Breaking Through Pessimism with Self-Coaching Strategies for Leaders - 196

As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran , I help high performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives . Hello and welcome . For today I thought yeah , I thought we would end up digging into something that has come up in a couple coaching conversations that I've had recently .

And , for those of you who are new to the show , the people that I tend to coach are corporate executives , occasionally some entrepreneurs who I guess we could argue are still connected with a corporate structure , and then military special operations combat veterans , because for the most part , that represents my background .

Now , a couple of the conversations I've had recently have come out during teaching not coaching teaching a particular mental model that I use with individuals so that they , in turn , can self coach . Part of my goal in working with individuals is for them to be able to coach themselves .

It's not going to be quite the same , but I like to think that people can get yeah , people can get pretty far down the road on their own and , as counterintuitive as it might be to earning revenue , I actually do want people to be able to be self-sufficient as much as possible and then to , once they're past that initial coaching engagement whether it's with me

or with somebody else to be able to choose their next coach more from the perspective of a level up than it is from a perspective of dependence . Now , plenty of my coaching colleagues might disagree . Who knows ? It's not my place , but this is how I like to run my business .

Now in conducting this exercise , a couple of the conversations that I've had recently have brought out feelings of despair , feelings of hopelessness and pessimism . And , to address the elephant in the room , typically the type of person that I work with isn't engaged in that emotion .

That does not mean that they don't ever engage in that emotion , and I thought it would be useful for us to spend a little bit of time talking about that , because there's a really corrosive effect of pessimism , despair , hopelessness that if you don't bring it under control quickly or you don't process the underlying instigator of those feelings and we don't really

get a firm understanding of where is this coming from , why are you connected to this right now ? Well then that corrosive effect can start to spread into your organization and that can have some pretty powerful consequences . Most of my clients really truly want to be good strategic partners with their customers .

Most of my clients , for whatever reason , have businesses where long-term relationships are the norm , and I don't know about other coaches . Maybe other coaches have a different type of clientele but that's the type of clientele that I've noticed over time . I tend to work with that . There is this orientation to the possibility at least for a long-term relationship .

Whether that's because there are a limited number of players in the space or what have you , that tends to be what is going on , and so most of my clients really truly want to be good strategic partners . Additionally , my clients tend to be the types of individuals who want to be both personally , professionally and organizationally , making progress .

They want to improve . Now , what brought them to my doorstep in the first place might be more of a problem-solving orientation , like I've got a problem and not quite so much I want to go from good to great , but in either case , making progress and making improvement is something that they are deeply invested in .

Now , if we look at this type of person and a couple of the conversations that I've had recently , a couple of comments that have come out that caused me to think about . You know , I should probably spit this onto the microphone and let people think about it for themselves . And how does this show up in their own life ?

One comment was I can't be a strategic partner . And what I want you to do momentarily here is to imagine a set of brackets and that we inject the word ever so instead of I can't be a strategic partner , it turns into I can't bracket ever close , bracket be a strategic partner .

And this is really where that sense of pessimism , despair , hopelessness comes forward . And before we go any further , let's go ahead and consult yield dictionary .

So when we see the word hopelessness , we see having no expectation of good or success , not susceptible to remedy or cure , incapable of redemption or improvement , giving no reason to expect good or success , incapable of solution , management or accomplishment .

When we see despair to lose all hope , to become excuse me to be overcome by a sense of futility or defeat and with pessimism this was probably the most interesting for me an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects , conditions or possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome .

And then the second the doctrine that reality is essentially evil , the doctrine that evil overbalances happiness in life . That was that probably was the piece that captured my attention the most . Now , is it important whether you believe in good or evil ?

I don't think so , but more looking at these different definitions is trying to help us understand where is it that we in the world are not ? Where is it that we engage in a sensation that bad outcomes are unavoidable ? Where is it that we engage in a sensation that this cannot be fixed or cured or improved ?

Another one of the statements that was made by one of my clients is we aren't making progress .

And what's interesting when we look at it through the lens of hopelessness , pessimism , is that we begin to see that it's not simply that statement of we are not making progress which is actually can be factually accurate , but what is being unconsciously injected into the statement that the client is not recognizing because they're currently connected to sort of a

depressive sense of pessimism , hopelessness , despair , et cetera , is , instead of it being we are not making progress , it's we will never make progress .

That is the emotional undercurrent , that is the inference that is happening on an unconscious level , that is actually lending more weight to the sense of feeling defeated and oftentimes in those moments when clients are feeling defeated and just recently I had to politely and nicely get into a client's ass because he was talking about how a leopard can't change its

spots because he had a bit of a regressive moment in a conversation with somebody and he acted in a way that he wasn't proud of and he was down on himself .

And so it was my place as his coach to gently step in there and say hey , pull your head out of your ass , you are better than this , not in the sense of you shouldn't have misstep or you shouldn't have regressed , but in the sense that he was being defeatist .

He was really sort of honing in on , homing in on excuse me , this display that he was not proud of and thinking that all the progress that he's made over the last several months of which others have made note , but none of that was a real thing that none of it counts because there was a moment of regression .

