A conversation with yourself...

Think for a moment about the people in your life who have helped you to develop the most. And for those that come to mind, think of a moment in which you learned something important about yourself, maybe something new about yourself. What were they saying or doing at that time and how did it make you feel?

We develop ourselves with help from others that can take many forms. We can define this approaching as a general category that includes mentoring, teaching, and other forms of helping from the others. But most of the time, people who gave us advices takes a form of life coaching’s. Specifically, coaching should help a person articulate and move closer to their ideal self, their vision and dreams of their ideal future. As well as enabling them to change their behavior to be more effective and to build more resonant relationships.

So why don't people learn and change more? One answer is that most of the time, we try to fix others. And when that happens, people close down and change is superficial and short-term. If we want a positive change, we must focus on a model for encouraging sustained desired change.

And focus on two components: discovery of a person's hopes and dreams, and unleashing positive emotion in the coaching conversation.  All in positive life coaching is about motivating others to learn and change by Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence.

We develop throughout life. Those of us who are able to continuously develop toward sustained, desired change do so, in part, with the help of others. This form of helping is called coaching. The result of effective coaching is that a person feels excited, motivated and inspired to learn, change and try new things in life builds on concepts like Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence.

Effective coaching should result in a combination of three changes: (1) the person being coached finds, articulates or reaffirms his or her personal vision, that is their dreams and passion; (2) the person changes their behavior, thoughts or feelings to move closer to their personal vision; and/or (3) the person builds or maintains a resonant relationship with one or more people. We call this the Positive (PEA) and Negative Emotional Attractors (NEA) through Intentional Change Theory. Most efforts at trying to help or motivate others are what we call “coaching for compliance,” whether by managers, teachers, doctors, or parents. In this approach, the person is brought into the negative emotional attractor by someone trying to fix them or tell them how to change. An alternative is what we call “coaching with compassion” in which the person is brought into the positive emotional attractor by initially discussing their dreams, values, and invoking hope, mindfulness, compassion and even playfulness.

Based on decades of longitudinal and neuroscience research into coaching, the ethics of helping others consist of the opportunity gave to a person to make progress in their intentional change. Or in other words, helping them articulate and move closer to the attainment of their ideal self, their personal vision of their ideal future. Now this is an approach expert’s call coaching with compassion.

Now in coaching with compassion, one of the objectives of the coach is to establish what we call a resonate relationship with the person being coached. One centered on positive emotion, mindfulness, hope, and compassion. Getting the person excited about some ideal future that they envision and helping them maintain and persist in moving forward with that excitement as they move toward that change.

This approach we contrast with another often used approach to coaching describe as coaching for compliance.

Now, in coaching for compliance, it's a very different feeling. In coaching for compliance, the coach is trying to help the person being coached achieve some externally defined standard or objective. Maybe having them do what you would like them to do better, or more of, or less of.

Very, very different than the coaching with compassion approach, where the intent is to help that person achieve what it is they want to achieve in their life, right? We know from research that to make change stick, it has to be intentional, right? We also know that it has to start from that standpoint of articulating that ideal self and personal vision.

We find that this anchors a person in what we call the positive emotional attractor, right? Really thinking about and feeling not only emotionally but physiologically excited and enthused about that change effort. This is contrasted again with the negative emotional attractor that individuals often are placed into when they're coached for compliance. So for a true effective coach to help a person change, they have to move gracefully between that positive and negative emotion. Spending more time focusing on that positive emotional attractor. Sometimes a person is living in part of their ideal self. So part of coaching helps them to maintain it.

One of the things that we must know is how apply it to ourselves. The only way to make this real for us have to be the way we reflect about the developed of our life to this point.

One thing that's helpful is to think about your life in different stages or eras. So let's start from when you were a child and a teenager, maybe up to age 18. Another stage would be 18 to 24, maybe through college. Another might be 25 to 35, and consider ten year increments after that up until the age you are today.

And an easy way to record your reflections would be to create some sort of table, with some columns. Beginning on the left hand side, put the era or life stage. In the next column, put the names or initials of those people who come to mind. And then in the column to the right of that, begin to jot some notes down about how those people have helped you.

I hope you enjoyed the opportunity to think about people who have had a lot of meaning in your life. The next step for the exercise is to analyze possible patterns. So to do that, look for similarities or differences among all the people that have come to mind. When we look across life stages and consider, are there surprises there? Are there things that maybe you didn't expect in terms of the names and the ways that they've had an impact on your life?

Often when people make these reflections, they notice how the people in the early years of their life who have helped them the most tend to be family members, parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles. And as they get older, sometimes you add in teachers or coaches, early managers, or a spouse or partner, close friends. So what I am asking is if: do you see any similarities or differences within any of the eras and then across them? What this exercise helps us to do is to begin the process of diving inside as to our experiences with people who have helped us.  

This will help us convert the thoughts and ideas into something that's an emotional reality. This can Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence.

What is it that happens in the coaching process?  What’s the difference between the excitement of coaching with compassion, versus the feeling of obligation and often oppression that comes from coaching for compliance?

How you act and come across to others.

Looking at your strengths and your weaknesses, looking at the balances involved. Developing a learning plan and starting to think about experimenting and practicing with some change process is possible to define a moment in which you are ready to learn or change.

Hopefully, all people and reflects in your life will conspire to enable you to not just learn emotional intelligence but to become a better version of yourself.

Think beyond the Possible…