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CONFIDENCE BOOSTER No.6: Be Accurate!

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THE CHALLENGE: To overcome inaccurate statements, self-talk and mindset. 

My clients get to hear about this over and over because accuracy has a complex role in combating a very powerful adversary of self confidence: cognitive distortion. This may sound complicated (it is) but if I highlight the most popular forms you will know what I mean:

  • Filtering – amplifying negative information while diminishing or completely excluding positives
  • Polarised “black & white” thinking – leaves no room for manoeuvre for yourself & others & leaves no room for balance
  • Overgeneralisation – With sparse information, creating strong opinions on a wide range of people, subjects or situations
  • Rushing to assumptions – not waiting for all (or any) available information on a subject & so assumptions are drawn & decisions made in considerable ignorance
  • Catastrophising – Why settle for a drama when a full blown crisis will do? This is when everything is bad even if it has happened only once. “I’m rubbish at this”, “No one likes me”, “You cannot trust anyone”, “Today was disastrous” etc etc.

 

EXERCISE:

It’s called tracking which is, in this context, keeping a log / diary of instances when you are inaccurate in any given situation about yourself, people, your day etc. If you are unaware of behaving in a particular way then how can you do anything about it? Just being aware of it will make a huge difference.

BEWARE: real and lasting shifts in deep seated mind set and behaviour takes hard work and consistency

Now you may be thinking that this is all a bit obvious and that calling yourself ‘useless’, for example, is merely a turn of phrase. But words have a huge significance: not only do they tell the outside world a great deal about us, but they also say much about our moods and mindset. Get control of them and they WILL begin to affect your attitudes and emotions for the better. 

CONFIDENCE BOOSTER No.2: Is Failure an Option?

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FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION – IT’S PART OF THE DEAL

The fact of the matter is that if you are reading this and are a member of the human race you will make mistakes, maybe even the odd howler, I guarantee it. The secret is to accept this fact and cut yourself some slack – but I am not asking for any more or less than you would a good friend or work colleague.

 

THE CHALLENGE: TO RELIEVE SELF IMPOSED & UNNECESSARY PRESSURE

If you suffer with issues of self confidence (and most of us do at different times), and if you are prone to working yourself over for making mistakes, you can set yourself a whole set of unnecessary challenges:

  • Reluctance to take risks
  • Stifling your abilities
  • Ignoring your achievements while highlighting your failures

 

EXERCISE: BACK YOURSELF – LOOK AT THE FACTS

  • Write a memo to yourself listing your abilities, which will be a matter of public record and fact – so that not even you can dispute them. Don’t roll your eyes….do it.
  • Note down your past successes – as you may well have buried them beyond normal daily recall. Get them out, dust them off and put them on display (this is for your benefit, not ours, as it will be you that cannot see them).
  • Check out what some of the most successful people in history have said about failure – in particular our greatest scientists, who reached the heights of achievement through trial & ERROR – get it?

There’s nothing wrong with striving for perfection and having to make do with mere excellence. The trick is not avoiding making mistakes or failing – it is in doing so and using that stumble as a lesson & not as a source of corporal punishment!

LISTENING IS THE KEY

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As a coach I have to be able to listen – this may sound all very obvious, right? But there’s listening and then there’s ACTIVE listening. This is a skill that is not only fundamental for any coach, but it is also an essential skill for any meaningful interaction be it in our lives at work, with our friends or at home.

According to the International Coaching Federation’s core competencies, active listening is:

“The ability to focus completely on what the client is saying and is not saying,

to understand the meaning of what is said in the context of the client’s desires

and to support client self expression.”

 

As a member of the ICF, this skill is not only a core competency (the fundamental skills of life coaching) but is practically an article of faith emphasized in all our training and our CPD going forward.

 

IMPORTANT BENEFITS OF ACTIVE LISTENING

 

Being Present

I become fully present and ‘in the moment’ with whoever I’m in discussion with – to the exclusion of all else. This is irrespective of whether we are having a discussion in a consultation room, or in a bustling hotel foyer

 

Get ALL the information

Active Listening distinguishes and ‘reads’ on just the words, but also the emotions, the tone of voice and the body language. All of these inform the flow of information and the quality of our work together

 

The agenda is yours!

It ensures the agenda is being set by you – by adhering to what I am hearing, seeing and sensing  you are not going to be fit into any pre-prepared behavioural models. What you say will dictate and direct what happens next and where our journey takes us.

