Get the Support You Need to Manage Any Change

By Mike Jay

No matter how lucky you were in nature’s lottery – no matter what skills and smarts you were born with – you will face many transitions in your life. After all, life is nothing more than a series of transitions. And at some point, you’re going to need support to see you through a life change.

Support can be anything, including business or personal coaching, money, a place to live, material things, etc. Some people need large amounts of support because they were at the back of the line in nature’s lottery. The attributes and traits they were born with are so far away from what is needed to survive today that society has to provide various types of support in order for these people to function on a daily basis. Other people need support less often, but the support they need is just as crucial so they can work through a major life transition.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a better understanding of yourself so you could predict when you will need support, how the support needs to come, and how long the support needs to stay in place? Fortunately, knowing this information is possible through genetically-guided coaching. The fact is that each of us comes into the world born with a special combination of talents, motivations, and limitations. We all have internal “coding” that can guide us to who we are, who we can be, what our strengths are, how we’re going to perform best, how we’re going to make the greatest contributions, and what kinds of activities will be easy or difficult for us. By tapping into this inherent “programming,” it is possible to identify when we will have a need for support, as well as the kind of support needed and duration of support required. This single piece of information could help reduce the trauma around transitions significantly.

Modern Day Transitions: As Americans, we have a goal in our society for everyone to be able to manage on their own. That’s why society provides such things as health counseling, help for the mentally challenged, welfare programs, etc. Additionally, society has helped us understand and define certain transitions. For example, we are all familiar with and somewhat prepared for dealing with such transitions as moving from child to adult, going from adult to college person, moving from college person to family person, and going from family person to retirement. But transitions go so much deeper than that.

When using genetically-guided coaching, we would take a look at the person’s motivational profile and see what kind personality he has. By identifying these attributes we can create support “scaffolding” that allows this person to tap into a range of support services that will help him through specific developmental and/or performance challenges. With this process in place, we can identify what sort of activities and jobs would be appropriate over time for someone with this person’s set of attributes and unique personality. Perhaps we’d find that this person was working generally in the appropriate context, but that he needs to do some very specific things within his position in order to take advantage of who he is in order to get himself out of the current rut he’s in.

Now the question comes: What kind of support package or scaffolding does this person need? He knows he wants to change, but he has no resources to do so. He’s at a point in life where everything is extended. He has failed in the past. The credit cards are maxed. The home’s equity is tapped. He simply does not have the ability to support the transition he needs to make.

Such a scenario is common. When people realize that they should be doing something different how do they get the support they need? How do they retrain? How do they get the resources to take them through the change? How do they get from point A to point B?

Even if these questions don’t plague you now, chances are they will in the future. As globalization continues and standard business models change, many people who have held traditional workplace roles will see themselves facing massive work and life changes. In the very near future, over a billion people on the other side of the ocean will be competing for the same contracts, positions, and roles that you are. What does that mean to overall life in the developed world—that so many people are going to be able to provide similar services? What does that mean to American life?

It means we’re going to need a lot of support. After all, how does someone in her mid-50s, who has used all her retirement savings to build her dream business, transition to the next step? What happens when her business fails to bring in enough clients and she is out of money? How can she get support to see her through the transition? Such a situation happens every day, and these people have no place to turn.

The Future of Support: Part of this question of support and concept of a scaffolding of support—a way of creating support in a variety of areas that promotes access to additional resources—means that we have to look at new way in which the “powers that be” can support its people. Rather than only doling out support in the form of food stamps, welfare, and WIC (which are very needed and useful programs), we also need to look at a “new living support system” that says people can tap into a certain amount of dollars to use during transitional periods as long as the person meets certain criteria and qualifications. 

But to make such a program work, people first need to be aware of when they’ll most need support, as well as what type of support they’ll most likely need. Genetically-guided coaching and living provides those answers. It tells us what kind of life we’ll be most happy embracing, because it identifies the creative tensions within us. We then know whether someone is going to live an ambitious life, a low achieving life, a life filled with relationships, or a solitary life, just to name a few. By tapping into this knowledge that’s already within us, we can make great strides toward helping each other live a life that’s in tune with who they are so transitions aren’t so challenging. Only then will Americans survive the globalization trend and be able to preserve their standards of living—with rewarding professional and personal lives that contribute meaningfully to society.

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