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.