Life/business coaches work with people to help them determine what they want to accomplish (goals). One way of determining goals is to ask yourself, “What about my circumstances or myself do I want to change?” Your circumstances consist of your living situation, job, relationships with others, finances, friends – those areas of your life that are outside of yourself. Your “self” includes character, personality, habits, health, attitudes, behavior, thoughts and feelings, sense of meaning – those areas that originate from within. To make a significant and long-lasting change, you must look inside.
The following questions are helpful:
1. Deep down inside, do I really want to change this aspect of my life?
2. If I have tried before to change this, what did I do?
3. What were my strategies in the past?
4. What worked and what didn’t work?
5. How come my plan didn’t succeed completely?
Not asking these questions and failing to come up with answers ensures a poor result. Not addressing these questions is a way of sabotaging your progress. You might ask, “Why in the world would I sabotage myself, when I truly want to_________? Fill in the blank with whatever you would like to accomplish, for example, losing weight, making more money, getting organized with your finances, etc. The truth is that old habits die hard. We tend to approach problems or achieve goals by using the same methods repeatedly. This may work sometimes, but often it doesn’t. We are often blind to this process.
Coaches need coaches, too. Getting coached is a process of getting to know yourself and your behavior. Getting coached means learning to be accountable for promises you have made to yourself and have not followed through on. Getting coache means uncovering blind spots, so that you don’t have to make the same kinds of mistakes repeatedly.
Here are a few ways that I have sabotaged myself:
1. Trying to do some new task, such as repairing a roof or book keeping that I didn’t know how to do. No problem yet. We all face jobs, assignments or projects that we don’t have the skills for. Here is the problem. Because of pride, I didn’t ask for help or get enough information.
2. Not preparing well enough for the job at hand. Not preparing adequately is about wishful thinking and having a slight case of lead in the pants. It’s like cooking from a recipe without all the ingredients. It’s like making a speech without having made any notes ahead of time.
3. Biting off more than I can chew. I once tried to single-handedly educate a whole school district on all the issues around drug and alcohol abuse.
4. Making promises to myself or others while hearing a little voice in the inner recesses of my mind saying, “You know you are not going to do that.”
5. Ignoring my intuition (the soft voice trying to get through).
6. Trying to accomplish some thing that someone else wants me to do. No problem yet. Here is the problem. I don’t want to do it. I say “yes” when I really want to say “no”.
7. Taking shortcuts. Sometimes shortcuts work quite well, and sometimes they turn out really badly. I think this is about ignoring that little voice which is saying something like, “Measure that board twice before you cut it.”
8. Being too methodical and taking forever. I have never done this. I just thought I would stick it in because I am sure others have.
9. Speaking of being sure, a great way to sabotage yourself is being too cocky or too sure of your skills. This relates to No. 2 above.
10. Letting the little kid inside of me, who has never heard of’ delayed gratification, run the show. For example, say, my adult, mature self sets about trying.to lose weight. But that little kid who figuratively resides in my head catches sight of that huge piece of cheesecake and wants it right now, so he starts nagging. “It’s really small and I am really hungry, and I won’t eat dessert tomorrow, and it’s not too many calories and before I know it, “Hmmmm, that sure tastes good!.”
11. Repeating No. 1 innumerable times. Resisting getting help because I think that I should be able to do something all by myself. Is that called false pride?” I think so.
The suggestion for the week: – Ask for help even when you are not totally sure you need to. Think about how good you feel when you help others. Let others feel good for a change.
Ken Edelston, Monroe, ME, USA
kened@prexar.com
http://www.edelstoncoachinggroup.citymax.com
Ken Edelston MS is a life and business coach. He has extensive experience in counseling teens, adults, and couples. For over 20 years, Ken has specialized in treating the effects of addictions, parenting adolescent issues, and conflict resolution. His coaching practice focuses on helping individuals, families, business persons, and couples identify ineffective patterns of behavior and then exploring and implementing real change.
