How to Proceed Towards Goals via Self Coaching

I have found in striving for goals (writing for publication or weight loss goals) that journal keeping helps inspire and direct.

My self communions in this journal consist of admonishments and advice giving and many ”you shoulds” that have a motivating impact on getting me to follow the acts necessary to fulfill my intentions.

By returning every day to these self directed dialogues, I find that compliance brings a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Non compliance inevitably brings guilt, frustration and new resolves to “to better”.

Much as an external coach would do, these self administered directives seem to lead me down a more virtuous path, or at least one that I believe is preferable to simply responding to every impulse or passing temptation that invites giving in rather than staying the course.

Working with a coach, you develop a goal and a plan of action for reaching that goal. Weekly meetings ensure accountability. But working with yourself, you can do the same thing, and use record keeping as your accountability device.

Self coaching is a kind of self empowerment process where you rely on your own resources rather than an outside expert to initiate and carry out strategies that you know are necessary to gain positive outcomes.

Some of the resources you need to help yourself in your goal strivings are: record keeping; perspective building….coming up with meanings that help motivate and inspire; role models…finding others who are doing what you want to do and finding out how they work; self contracting…setting particular tasks and a time limit for their attainment; recognition rituals…finding ways to reward yourself for doing what you say you think is important or that you ‘should’ do.

The best resource I have found is journal keeping.  As far as I am concerned the results are in: more self knowledge via journalizing increases control over your actions. Many of our beliefs about ourselves are taken from others.  But the ones that really count in terms of their efficacy are the beliefs derived from your own experience.  Keeping a journal allows you to encapsulate the lessons from you experience so as to provide empowering beliefs.

These are just some of the factors that help you move forward when the services of an outside coach are not available or are out of reach financially.

Negating the Fear of Disapproval to Optimize Need Fulfillment

It has become a common place in therapeutic circles to argue that fears of disapproval disconnect people from their desires. And when that happens, frustration and self downing are the inevitable result. How could one be so cowardly as to sacrifice important needs?

Any cursory examination of reluctance scenarios shows how this happens. Think of the following examples:

l. A young man spies a beautiful girl and seeks to make a connection; but, the woman gives no sign of welcome and in fact seems positively uninterested and/or offended at his attentions. Result, he backs off for fear of “giving offense.”

2. A salesperson who aspires to achieve a management position is offered an opportunity to give a talk to a gathering of marketing experts. Unfortunately, he fears he will be embarrassed and humiliated by the experience and politely declines thereby passing up a chance to satisfy his ambitions.

3. A writer of my acquaintance could not finish a manuscript that would have furthered his writing career because he feared his ideas were not “good enough” and would only garner contempt from a potential audience. Time was wasted in making the attempt that did not come to fruition and consequently he was bitter at himself for, in his words, “giving in to his worst fears.”

What all these examples have in common is avoidance brought about by negative assumptions of what might happen if one does not put his or her best foot forward. The connection is between poor self confidence and a lack of readiness to engage in a public presentation of self.

And avoidance of seeking feedback shows also with  fear of disapproval. Research results suggest that undergoing a positive or negative experience subsequently influences motives in feedback-seeking decisions. In other words, fear of disapproval, or of rejection and failure, sustains avoidance of feedback, no matter how skilled or competent one is.

A second shared element is the follow-on of self criticism that erupts after a failure to exploit an opportunity now lost. Negative self evaluation tends to further restrict a readiness to try unless there is an awakening to the real trade off: for every opportunity avoided, one’s chance of eventual public success is diminished.

It is far better to become persuaded that the risks of rejection and disapproval are of small moment when compared to the values and benefits sacrificed.

“Adventure means risking something; and it is only when we are doing that that we know really what a splendid thing life is and how splendidly it can be lived…The man who never dares never does; the man who never risks never wins. It is far better to venture and fail than to lie on the hearthrug like a sleepily purring car. Only fools laugh at failure; wise men laugh at the lazy and the too-contended and at those who are so timid that they dare undertake nothing.”

Quoted in The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, Stein and Day Publicshers, NY, 197, p. 22.

The Role of Insights and Reframes In Behavior Change

When I look back at two of my success stories, stopping smoking and losing weight, the lessons that stand out are: first, a blinding new insight can bring immediate change. And second, an accidental discovery of a new term or frame work of viewing can spark another immediate change.

In both cases, the experience heightened my interest in finding the new understanding that brings about a mastery of resistance.  But mutative insights, insights that bring a change in action, are very rare. I can only recall one in my lifetime. I keep looking for what Yalom (in his book, Existential Psychotherapy) calls the mutative insight, but so far it remains very allusive.

More common is a new term or way of viewing a current challenge that brings action change. In my weight loss story, I was losing steadily when I hit a plateau that lasted weeks and perhaps months. After losing 25 pounds the usual way…i.e. less intake and more exercise, I became stuck.

 One day, while reading a newspaper story about our recent Republican president G. Bush, I cam across the term’feckless’, meaning ineffective, in describing our recent president. I was not familiar with the term but once I looked it up and compared myself with the president  in an unflattering way as a ‘feckless’ weight loser, I immediately bore down and got off my plateau.

In the past several days, I came across a book review in the NY times that mentioned the term ‘Kafkarna’ to describe an absurdity impossible to explain rationally. This is the Czechoslovakian term for Kafkesque and immediately resonated with me.  For I have long felt about my personal agenda pertaining to goal achievements of various sorts, that while that agenda had many benefits, and was definitely approved by my Better Self, I was not ‘doing it’.

The term that Aristotle in describing this phenomena was Akrasia, or that condition of character where one knows what should be done but is unable to do it. In essence, it is lack of willpower for when intentions come calling but their fulfillment falls short.

For years I feel I have suffered from this particular malaise and now I am faced with the hope that reframing this condition as Kafkarna will some how release me from the inertia of lazyness and the immobility of fear. For, after all, the solution is to act and stop dithering. I will report back soon.