And so for you , dear listener , there is something that you've been seeking to improve upon and it doesn't feel like you've made progress . Evaluate . Why is that ? Is it because you had a moment of setback ? Is it because you're just not accelerating as fast as you think you should , because neither of those invalidate the progress that you're making .

And so perhaps this is you know me , on a wider level being of service , saying hey , pull your head out of your ass . You're better than this . And by better it doesn't mean that humans are not allowed to have missteps , that they're not allowed to have moments of regression .

When I say that you're better than this , what I mean is that we want to pull you out of your defeatist pessimism . We want to reconnect you with a deeper understanding that you have been making progress .

Now , if you genuinely have set yourself a certain goal , a certain target , and , in true objectivity , you recognize that you've not been putting the work in to make progress , okay , fair . Well then , see where you're not making progress and begin to put the effort in .

Whether that's a physical , tangible goal , or whether that's more of a how do I carry myself in the world or what is the attitude that I take in my day to day affairs . Perhaps it's a relational goal , in terms of how you treat somebody else or treat others in general , or perhaps it's an inward relation when are you too harsh and cruel to yourself ?

In either case , if you genuinely , objectively , have not been making progress , that's fine , that's fine . Note where you're not making the effort and put the effort in If there's a belief that standing in the way , get clear on what that obstruction is and look at it really deeply , look at it and grapple with the significance of it .

Are you actually maybe connected to a sense of pessimism , a sense of hopelessness , a sense of despair that it's futile ? We so often convince ourselves that something is futile because we downgrade the potential reward of the change we are attempting to make . Why ? Because change is hard .

That's why , so frequently , that expression the juice had better be worth the squeeze can be such a wonderfully appropriate and juicy expression . To be clear about what is the benefit of the change that you are attempting to make , so that when the effort shows up , the pinch , the struggle shows up , that you are clear in your mind .

Okay , yes , this is why I'm doing this , this is why I'm going through the hard work , this is why I'm facing the discomfort and if you're one of my clients listening to this and many of my clients do this is the process right . You are facing difficult things .

Sessions with your dear coach are not always easy , because we're looking at elements that are can be excuse me deeply transformative . And in that process of transformation , very frequently the old way has to die and that tends to come with , at the very least , a lot of pain , and quite often also tackled in with there is a lot of suffering .

Pain and suffering are different things , but we often stack suffering on top of pain , which is also part of the process of opening our awareness . Where is it that we are creating suffering ?

And I would say that if we are tapping into a sense of despair , a sense of pessimism that we have unknowingly been adding in a fair amount of suffering narrative , we look back at the client that was talking about a leopard not being able to change its spots because he acted in a way that he wasn't proud of .

He's engaging in a suffering narrative that , oh gosh , well , this will never get better . I don't have it in me . I can't really change myself when , in reality , the 360 that was done for him , there were people that actually explicitly commented on being impressed how he has been able to change himself .

So we engage in these poor me suffering narratives , and I do it too , hopefully , if I mean , if this is your only exposure to the show . Well , but hopefully , even in this show , you can recognize that I am not trying to come from some holier than now place . I am not the coach who is out there saying , oh , I've got it all figured out , follow me .

I am the person who , most of the time if you were to ask my friends and my wife and my family , I'm sure that they would point out areas where I fall down on this but most of the time I am the individual who attempts to look at things , who attempts to be curious and willing to put myself in the harms way of perhaps doubting whether I have the answer

or whether I'm doing things the right way or whether I'm the good person that I think I am or would hope to be . It's not that we need to have the answer all the time . Is it nice to have the answer occasionally or most of the time ? Yeah , probably .

But for us to be willing to acknowledge when we don't have the answer , for us to be willing to acknowledge that , okay , I'm not going to be 100% If I act in a way that causes me to feel guilt or shame because I've regressed on the progress that I've been trying to make in a certain endeavor , take it on board , face it , keep your eyes open , look really

deeply , look at what happened in that instance and then also begin to recognize where you are adopting this suffering , poor me , self-defeatest attitude .

And then , if you are a leader and I would actually argue and thanks to my coaching institute for helping to drive this one home you're a leader , whether you have the title for it or not , because even if you are quote unquote only an individual contributor , the way that you show up to work , the way that you show up to your family , the way that you show

up to the people in your life , has an impact . Now , it's quite likely fair to say that if somebody's title is president or CEO or you know some formal leadership title , that that effect is simply magnified and intensified , at least inside of an organization .

But there are plenty of individuals that have no high rank on their business card and yet have tremendous influence in the organization because of the charisma that they bring , their ability to magnetize people to them , because of how they make people feel or potentially because of their technical expertise , even if their rank is relatively low .

So people sit up and take notice and so , regardless of whether you have the title for it or not , I would say you are in a position of leadership and that the thing to bear in mind is how are you leading others when you are connected to a sense of despair , pessimism , suffering , and what would you like to change about that ?

Okay , that's it for today . Hopefully this was short and punchy for you and hopefully it was useful . I would love it if you would like subscribe , hit the smash button of likes or dislikes or I don't know whatever technological stuff , and share it with people that you think would benefit or don't . It's totally up to you .

Until next time , take care of each other .