Breaking in new shoes

I’m sure like me, you’ve broken in many new pairs of shoes and have memories of the painful blisters to recall.  According to various sources who know a thing or two about breaking in new shoes, the best way to do it is slowly and wear them a little, around the home, every day. This promises to gradually soften the shoes up.

So why blog about shoes on a coaching and development website? Those who know me well would say I’m obsessed with joining up the dots between seemingly random and everyday things to coaching and leadership principles.

You fall in love with a pair of shoes and then when you get them home your satisfaction momentarily wanes as they are uncomfortable and don’t yet fit how you’d imagined they would. You knew that when you bought them, but you also knew the potential they had to be like your favourite slippers once worn in.

With coaching and development, the shoes (in my mind) represent the change we want to make in our lives, whether professional or personal, and the gentle breaking in of new daily habits which stretch us into our new comfortable and expanded place.

Just like a pair of new shoes (ooh I like this metaphor), with small incremental changes in behaviour and mindset, practiced daily, we start to welcome into our lives the power of possibility. We choose not to hobble through our discontent in the hope that by doing nothing, things will change. Instead we commit to everyday action. Evolving as we go.

Whatever this new-shoes metaphor might represent for you, be kind to yourself as you let go of the old or build on it to break in the new.