I think my sidewalk is trying to tell me something.

I walk down my front stairs, take a right, and there, on the sidewalk are the words.  Pain Stops Here.  I don’t know if it is paint or acid or something a dog shared, but how perfect for a Life Coach.

Some life coaches write action plans for top-level executives.  Some Life Coaches help people who have lost a loved one.

But at the end of the day we all are really trying to do the same thing.

Stop the pain.

I’m on board, but when my front steps say, “Call Your Mother” I am going to officially freak out.

I don’t cry pretty. When I cry,it’s not like a Hollywood cry. I go straight to the ugly cry with a twisted face… swollen, bloated and red. When I have an injury, it’s not sexy. No breaking a leg skiing. No, I am the one who rips a tendon trying on Spandex.

And I am definitely not pretty when I make a personal breakthrough to change my life. Shouldn’t positive change be a lovely, pretty thing?

In my mind, when I have a personal breakthrough there will be a beautiful moment of enlightenment. The music will swell. A look of realization will twinkle in my eye. Then, with a tilt of my head a slow, “Yeaaaah” would escape my lips. My life will change and things will be better.

But reality? Picture, if you will, a cat over a toilet bowl. Claws are out, grasping at anything possible to avoid getting wet. Wild scrambling. Fur flying. Picture a baby who does not want the spoon-full of medicine you are trying to force in her mouth. The baby suddenly has the strength of ten men.

I am not pretty during personal growth.

But I am normal.

Once I realized that it’s normal to resist change, I stopped resisting quite so much. It’s normal for my mind to want to think the way it’s been thinking for a long time. The old way had been working for me pretty well. But pretty well is not good enough for me any more.

I’m on the hunt for consistent awesomeness.

Now that I know that resistance is often part of the process, I notice it more easily in myself and others. It’s fascinating. It’s an opportunity. It’s OK.

When I get my ugly on, it’s my brain’s final fight to avoid creating new synapses. It’s the car wreck on the neural superhighway that forges a new road for my thoughts to take.

So I take it easy on myself.

It’s like childbirth. A new and wonderful thing comes out of something painful. The pain is part of the process. It isn’t as scary if you know it’s supposed to happen.

And come to think of it, childbirth was not what I would call pretty.

But it was beautiful.