COACH 101: ONLINE COACHING RESOURCES
Activating the gear of healthy success
The ‘external observer’ technique is the ability to observe yourself from the outside without judgement, as if you were a curious kid playing scientist and observing a guinea pig. As you master this technique, you get a fascinating realization.
You realize for the first time what you truly are: a human being. I italicize being deliberately. It’s not as much of a ‘human being’, but really, ‘a human, existing’, a living creature on a journey through life.
You begin to understand your nature better, respect it more, embrace it, and extend the same understanding to others as well. You progressively feel less upset about the aspects of your mind-brain ecosystem that are not working well -just yet!
Why so? Because you are starting to understand how you function, viewing your mind-brain ecosystem from a more knowledgeable perspective. Just as a doctor couldn’t be upset with a patient for feeling unwell, you cannot be upset with yourself. You see less of the you-you that you are used to, and more of a generic human being that functions in a certain way. You start shifting attention to the HOW: how does this work and how do I fix it? You transition from a complaining patient to a professional doctor. In other words, you become accountable for who you are and who you want to be.
Once you are able to observe your true nature through the lens of a curious kid playing scientist, you can de-construct yourself.
In doing so, you’ll notice that you are essentially composed of three elements: thoughts, emotions, and a physical body.
Once you learn to observe yourself from the outside you realize that you are a ‘human, being’ essentially composed of three elements: thoughts, emotions, and a physical body.
Let’s analyze each of them so you know how to act on each of them in order to activate the gear of success.
The first thing to learn is that the three components of your human being are interrelated. This means that modifying one will impact the others.
Today, I’ll focus on thoughts, reserving emotions and the body for the next edition.
Thoughts, emotions, and body are interrelated and influence each other.
No need to control your thoughts
You may have tried to find ways to control your thoughts before, but it’s actually quite complex to be able to ‘control your thoughts’, as such.
The problem is that ‘thoughts’ is a very abstract concept, so thinking about your thoughts as thoughts is what makes things complicated. The other problem is if you are approaching this process as something you want to ‘control’, because wanting to control and repress will just put more pressure and won’t really bring you very far (I will cover why in some other occasion).
There is actually a much easier way to activating your gear of success.
My suggestion is that you don’t see thoughts as thoughts, but as language, which is something very specific upon which you can act. The way we communicate with ourselves is with language. So it is actually all about changing the language, not about controlling the thoughts.
The first big step to activate the gear of success that will help you move from the powerless to the empowered mindset is to be extremely mindful of how you communicate with yourself.
We subjectively interpret external information without even realizing that we are in a constant interpretation process crafted in our mind-brain ecosystem.
For this reason, we have a choice. Our choice comes from the fact that we can decide what language we use to build our reality, which is relatively easy to do.
The decision on the language we choose is one of the most critical aspects that will determine whether we position ourselves in the powereless or the empowered state. The language we utilize within our thoughts will have a direct impact on how our brainforest looks like.
The first big step to activate the gear of success to move from the powerless to the empowered mindset is to change the language you use to communicate with yourself.
How does this look like at a practical level?
Let’s see it with a couple of specific examples.
Situation 1: A potential client or investor did not move forward with the negotiation
Interpretation from the Powerless Mindset: I did not get the client / secure the funding, this is a clear indication that no one will ever be interested in my product.
Interpretation from the Empowered Mindset: That was an amazing opportunity to practice my pitch, gather some important feedback to refine my offer, which is clearly a step further for the company.
Situation 2: Ben did not reply to my message.
Interpretation from the Powerless Mindset: He doesn’t like me.
Interpretation from the Empowered Mindset: He is probably busy.
Since we are in the realm of interpretation, we have a choice. We can ideate a negative or a positive interpretation.
Paradoxically, none of them is more true or more false, but choosing one or the other will have very different consequences on the other two gears: your emotions and body.
I will explain more about that in the next post.
Key takeaways
- Once you learn to observe yourself from the outside you realize that you are a ‘human, being‘ essentially composed of three elements: thoughts, emotions, and a physical body.
- The way we communicate with ourselves is with language. Therefore, it is not about controlling the thoughts but about changing the language you use to interpret things.
- The first big step to activate the gear of success, and be able to move from the powerless to the empowered mindset, is to change the language you use to communicate with yourself.
- You can use your external observer to ask: “is this interpretation helping or hindering?” – and evaluate if the interpretation needs to be rewritten from the empowered mindset.
Ready for a more intensive, fast, and effective process? Discover how the Conscious Self-Rewiring Coaching Method can accelerate your personal growth. Book a complimentary 30-minute discovery call with Dr. Laura to explore the Healthy Success Coaching program. Coaching sessions online. In-person coaching in Dubai and the UAE.