Ah Ha Moment - Light bulbAha, Ah-ha, or Ah Ha moments – no matter what you call it, those are the times when light bulb goes off in your head because you have a new awareness about something in your life. I have seen those moments during individual coaching sessions, team development workshops and day-to-day conversations. It’s easy to notice.

The person having the “Ah Ha” moment stops doing whatever they were doing and stares into space. It is a reflective moment where they are processing everything and perhaps reassigning truths. Whatever the realization is – they are assimilating it into their being and testing all the assumptions they once held. Then, suddenly a smile comes and their gaze and attention returns to conversation.

Often, we attribute your “Ah Ha moments” to shifts in behavior because whatever you discovered creates a new path for you to follow and is demonstrated through deliberate changes in action. This new behavior is what people see. The reality is that the change in behavior was due to something more significant – a change in your belief system. That’s right – “Ah Ha” moments come from changing your belief about something that you held as a truth. When you bust that belief’s truth you enter into a new world of possibilities and discoveries – the place where “Ah Ha” moments exist.

Last month, while I getting my NLP Coach Certification, I worked with many coaches about my personal and professional goals. There were several times over the course of 20 days that I experiences the “Ah Ha” moment.

Here is one of the professional beliefs that I held:

It was important for me to get feedback from my clients because that was how I knew I added value.

I was looking for confirmation. Because of this belief, I held back from creating and promoting universal materials that could be used by anyone. While I had authored two eBooks, I did not move them into the broader distribution paths.

My “Ah Ha” moment was that it really did not matter if I received feedback from people who bought my eBooks because they were on their own journey and if what I provided them helped them along the way, then that was good enough. It was about them, not about me.

Once I realized that my belief was an obstacle and not founded on good logic, the path forward was more obvious and compelling. My colleagues may see that my behavior has changed because I move forward but the reality is that my belief was the impetuous for making progress.

Here’s your challenge – think about something that you are wrestling with, perhaps something with an obstacle and see if in fact a core belief might be stalling your “Ah Ha” moment.