturally build a list of the secondary gains that way outwit the gain you are getting currently. Which is disguised as comfort but in all truth it is REALLY uncomfortable and unnerving to be standing still in a position in life we are not satisfied with. Let’s talk about this more in our next Mentor Masterclass sister circle!
Love you and you totally got this. So proud of you! And thank you for sharing with us here. I know we can ALL relate to this at any given moment in our life. It’s coming up a lot for me in pregnancy right now.
xoxo Jey
What a great video for the week Coach Jey especially as we enter into prospecting. I know that I put up resistance to really putting myself out there. I’m great at introspection, reading, and gaining inspiration but taking the step of sharing that I’m a life coach with others, posting my blogs every single time, and networking is scary for me. What I’m gaining by not putting myself out there are all “nots”, not being judged, not having to exert all my energy engaging with people, not being subject to questioning of my life and beliefs. Ooo, except I just thought of one more thing this provides me that I WOULD like to keep and that’s feeling safe with myself. I think if I can enter into prospecting and engaging with people by remaining loving with myself and non judgmental of myself I can enter into putting myself into the world with ease. I can also go beyond my ease and enter into my bravery with the knowledge that I am sharing my message and knowing that it might positively impact someone else (even if other people are showing judgment) rather than hiding behind what’s easy.
Camila my love,
Let’s talk about why is scary!!! I know the feeling and I have a feeling we can get over and through that together in Mentor Masterclass. All we have to do is figure out a new frame of “safe”. In other words what can we replace the thoughts that come up that stop you or cause the nots that actually bring up feelings of safety. Looking forward to diving into this more with you in class!
Jey