I Change People’s Lives
July 26, 2010
life changing
I decided to create a tongue-in-cheek video this week about changing people’s lives. As I’ve been working with my branding manager on creating my new website, he insists that my tag line be:
Annie Hart – Life Changing
I love it but at the same time I realize that it’s nearly impossible to say that you change people’s lives. In my field, everyone says that they change people’s lives so who is going to believe you if you say you do?
Years ago I used to have this dilemma in a different way. Back before the field of coaching existed, I would try to tell people what I did for a living and I would always run up against a wall. I had no idea what to say.
So I would mumble a bit and then finally mutter under my breath, “Um I change people’s lives.” That would stop the person dead in their tracks and they would say, “Really?? How do you do that?” Then the conversation would be quite animated as they found out about my work.
no small task
Changing people’s lives is no small task. It requires humility, perseverance against all odds, knowing when to listen, knowing when to back off and most important of it, it requires knowing who you can help and who you can’t.
So I do change people’s lives and I’m damned proud to be able to say so. After all these years it finally rolls off my tongue without too much of a glitch.
But I don’t take it lightly either. I’ve come by my skills both due to having had amazing mentors and do to the hard knocks of real life. I’ve learned from my own foibles and failures and from worked and didn’t work with my clients.
But the irony is that although I use the tag line, “Life Changing,” it’s really my life that is changed by doing the work that I do. I am the lucky one, to be privy to the tender, raw and real insides of people’s lives and to have the trust that they place so delicately in my hands.
changing lives
I take care to never tromp on their trust or to act in anything less than integrity.
Changing people’s lives is the most beautiful and the hardest task of all, because you have to be real and true to yourself. You have to live by your principles you can’t just talk about and take the easy way out.
It ain’t easy but it’s life changing to change people’s lives. So here I am after all these years telling the truth for the first time. I am Annie Hart and I change people’s lives.
Look for my new website coming in the next few months!
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Annie,
I love “life changing” as it implies that you create/provide something that leads to that outcome. Around that language consider focusing on the experience you create that sets up an environment conducive to the change process. I would argue that you do not change lives, but that you facilitate change in individuals who desire it.
Can any of us change someone else’s life?
Maybe we can. I tend to think that people can only change from within, but that guides like you and I lead them through that process once they have committed in their own minds. They have the heavy lifting to do.