| Date: 22 September 2005 |
COACHING: EMPOWER YOURSELF, EMPOWER OTHERS
by Cheryl Massey MSc MSc MA BSc PGCE
Systemic Psychotherapist, Psychologist and Coach who works at The Good Food Shop, Hertford.
As a psychologist and psychotherapist, I have become increasingly aware of the powerful ways coaching can impact on the ability to prioritise time and generate solutions. It is often not sufficient to beat depression, calm anxiety or overcome panic attacks. Clients increasingly ask me how to return to work or to relationships in a more positive and empowered way. These are people who want to move forward, be more confident and take control of their life. In this article I want to introduce you to the brief underlying principles of coaching and then present some questions you might like to try, just to whet your appetite!
Coaching is about listening and helping people to take time out to reflect and pro-actively engage with personal growth. We appear to spend so much time engaging with other aspects of our life that actually thinking through how we make decisions is not something we often consider. In effect, it is probably the most important thing to think through to ensure a life that is congruent with our ideals and aspirations. So we need to do some “thinking about thinking”!
The psychology underlying this approach is this: Beliefs are ideas we no longer question and we refer to such deeply held beliefs when making decisions, thus all our actions and choices are based on our beliefs. The problem is, our beliefs are not always helpful to us. Let’s take an example. Think of something that you felt went badly in school when you were young, and how that became a belief about yourself. Consider now how that belief has had a limiting effect on your life, your choices, your dreams, and your desires. By not adopting that limiting belief, how would that have made a difference to your life? What different choices would you have made and how might that have developed your energy, resilience and idea about yourself as a person? Think of the enormous benefit to you if someone had taken the time to challenge this WHEN you were a young person.
Here is the good news. Limiting beliefs can be challenged and thus changed, and your patterns can be broken. Even patterns that have become part of your ritual and thus have led to you adopting negative labels, can be confronted. It is not an arduous or long process, but it does take psychological knowledge and of course skill in questioning. Here is something to consider: If you could change that one limiting belief you assimilated from your time as a pupil in school, what would you achieve, what would your target be? For example, my client had a belief that she was a worrier, someone who couldn’t take risks, all based on one episode that happened whilst performing on stage as a child. Before our sessions, that limiting belief led to avoidance strategies, lack of confidence and restricted choices. That negative and limiting belief is now shattered, and she has begun to explore many avenues that have become available to her.
Now try this as an exercise. If you share your own target with a friend or family member, get them to ask these questions of you: What excites you about this target? What strengths do you have that could help you here? What would you do if you could move yourself one step forward right now? What could you do if you didn’t have to explain that to anyone else and how would that feel? Who would be the first person you might tell when you move that one step closer to your goal?
By using such positive questions, we begin to allow the other person to consider other options, often termed “looking outside of the box”. How good do you feel when you say “If I won the lottery I would ……/do/meet/go/buy/have/……” and don’t we all play this at some time, just because it makes us experience a sense of well being, of freedom of limitless possibilities! That is the same “feel-good factor” coaching questions elicit, because we are allowing our mind to consider other paths, other ways of living, other choices and we are disallowing our limiting beliefs to cast a shadow over our ability to achieve. You want it? You can get it, you just need to think differently.
Interested? Why not give you and a friend or family member fifteen minutes and go through the exercise, feel how good it is both to question in this way and to take time to engage with your own personal growth options.
If you have enjoyed reading these brief details about coaching, or even better, tried the questioning task, I would welcome your comments or queries. If you want to know more about coaching and how it might be useful in your own personal growth or in your professional role, why not visit my website www.cherylmassey.co.uk., contact me by phone 07974 261744 or drop me an e mail to cheryl.massey@ntlworld.com.
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