THREE FORMS OF RELUCTANCE: AN INTRODUCTION

I am starting this blog because I have been collecting notes and studies about reluctance and self coaching for 20 years and finally feel as though I have a few results to report. I still need more anecdotes and systematic studies but I have learned enough to warrant sharing some of the pearls in the archives. 

My own experience with reluctance has cropped up in three main areas that circumscribe the main domains of reluctance in everyday life: reluctance to express, reluctance to engage and reluctance to undertake.

Reluctance to express comes up in writers’ block, speaking up in groups, and voicing your opinions to friends and associates. It participates in reticence, that peculiar from of communication apprehension that is now so thoroughly studied in psychology. Communication anxiety has been defined as the fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons.

Reluctance to engage is about interaction with other people, especially  initiating contacts with strangers. My strongest experience with this reluctance form came later in life as I struggled as a neophyte direct sales man, an experience I have detailed in my book Fearless Cold Calling.

Reluctance to undertake or initiate is the third kind of reluctance and pertains to such personal change projects as smoking cessation, weight loss, starting a business or developing a new skill or mastery of some discipline that requires lengthy formal learning. These are areas in which self coaching is pertinent and I use this term to refer to all the tactics and strategies that one uses to attain self disciplined goals. 

I my self had a long battle with smoking cessation attempts that ultimately, after years of trying, led to a successful result. This was my first exposure to the difficulty of resolving inner conflicts (a typical scenario in reluctance work) where two sides of oneself are fighting for dominance and your body and mind and feelings are the battle ground.

Suffice it say, learning to regulate or discipline inner conflicts is the core issue in so much reluctance work and the work of self coaching. In postings to come, I will be reporting on some issues surrounding personal overcoming of one’s own disinclinations to change, the consequences of avoiding change, methods I have found to be effective in thwarting reluctance tendencies and research studies that throw light on the subject of other forms of self defeating inhibitions.