Behavioural coaching: Dumping your old self

But my biggest problem, which makes it difficult for me to go back there, is I strongly feel that I am incorrigible in many of my disdainful ways, such as my lack of courage and a high sense of guilt including my stubbornness to change. These have caused me to lose my self-image and confidence. This is no thanks to my decision to quit the corporate world six years ago when I decided to take care of my ageing but domineering mum. Now I really want to get back to work but I think the beatings all these years have made feel very scared as I do not know whether I can handle the realities of office politics, company’s goals and business interaction, etc. What is really happening to me? What should I do now? I do not want to live the rest of my life this way. Please help. 

 

Nervous wreck 

A: You are indeed fighting a fierce ‘battle’ within you, which I call a ‘battle for self-love’. It is probably the ‘mother’ of all battles, because it will slowly eat into you till there is nothing left in you if you don’t do anything about it now. Anyone who is in such a state has no more dream and vision of what is possible and artificially set themselves all sorts of conditions and reasons to amplify their fears so that they can fulfil their own prophesy that they are ‘incorrigible’ in making any change. 

The Bottom Line: The way out is not to see your wrongs and be an expert in diagnosing your own neurotic behaviour that makes you look only at your own weaknesses but not at the things that are good about you. This will not help you an inch. Get out of this danger fast, otherwise your energy and enthusiasm, etc will be totally drained off. Instead, see yourself as special. Adopt the strong belief that you are a spiritual being having a human experience (and not a human being having a spiritual experience). The spiritual self sets no condition on itself. Believing in this will also make you believe that you are a special creation of God. Isn’t this exciting? Nothing about your current life and behaviour will wear you off from now onwards. Start to dream and build a vision of yourself as an already successful executive in the corporate world. Not even your mum can wear you off from now onwards. Many things that you want will soon become realities. 

Powerful Questions: How is the current feeling of yours helping you? What kind of future do you want to have? What is special about you that you can count on to get what you want? What is a step you want to take yourself forward to get this? 

 

MANAGING DIFFICULT |CONVERSATIONS 

Q: I get into very uncomfortable and stressful situations each time I do not agree with the views of people, especially my employees or customers. Objectively, I am always mindful that I need to be fair and logical all the time. I expect them to be the same. So when the other party behaves in a non-objective and unreasonable way for no good reason, I get disappointed and start to react in an emotional way. When this happens, I usually do one or more of these: either I ‘withdraw’ by keeping quiet to let the other person ‘win’, causing me to feel lousy about myself, or force my views on them, causing them to feel offended with me. Both these ways make me a loser as I let my emotions run over me. Can something be done to help me self-manage better? 

 

Born loser

A: In the coaching language, we call this ‘losing your presence’. When a person does not have ‘presence’ or is weak in this, it implies that they have difficulties in bringing ‘themselves’ out to express their values, passion, creativity, emotion and discerning judgement in the dynamics of a conversation. Due to this, they cannot hold themselves together and therefore ‘crumble’ under the weight of their emotions during difficult times. When this happens, they become reactive that makes them lose what they have previously gained in the relationship.

The Bottom Line: To gain presence is to gain tolerance in facing up with negative situations; be it in confrontations and disapprovals, etc. Skilful tolerance will enable your tolerance to balance between two tasks in opposite ways – have the ability to recede to the background and become ‘invisible’ yet be able to stay composed and have full control of the situation. One example is, you can disagree with them but you are able to understand what they want. 

Powerful Questions: What is your goal when you are in conversation with people? What triggers you to act in a reactive manner? What will make you be mindful of your goal even when this happens? How will you want to behave in such a situation where the best of you is being demonstrated?

 

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