Self-Coaching

Beware of the saying: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” All too often, we cling to the short-sighted safety of attempting to control life. But sometimes, because of insecurity, a normal need for control becomes excessive as we desperately try to over-control life and outcomes.  The problem is that the more we rely on insecurity-driven habits of control, the less we rely on our natural resilient ability to trust self and life. Rather than letting go and allowing life to unfold, we gravitate toward perfectionism, rigidity, and neurotic self-distrust.

You may have become convinced that over-controlling life may feel like a better option than risking self-trust, but if you truly want to live a more passionate, liberated, enjoyable life, then it’s time to realize that there’s only one devil—refusing to risk self-trust.

This week’s Self-Coaching challenge is to learn to risk believing that you can let life unfold today without your usual insistence that life, outcomes, and others must be controlled. Controlling life is a myth; living life isn’t.

Most people, at one time or another, will ask, “What’s the purpose of life?” More accurately, we should be asking, “What’s my purpose in life.” For some this isn’t a difficult question to answer, yet for others, it remains a total mystery.

A sense of purpose isn’t something reserved for only those fortunate, happy, successful people; it’s a potential that resides in each of us. Unfortunately, one’s purpose may be submerged, unrealized, or covered over by neurotic distortions. While there’s no simple, one-size-fits-all answer, join me in this week’s Self-Coaching challenge as I offer suggestions that may help you grapple with finding more purpose in your life.

Developing self-discipline and willpower

What stops you from achieving your goals? What exactly is the resistance that keeps you from taking charge of your life and realizing your intentions? As complex and multifaceted as the answer to this query may be, one way or another, it all boils down to self-discipline.

From a Self-Coaching perspective, self-discipline and willpower depend on the ability to willfully endure the transient discomfort of changing who and what you are. You weren’t born with self-discipline, you acquired it. Like a muscle, you need to develop your self-discipline muscle, one challenge at a time. So, if you wish you had more follow-through to get things done, whether losing weight, exercising, or realizing your ambitions, this Self-Coaching episode will give you strategies for reconstituting your atrophied self-discipline muscle.

Let’s be honest, we live in a world of imperfection. we are imperfect. No matter how fastidious you may be, there will always be banana peels to slip on in everyone’s life. “Why did I do that?” “If only I worked harder.”  The old could-a, would-a, should-a’s.

Every challenge, no matter how small, is an opportunity to grow in self-respect, confidence, and self-trust. Every setback is an opportunity to grow in self-respect, confidence, and self-trust. It’s true we can’t prevent regrets, but we damn well can minimize and avoid most of them.

In this Self-Coaching episode, join me as I offer twelve ways to minimize regrets going forward while letting go of yesterday’s banana slips.

Bumble bees are not supposed to fly. Their body weighs too much, and their wingspan is too short. Thank goodness the bumble bee doesn’t know these facts.

What are the supposed “facts” that are holding you back? Sure, there are challenging circumstances in your life. But it’s not life circumstances that are holding you back or making you feel anxious or depressed, it’s your reaction to these circumstances

When it comes to happiness, we often hold ourselves back psychologically through self-imposed limitations and mental barriers, many of which stem from past experiences, cultural conditioning, or deeply ingrained, habituated thought patterns. Join me in this week’s episode as I explore some common ways we do this.

I’m sure you’ll agree that changing neurotic perceptions characterized by excessive worrying fear or emotional hyper-reactivity is easier said than done. In order to change the way you perceive and think about yourself and the world, it will take what we might call intentional effort. Efforts to reframe the thought patterns that have become reflexive habits while also managing and regulating your emotional/physiological responses.

Once you understand how you’ve been compromised by neurotic perceptions and thoughts, then it’s time to apply a Self-Coaching approach that will allow you to reverse the grip that irrational, anxious struggles have on your life.

Ever notice how silly someone else’s worry seems to you? How many times have you told someone to stop making mountains out of molehills? Unfortunately,// if worry has become your knee-jerk reflexive response to life challenges, then mountain-making is what you do best.

People make mountains out of molehills for a variety of psychological, emotional, and social reasons. This often stems from an inability to put issues into perspective, where minor inconveniences are perceived as major crises. And if you struggle with stress and anxiety, you’re probably no stranger to amplifying small problems, making them seem disproportionately ‘mountain’ like.

In everyone’s life there are challenges, some big, some small. When faced with adversity, hope can help us weather our storms. What exactly is hope? There’s no doubt that hope involves our emotions, but did you know that hope itself is not an emotion? Hope is a way of thinking. This means that hope—OR HAVING a hopeful attitude-- can be learned or coached.

It’s true that hope may not mitigate the inevitable challenges we must face, but hope isn’t about what’s coming around the corner, it’s about releasing ourselves from the despair of hopelessness in our present. Allowing us to live more courageously and unencumbered by pessimistic projections.

In this Self-Coaching podcast, I’m introducing a new format: weekly Self-Coaching challenges. My intention is to provide bite-sized, motivational instructions that can be practiced each week to enhance your Self-Coaching efforts. Today’s challenge is an exercise in ‘creating a bubble’ of separation from your world of “have-tos.” By practicing being more responsive to your ‘whims,’ you open yourself up to glimpse the life that awaits you.

Today’s Self-Coaching episode addresses the crucial role that optimism and pessimism have on your liberation from emotional struggle. Although I’ll be talking about optimism in next week’s podcast, I felt it was crucial to first address what happens when we identify with pessimism, “I’ll never get better,” “life’s too hard, I just can’t handle it.” This is the voice of pessimism, which has become an entrenched habit of ego identification—in a very real sense, you become your pessimism. And when this happens, you begin what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the neurotic thinking associated with insecurity begins to feel like it’s your voice—It’s not!