become your inspiration

Are you happy with the way  you treat yourself and others?

This was one of the questions that I included for my self-reflection for 2018.

And then later I read this:

The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is.

What effect do we have on others? Have you ever thought about it? How do we treat ourselves and others?

We sometimes tend to treat others better than ourselves, sounds familiar to you?

As well, very often  as a response to stressful situations, our behavior changes drastically, we attack or escape. These are the basic responses that our brain has learnt.

My question to you is:
What is your behavioral pattern in stressful situations? Do you avoid or attack?

In order to start identifying your response patterns, below are the questions I invite you to go through:

1. Identify your inner response to stressful situations

2. Identify your emotions  (is it self-attack, self-defense or attacking others?)

3. Check what impact it has on your life? And on your relationships? How does your behavior or comments make other people feel?

One of my coaching clients has noticed that he is currently under stressful situation and it really affects his relationship with his wife. As a consequence, he sometimes is very rude with her, not caring, defensive, etc. And he hates it!

In stress, we tend to react in a way that we regret after. And later we start noticing the impact it has on our emotional health and our relationships.

And then we start blaming ourselves, BUT! Today I have another proposal for you.

Once we identify our (negative/attacking/defensive/avoiding) inner voice, our self-sabotage voice, the invite is to accept and give it a space.

This is where we make a shift, instead of hating this reaction, NOTIFY IT!

The shift is happening when we give our self-saboteurs their space, when we start seeing them, listening CONSCIOUSLY and deciding which  attitude we empower.

Do you remember the Avatar movie? They used to say to each other – “I see you”. This is what works with our self-saboteurs as well. Start noticing and seeing them, instead of hating, blaming, wanting to get rid of them! Because the truth is that, they WILL always COME back again and again to ¨protect¨ you!

Good news here is that once you start seeing them and noticing your reactions, you empower your other qualities that can see situation from the different angle.

Below I offer you the sequence to work with your inner self-saboteurs:

1. Identify it (internal dialogue and external emotion)

2. Give it a space (“I see you”)

3. Connect (what is behind of these voices? Is it fear? Is it self defend?)

5. Empower your real you! (what do I really need in this situation? How do I want to treat myself and people around me?)

Our self-saboteur has a lot of power in our lives! Our inner voices that as a consequence of our childhood, society, people we were surrounded, those voices gained a powerful position in our minds and in our lives, and those define the way we live today! And they appear when we are having hard times. Very often in stressful situations and when we are about to step outside of our comfort zone.

The below exercise is the one we practice a lot in Co-Active Coaching:

1. Identify in which situations, how often do self-discouraging messages and complaints appear in your head! What are those that poisoning you and your relationship with your beloved ones?
2. Give your self-saboteur a name or even better, visualize it! Imagine how does it look? Imagine how would it walk? If this would be an animal – which one it would be?
3. Ask what is their role in your life? You will be surprised but in majority of cases those are voices that protect us, their primary role is to keep us safe.

However we are paying a huge price for keeping us safe. Because our responsive emotions are usually negative, containing self-rejection or discouragement, usually we complain or attack others.

It is important to consciously identify our self-sabotage inner voices and allow ourselves to understand what is behind them. Once we identify, construct dialogue with them and observe every time they appear – this is when we are taking away their power.

Our inner dialogue is important because it is a big part of us!

However it is not our essence, we are much more than that.

And by identifying our self-saboteur, we consciously choose the way to treat ourselves and others. We consciously become more powerful and taking responsibility for our thoughts and reactions. Even in stressful situations. Especially in stressful situations, this is a gift by which we discover a lot about our inner world.
By listening our internal dialogue, feeling our emotions and after taking decision on how to proceed, we empowering ourselves and not letting our ¨self-saboteur¨ voices to lead our life and our relationships.

And finally, let’s ask ourselves: what do we practice in life?

Because what we practice, we become very good at it. Do we practice joy, compassion and self-love? Or do we practice anger, self-sabotage and complaints? What do you practice?

I invite you to go through the above exercises, to listen, to identify your inner self-saboteur and to start empowering your essence!

As always, I am happy to read your comments, thoughts on what has worked for you and become a part of your coaching process!

With love,

Jelena