Self-Coaching

Here’s a simple Self-Coaching practice that will ensure your relationship’s ongoing sanity.

Bottom-up, top-down interventions will solve most relationship conflicts. This is especially true if both partners are employing these strategies.

In this Self-Coaching episode, you’ll learn that the strategy of calming down raw, bottom-up emotions of defensiveness, and replacing them with top-down, insightful thinking is perhaps the single best way to minimize, if not eliminate ongoing relationship stress.

In order to answer this question, we have to appreciate the thin line between anticipating future events and worrying about future events. The essential difference —anticipating versus worrying —has to do with the infusion of insecurity.

In this Self-Coaching episode, you’ll find out why it’s important to take a step back from any life challenge or crisis and ask two important questions:

·         Is what I'm feeling rational and reasonable?

·         Is what I'm feeling proportionate or disproportionate to the circumstance?

Asking these questions will put you in the best possible position to begin to liberate yourself from needless worry and stress.

Many people who struggle emotionally look back to their childhood for answers. But what happens when we scour our past only to find a "relatively" happy, loving, nurturing environment without any significant trauma or neglect?

The confusion often occurs when, for example, a patient in therapy scours their childhood assuming there must be something-something dysfunctional, alcoholic, abusive, or neglectful — about their parents. You know, the really bad stuff.

In this Self-Coaching episode, we’ll explore this paradox, demonstrating that not all anxiety and depression are a result of a completely dysfunctional nurturing environment. Far from it.

Next time you feel dead-ended by life, stuck, or overwhelmed by problems and worries, and you just want relief, rather than caving in to your feelings, recognize that you may need only a simple perceptual upgrade —a Self-Coaching "upgrade" that begins with an acknowledgement that just because you feel dead-ended and powerless doesn't mean you are.

In this episode you'll learn three Self-Coaching truths designed to provide you with an empowered perspective that will liberate you from needless psychological struggle.

In this Self-Coaching episode, I discuss lying, particularly the ubiquitous, “white lie.” Is it wrong to fudge the truth if, in fact, we’re doing it to be diplomatic? Of course not; it’s what we might call a social lubricant. But when does white-lying cross the line becoming a neurotic problem?

Tune in to learn the difference and start to fine tune your life. It’s all about living “correctly” rather than at the mercy of reflexive insecurity.

Traditionally getting older gets a bad rap, but whether you’re in your twenties or your eighties, this Self-Coaching episode will have you looking forward to your golden years with optimism. Admittedly, this sounds like hyperbole—it’s not. Not once you understand that mortality, far from being a disquieting notion, is actually a profound teacher.

What can the concept of mortality teach us?

You’ll have to listen to this episode to find out; just don’t be surprised if you start to look at growing older as something much more than a winding down, but as an opportunity to grow and expand. You’ll learn the value of shedding the superficiality of your acquisitional younger days and realize the true value of living “correctly.” No longer does growing old have to be feared.

Anyone who insists on looking for a guru, a shrink, a shaman, or a pill, to liberate themselves from struggle will ultimately fail. Why? Because no one but you can ever topple your destructive habits. When you look for someone to heal you, to take care of you, to make you better, then, like a child, you remain without the full potential power of your maturity.  It is exactly this power of personal maturity and self-trust that Self-Coaching promotes.

In this Self-Coaching episode, I discuss the why and the how to becoming your own best coach in order to take an active role in your emotional liberation

Human beings are vulnerable creatures and when feeling out of control or insecure we instinctively tend to compensate with attempts to gain control and not feel insecure. Insecurity/vulnerability is the root of our struggles and trying to control life is the weed that grows from it. A desire to control life may begin subtly, going unnoticed for years, with no ill effects. But make no mistake: in time, control will act like a weed, overrunning your life with worry, doubt, and fear. Trying to control life is such a destructive strategy, yet few people see it for what it is.

In this Self-Coaching episode, you’ll learn why controlling life gives you an artificial and temporary feeling of security—you get seduced into thinking that your particular juggle of controlling strategies is the only way to escape vulnerability.

Do you want to turn your life around? If so, then this Self-Coaching episode will help you recognize whether you have a fixed or growth mindset.

A fixed mindset is like having a bicycle with 10 gears, unfortunately if you have a fixed mindset, you’re only using the first gear. You’re afraid to experiment with the nine other gears, why? Because you’re just not sure you want to risk failure.  

If you happen to be clinging to that first bicycle gear your experience will be limited to peddling along level, easy roads; roads that are safe, manageable, boring, and limited. Whereas your friends with a growth mindset are saying, “Wow! Let’s see what these other gears can do, as they abandon the level road, trying different gears to tackle different terrain challenges.

You’re not a 10 sped bike, but if you suffer from a fixed mindset, you are limiting your ride through life. Sure, it takes a bit of courage to experiment with life’s other “gears”, but since we only live once, why not take the risk? Why go on holding yourself back with a fixed mindset? Why not try some of those other gears?

Everyone worries from time to time, but if you’re a worrier or even a worrywart, maybe preparing for the worst doesn’t sound so terrible to you. You may think it’s prudent if not smart. And I wouldn’t disagree if it weren’t for the compulsive, unrelenting worry-loop that gets generated by insecurity and anxiety.

There’s a big difference between worrying and being concerned. Concern deals with here-and-now facts, worry deals with emotional fictions, projections of future vulnerability.

When, because of insecurity and lack of self-trust, you feel you can’t handle some aspect of life, then worry is often an attempt to somehow—if not magically—find a way to figure out how to feel less vulnerable about something that hasn’t even happened. In a sense, you’re trying to worry away the fears. What’s the opposite of worry? Courage! Courage and a willingness to let life unfold dealing with each day as it presents itself. No doubt letting go of worrying may feel dangerous—it’s not dangerous at all. But don’t take our word for it—give it a shot and find out for yourself.