Are you holding yourself back?

Are your beliefs limiting your potential?

Coaching is all about seeing things from another perspective. Most people develop a pattern of behaviours that remains largely unchanged for much of their life. These patterns are usually formed during childhood and early adulthood, where we are learning about the world and people. These patterns also contribute to our beliefs and how we see ourselves and others. Some of these beliefs can be negative and limit our potential to do many things, including being confident, successful and even happy.

When working with a client, we spend time getting a clear picture of what they want from the coaching. It may be that they have a specific goal at work that they want to achieve. Once we have built a detailed description of this, it’s useful to put a plan in place of how they are going to achieve it. Then, I might ask what could get in the way from a successful outcome. After looking a list of obstacles like money, staff, time and finding ways of overcoming them or finding potential solutions, I ask again what might get in the way. Very often, the client will smile and say “me”.

When we explore this, there can be a number of reasons that surface that lead the client to believe that they are “not good enough” or “don’t have the necessary personality” to achieve the goal. They may believe that they are not “that sort of person”, or that they “couldn’t possibly do that”. This is where coaching is immensely useful. Very often, as a client utters those words “I am not”, “that’s how I am” or “I can’t”, they realise  how much they are holding themselves back. Sometimes I will ask “according to whom?” or “really?”, but often they don’t need a lot of further input. Just the realisation is enough to shift their thinking and open up some possibilities.

When you next think you couldn’t possibly do something, ask yourself if that is true, or is it simply a belief that might benefit from being challenged.