The Power of Belief and Resilience Regarding Personal Change
Gary Gasaway (USA)
Challenges aren’t an obstacle to personal change — they’re the territory. Life coach Gary Gasaway has built his practice around one foundational truth: before anything external shifts, two internal forces must be in place. Belief in yourself. And the resilience that belief makes possible.
Okay, get ready for it. Challenges are not a sign that something has gone wrong with your efforts to change — they are a constant companion of the process. Gary Gasaway doesn’t soften this. As a practising life coach, he opens with the plain truth that most coaching conversations dance around: if you want personal change, you will face fear, stress, and anxiety every single step of the way. The question isn’t how to avoid that. The question is what you’re standing on when you meet it.
His answer: belief. A strong, non-negotiable belief in yourself. Not the passive, hopeful kind — but the assertive kind that walks toward what it fears, and in doing so, watches those fears begin to diminish in both size and influence. The moment you allow fear to have the final word on whether you move forward, Gasaway argues, you’ve handed over your power. And personal change becomes nearly impossible from that position.
“It is when we assertively move toward things we fear that the seemingly daunting uncertainties appear to diminish in their assumed size and influence.”— Gary Gasaway
Here’s where Gasaway gets specific — and where his coaching perspective becomes genuinely useful. Most people assume that challenges to change come from the outside world: circumstances, timing, lack of resources. But in his experience, the hardest challenges are the ones his clients create entirely themselves. They live in the belief system.
Our life experiences lead us to accept certain things as true about ourselves. Whether those beliefs are objectively accurate is, in a sense, beside the point — because if we accept them as true, they are true for us. The problem compounds when we hold those beliefs long enough that they stop feeling like beliefs at all. They start to feel like facts. Like the fixed boundaries of what’s possible for us. And at that point, Gasaway says plainly, personal change becomes exceedingly difficult — and many people give up entirely.
“We become limited not by reality, but by the reality we are emotionally perceiving it to be.”
The only way out is through the emotion itself. Not by pretending the fear isn’t there — Gasaway is clear that suppression doesn’t work, the challenge simply waits — but by actively changing the emotional response. When you shift the inner story, you shift the physiology. When you shift the physiology, you shift the behaviour. This is the sequence he works with: emotion first, then action. Not the other way around.
The three dimensions of change
Gasaway frames personal change as operating across three inseparable layers — and challenges show up in all three. Understanding which layer is creating friction is often the first step toward moving through it.
You cannot skip the first two layers and expect the third to hold. That’s why so many people set goals and fail to act — not because they lack discipline or capability, but because the emotional and reflective foundations haven’t been addressed. Belief must be built before action can land.
Resilience — you already have it
Here’s something Gasaway wants his clients to understand from the very beginning: resilience is not something you go out and find. You already have it. By virtue of every challenge you have faced in your life — every failure, every loss, every difficult moment you somehow got through — resilience has already found you. It has been building inside you this whole time.
What changes is not whether you have resilience, but how clearly you can access it, and how consciously you choose to deploy it. Gasaway describes this as the relationship between your inside self — your internal thoughts, beliefs, and emotions — and your outside self — the behaviours and presence others see in the world. When these two are aligned, when your internal belief system and your external actions are no longer in conflict, resilience operates at full power. The inside and the outside move together. That alignment, he says, is the power of belief and resilience working from the inside out.
Resilience is a choice — and so is staying stuck
Gasaway draws a clear line between two types of people who face the same challenge. Not to judge — but to make the distinction visible, because visibility is where choice becomes possible.
The difference, Gasaway makes clear, is not talent, circumstance, or luck. It is a decision. Resilience is a choice you make — to show up, to take the risk on yourself, to act on what is within your power of influence. And the extraordinary thing about that choice is that it compounds. Each time you face a challenge and move through it, the next challenge is met with greater ease. Not because the challenges get smaller, but because you get stronger. Your belief grows. Your resilience deepens. And the range of personal change available to you expands accordingly.
The hopes, goals, and dreams you imagine for yourself — Gasaway believes they become available to you the moment you take a risk. Then another. Then another. It’s a journey, not a single event. And it begins, always, in the same place: a decision to believe in yourself just enough to take the first step.
Indeed. It will be this combination — believing in oneself, along with resilience — that wins the day.
Source: iCN Issue 53 (Wellness & Holistic Coaching: Well-Being & Balance); page 39
About Gary Gasaway
Gary is a practicing life coach that provides individuals and couples with coaching needs concerning life’s difficulties in the areas of career decisions, dealing with stress, developing positive habits, and improving relationships. When not coaching, Gary dedicates his time to family, friends, and of course – writing.
Gary has a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Management and a Master of Science in Leadership and Management from the University of La Verne and is a member of Alpha Chi, National College Honours Society. In addition, Gary has earned the professional designation of a Certified Coach from the Coach Training Alliance.
Gary also has written and published eight books: The Coach’s Chronicles Trilogy, The Reflection Connection – Reflecting and Connecting to Life’s Experiences, A Simple Life – Living Less Complicated, Beyond Reflecting – Actions Lead to Personal Potential, Choices in Life – You Choose Your Choices, and just released, The Coach’s Chronicles – A Journey Through Life’s Trials and Triumphs – The 10-Year Anniversary Edition. For additional information regarding Gary and his books, go online to Barnes and Noble or Amazon.
