Are Your Beliefs Holding You Back From What You Want?

Working with a client this morning prompted me to write this blog.

My client recognised that for all of her adult life to date she had been rebelling against her parent's frugal behaviour with money when she was a child.

One particular vivid memory was: 'My Mum used her own baking chocolate on cheap plain biscuits' and 'I decided then that I would always be in a position that meant being able to buy nice tasting biscuits'.

My client recognised she had behaved at the opposite extreme of spending all her money quickly based on one belief that 'I shouldn't have money' and another 'I feel more comfortable when I do not have money'.

Our beliefs are very powerful and do an excellent job at determining our behaviour even when we don't consciously want to carry out a particular behaviour

Does this sound familiar?

What behaviours do you want to change because on a conscious intellectual level you know that the behaviour is stupid or childish?

If we are not able to make changes at a conscious level then we need to look to our unconscious beliefs for evidence of what is driving the unwanted behaviour, such as, spending all of our money.

When I asked my client what she wanted she said: 'To take more pleasure from saving personally and at work' and 'To strike a balance between spending and saving'.

Our core beliefs about ourselves, others and the world we live in are often formed before we are 10 years old.

In order to make changes in our behaviour we need to work on changing our beliefs.

How do we do that?

I help my clients using a combination of Solution Focused questioning to understand what they wants - specifically:

• Hypnotherapy - Helps me to access the client's unconscious mind which is more accepting of new ideas for consideration
• Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) visualisation and linguistic techniques
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) - Offers tools and techniques for shifting thinking patterns

Stop for a moment and write down a list of unwanted behaviours which you have noticed yourself doing in the last month.

Think about which beliefs you currently have which are driving those behaviours.

Think about why you want to change - What do you have to gain? This will help to rev up your motivational intent.

Start by doing the visualisation exercise on my previous blog - Visualisation Is Key To Making Your Changes Stick.

In the next few days, as you think of this more, you will - often quite subconsciously - start to think about what you need to do to make the changes that you want to make for yourself.

If you have found this blog to be useful please leave a comment or if you would like help please get in touch via our website at West of England Coaching and Counselling, via email at enquiries@westofenglandcoachingandcounselling.co.uk or by calling us on our confidential answering machine service at 01761 237 400.

Coaching For Solutions To Relationship Issues

Do you have what seems to you to be an intractable problem which involves other people either professionally or personally?

In certain areas of life, such as, engineering, IT and medicine a problem focus is required so that weaknesses and what went wrong can be understood before a solution can be put in place.

Increasingly in life the most interesting and potentially significant problems are about people - especially their difficulties and challenges in communicating with each other.

Change programmes at work show that the Number 1 challenge is most often communication between the workforce.

Research also shows that when it comes to people issues analysis of the problem rarely assists in finding the solution.

Rather, by focusing on the problem you become problem-focused with an excellent strategy for defining it.

Understanding why things are like they are does little to help you to decide what to do next.

Negative emotions brought about by people interaction issues, such as fear, anger, frustration, feeling overwhelmed and misunderstood do not pave the way for a clear solution.

Following the 'What you focus on is what you get', neuroscience helps us to glean that focusing on what the solution is can help enormously with problems relating to people interactions.

The solutions-focused approach is used in all of our work. We start with some initial questions to elicit the issues as you see and experience them and then move forward to articulate specifically what you do want - your goals and objectives - in positive and measurable terms.

We move forward by scaling where you are now and identifying what is already good and what is already being done right.

This helps us identify what already works for you - so you can aim to do more of it - as well as highlighting resources, strengths which can be used to move further forwards to help you gradually achieve your goals and objectives at your own pace.

We also work on the premise that problems rarely happen in all contexts. Identifying times when problems do not occur for you helps us to think about transferring this knowledge, skills and so on to other contexts where the problem does happen for you.

One example of this came to light for a client of mine last night when he realised he felt calm and in control the days after a good night's rest when he was not up until 1am emailing.

This had the knock-on effect of him being calmer with his wife and children the next day which subsequently helped his wife feel warmer towards him, more supportive and so on.

The solutions-focused approach is a positive and pragmatic way to progress with people issues and problems communicating and interacting.

Your challenge is to apply this approach in your own life and if you so wish let us know how you get on.

Our mission is to teach you an approach which you will find useful again and again in your life.

If you would like to know more about receiving solutions focused coaching or counselling please visit our website to see our full range of services West of England Coaching and Counselling.