What comes to mind when you hear the phrase: make way forward? For me, to make way forward is to make a change so that one will experience progress. But why is progress important? Progress moves us to new experiences that enable us to grow. When we don’t experience progress in an area of our life over a long period of time, we miss many learning opportunities. And when we stop learning, we also stop growing. Because our environment is constantly changing, we need to grow with it. And if we’re not growing with change, suddenly we will find ourselves stuck and clueless about how to move our lives forward.

The Cambridge University Press defines progress as the “process of changing or developing towards an improved situation or condition.” In my view, this definition of progress has two parts. First, it’s the process of changing or developing, and second, it’s changing towards an improved situation or condition.

Towards an Improved Situation or Condition

The process of progress actually begins with the second part. How do you feel about your current situation? Are you perfectly happy with the way things are or do you feel a sense of dissatisfaction? Have you ever wanted more from life? Do you want things to change? Do you believe things can change? You need to carefully consider the answers to these questions in order to begin (or not) your journey towards progress. You need to have an awareness of your situation and be able to examine what you really believe about yourself and your situation. Once you understand that you want things to change and that change is possible, then (and only then), you can move onto the first part.

The Process of Changing or Developing

The process of changing or developing always comes down to you, at least: you, first. Many times, in my life, I wanted the situation to be different or people to be different. Whenever I began feeling or thinking like this, I felt even more stuck because I couldn’t just change a situation or person. The only thing I could really do was change myself so I could show up differently.

But how do you need to change? What is it about you that keeps you behaving the same way or making the same decisions over and over even if you want things to change? If you don’t know the answer to this question, it’s okay. You’re not alone. Most of us go through behavioral patterns that we are not even aware of. This is why we get stuck – we keep repeating unconscious behaviors that cannot produce the result we want. And If we were aware of these counter-productive unconscious behaviors, we would have already done something about it.

Making Your Way Forward

To make way forward is to unlock yourself to create progress in your life. Coaching can help you with this. How? By having someone listen to you, make an observation about you, and help you make sense of your experience so that you can piece things together and see better and more clearly for yourself what you’ve been missing. It’s about unlocking yourself because the answer is already within you. You just have not thought of it yet. Once you are unlocked, the path forward will become very clear! You will know what to do next. You will get unstuck. You will change your life!