Freedom from Confusion and Limitation
The CEO told her she was in jeopardy of losing her job. This was a puzzling turn of events in that the CEO thought she did excellent work in a key role. She’d been a straight A student in college and law school and loved her job.
The problem was she suffered with periods of uncertainty and hesitation. She often woke up and had to force herself to get up and go to work. Important responsibilities were not being completed in a timely, professional manner. She had a number of stories she used to try to understand her unfortunate predicament. She thought she was too inexperienced not really good enough for her role, unmotivated, depressed, and on and on.
In our first coaching session I suggested she stop telling herself those stories. While they made some sense to her, they really reinforced her resignation to a life with this problem. These stories were a considerable factor in her inability to resolve her problem. She was doing herself a serious disservice by allowing them to preoccupy so much of her consciousness.
Instead of focusing on these explanations of “why she had this problem,” I suggested we identify what she thought her problem meant to her future. In other words, I asked her to tell me about the unpalatable future she felt destined to be stuck with as a result of having this problem. We eventually arrived at this subtle belief, “I am destined to waffle on things I don’t know how to do until I am forced to guess.”
Who’d want to get out of bed and go to work with that reality to look forward to? When I taught her the practice of remembrance to help her find the voice of inner wisdom in her heart, she felt relieved to discover that her stories were not true. Her real concern was a fear of making a mistake and failing to deliver “straight A” work. It was a heavy burden to carry to work every day and worry about. She found strength and confidence in her heart that was bigger than that burden. She already knew that her boss just wanted her to tell the truth about what she could do and what she needed to learn. Now she was free to practice just being herself and learning what she needed to learn.
In the next few weeks she spent lots of time in remembrance and felt a tremendous amount of relief and freedom. It all came together when she realized one morning that she was not prepared for a big meeting with outside counsel and her boss. Instead of her normal feeling of dread, she was exhilarated at the idea of asking to reschedule the meeting until she was prepared. The truth worked – no one cared.
This may sound like a small thing to you, but to her it was huge. She said to me, “You have no idea how these two coaching sessions have helped me. You fixed me in an hour and forty-five minutes!” I responded, “No, you didn’t need to be fixed because you were never broken. You just needed someone to show you the self-imposed prison you were in and how to open the door to freedom. It’s been there all along in your heart.” She smiled and simply said, “Thank you.”
By Paul Werder, CEO, LionHeart Consulting Inc.
LionHeart Consulting offers customized support to improve performance without compromising what really matters. They have published a Self Study Guide, called Mastering Effectiveness that contains practical tools that will transform your experience of work. For additional details or to purchase, click here.