 

Follow what’s being said

It prevents the mind from running ahead of what is actually being said. If we do that, then we’re not listening properly and focusing on the present discussion. Instead we are over thinking and analysing to the detriment of the discussion.

 

Clarity for both of us

‘AL’ develops understanding and gets to the heart of the main issues in a way that produces remarkable trust and clarity in areas which may have been obscured in the past.

 

What people are REALLY thinking

This may not come immediately. Openess and candour can give vital and valuable information – what people have to say is the clay with which we have to work.

 

It is as important to understand a person’s strengths and potential for greatness as well as observing their challenges and vulnerabilities – the whole picture has to inform the discussion and, of course, the conclusions.

 

THE ROLE OF MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness practice, both formal and informal, makes all of the above that much more natural and easily available. The ability to maintain a high state of awareness in the moment, and without judgement, helps to take the skill of Active Listening to another level – but that’s a whole new topic….

 

I maintain that people already have everything they need to make positive, lasting change for the better in their lives. If proper attention and awareness is paid to what is being said – this will provide us both with all the raw material we need on which to build a rewarding and successful coaching relationship.

IN THE QUEST FOR NEW LIFE STRATEGIES, IS PATIENCE A VIRTUE?

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Offering patience as a possible option in fashioning new life strategies can meet with short shrift – and that’s putting it mildly. Patience is often regarded as ‘off the pace’: a waste of time when we should be out there ‘making things happen’. Patience is seen by many as too ‘wait and see’, or being passive, docile and even weak.

 

REVOLUTION OR EVOLUTION?

Most of us know of individuals who on deciding to make a new life change just do so: quitting smoking, training for their first marathon, losing 40lbs… they seem capable of a 180 degree with unshakable determination. We can respect and applaud such discipline & force of will but revolution is not for everyone. AND we certainly must not make comparisons and use those as a stick with which to beat ourselves. For many people evolution is a better fit: a more measured planned approach can get us to where we want to be.

 

BABY STEPS

It’s all bout forward momentum. Have you ever put a toddler down and turned away, only for a matter of seconds, and then turned back only to have to begin trying to track them down? Well, there’s nothing wrong with baby steps! So the sort of patience I refer to has nothing to do with ‘wait and see’ but is all about planned persistence at your pace. It does not signify lack of proactivity – quite the contrary, it’s all about devising an action plan combined with perpetual and most important of all – relentless forward momentum:

  • you do not lose sight of the target
  • you will not be knocked off course
  • and you’re not stopping for….anything!

 

MEETING THE CHALLENGE ON YOUR TERMS

By setting your own pace, you can manage your own evolution by taking measured and positive steps every single day, for example:

  • going for a walk
  • not tackling a pile of mail but one piece at a time
  • making a point of smiling at shop assistants and bank workers
  • avoiding emotional vocabulary
  • periodic ‘turn ‘em off time’ – TV, tablets, smart phones etc (tough one!)

To achieve goals it’s not a prerequisite to take giant leaps, or to turn lives upside down (however, if that’s the pace you want to set that’s fine). Change can be gradual: it evolves, and as such is grows into a natural fit and this time it will take!

The practice of thinking in new ways and doing new things often enough can alter lives a piece at a time. Quick fixes and short term enthusiasm so often leads to short lived benefits, disappointment & regression. Evolution can be the key to real change in thinking and in behaviour and replicates how we took on bad habits – we’ve just reverse the flow. So positive changes can ‘take’ and become our new good habits. What took decades to condition our lives cannot necessarily be turned around in weeks, but real beginning can be made – in bite size pieces….buon appetito!

Alan Keyse is a fully qualified Business and Life Coach who now applies his 30 years of experience as a sales executive to coaching Emotional Intelligence to business leaders, executives, managers and their staff. Alan specialises in stress reduction; conflict avoidance; & employee engagement. 

 

 

THE NEED TO PURSUE YOUR OWN DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

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Most entrepreneurs will be all too aware of the pressures that go hand in glove with being self-employed. The pressure not only to succeed but also to be seen to be successful, is inherent within the very fabric of our society. 

 

WHEN SUCCESS CAN FAIL

We are taught to want to ‘succeed’ from a very early age, and once past infancy the forces at work, driving us forward: our parents; our teachers; and our friends, are irresistible. We become conditioned with the need to compete and in a competitive society this is a useful driver to have. However, if we become conditioned to value our worth by what we believe the world thinks of our success, our thought process and behaviour can create huge dissonance with our core values.

