Ambivalence

What’s stopping you from making the changes you need to make in your career or your life?

You know you need to do things differently or do different things. What you have done for years isn’t working for you anymore and you're feeling anxious and frustrated. You have made changes before but they have lasted only a few weeks at best. You’re feeling stuck and don’t know what to do next.

Ambivalence to change can sometimes be an issue that team leaders face in their work Almost all of the coaching models assume the client has mentally committed to making a change and that resistance is not a feature of the conversation. This is often the case, which is why skills in helping team members make links between their emotions, cognitions and behaviours, are useful, alongside skills in challenging irrational thoughts or developing personal action plans. However, from personal experience, I find some people are stuck and are unable to move forward through the use of behavioural or cognitive behavioural interventions. They are stuck with behaviours which they do not see as problematic, but which others do. Or they may be stuck in ruminating on a problem without a clear commitment to take action. I certainly was at times in my executive career

In these cases, Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a useful evidence-based approach that can be employed by the coaching psychologist to help the individual build sufficient motivation to take action.

However, in eliciting permanent change it is important to remember that changing habits of action without changing habits of thought is likely to lead to a relapse of the actions

The secret to success is learning to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, then you're in control of your life. If you don’t life controls you. Anthony Robbins

The truth is that we have learned to link pain to change and pleasure to the status quo. If we make changes then we might fail. It’s better the devil you know.

To truly challenge ambivalence we must be aware of those limiting if-then beliefs, to disengage from the fear of failure or success or whatever other limiting beliefs we have about ourselves. We must learn to attach pleasure to the uncertainty that change brings. This requires us to go deep and not everyone is ready or able to do that… or wants to. It is true that successful people are prepared to do the things others don’t want to. Are you?????

#thebigshift #compassionateleadership #emotionalintelligence # #change #meaningfullife