 

TIME TO REFLECT

Most of us at some time in our lives have uttered the plea ‘stop the ride, I wanna get off!’ but seldom do we question that urge. What many of us do not appreciate is that we do not need to ask permission of a third party to stop the ride, in fact all the controls we require are in our hands. This does not mean have to mean walking away from existing life styles, nor for abdicating responsibilities. Rather, it is a call for regular pauses, short periods of reflection to re-evaluate our understanding of our lives, our aspirations and our emotions.

 

OWNING SUCCESS


How often do we question how we personally measure success & why? Our social and cultural conditioning measures success by whether or not we surpass those around us. We spend our time, therefore, making comparisons with our peers and competing on that basis. We often fail to explore what success really means to us. As a result we spend our time chasing goals reactively preset, and which may have absolutely nothing to do with our innermost desires and core values. Only by matching our lives to those desires and values can we attain our own true success and fulfilment.

IF WE DO NOT TAKE PERSONAL OWNERSHIP OF OUR GOALS BUT INSTEAD ABSORB THOSE HANDED TO US – ULTIMATELY, THEY WILL NEVER STICK!

It is for all of us to challenge our own thinking and, possibly for the first time, take a serious look at what makes us tick as opposed to what convention dictates it should be. If we take the time to take a look, we may be pleasantly surprised.

 

. Alan specialises in helping executives, entrepreneurs & their staff to manage stress levels, conflict resolution, self confidence & potential burnout! In doing so he employs mindfulness, emotional intelligence, life coaching/CBT, & more than 3 decades of experience as an international sales executive.

 

 

MEDITATION IN BUSINESS: IT WORKS!

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MEDITATION IN BUSINESS: IT WORKS!

In a frenetic, noisy and obsessive world, the ability to disengage from the hurly burly can prove invaluable, most particularly when we are trying to find inspiration to fire our inner motivation or to manage difficult challenges. In my own experience I have found that the ability to be able to step back and observe events in the moment, with a certain detachment from negative emotions, is a potent skill, especially (but not exclusively) in business.

Meditation comes in many forms, from a variety of traditions, and it is not my intention here to discuss techniques or philosophies: there is bountiful information on this subject both online and in print. My aim is to encourage people to simply cast off preconceptions and take a look.

At a bare minimum, meditation can have very notable applications for the busiest of schedules, in fact the busier and more stressful life gets, the more valuable it can be to develop such skills. This fact has been embraced by a number of corporations including Apple, Google, Nike and HBO to name but a few.

SO, WHAT BENEFITS CAN MEDITATION OFFER?

THE MONKEY MIND
We all experience this: the incessant inner dialogue that occupies our minds for much of our day – a constant flow of consciousness tumbling like lottery balls, with no beginning, middle or end. So how can our thought process, so congested, be expected to work effectively for us? Surely, if we are able to quieten the internal chatter there can be greater benefits for us than allowing it to carry on unchecked.
Even a brief period of contemplation, each day, is a good start – it’s just a matter of engaging with the present moment when time is set aside for being alone with ourselves. Like all skills, setting aside all unnecessary thoughts takes practice, but in learning to do so benefits can be felt from the start. Of course the relaxation can be reward enough but there’s far more to gain than that:

CLARITY
With a calm and uncluttered mind comes clarity and with it determination, as we see what needs to be done whether we are beginning to set goals or in need of reinforcing our resolve during a difficult day. When we tame our monkey mind we find, in its place, calm and simplicity – what better state is there for making good decisions?

FOCUS
With the mind thus soothed we will also find it far less likely that we can be knocked off our course by distractions. We are able to refocus on the priorities and goals we set ourselves with greater vigour. We can rediscover those emotions that inspired us when we first decided upon a course of action and so launch ourselves, refreshed, into making a reality of our wishes.

CONTROL
In large measure, we take control of our thoughts because if we do not do it then someone else will try do it for us. We can then find ourselves abdicating our free will, albeit subconsciously, and following the agenda of others. Alternatively we drift on autopilot leaving our most important decisions to our social conditioning, negative emotions, and learned reactions. If our own hands are on the steering wheel, however, we can be sure of our ideas, as our thoughts are stripped back to their bare essentials. There is no waste, just the burning desire to carry through the goals we have set.

CONNECTION
Meditation connects us directly to our unadulterated core values, our essence – in other words, the things that really make us tick. Nothing is more important as we cannot be truly happy or feel fulfilment if we are not at one with who we really aspire to be.

And regular meditation can do all this? Not on its own but it is an invaluable element in helping us to do it. Meditation gives us the choices, and in this life, clear choice is a precious resource available to us all, we just have to ‘dig’ a little.