I was coaching a guy the other day who came to me with a belief that he had a terrible lack of confidence. This was really affecting his ability to live the life he wanted to live, so of course I wanted to help him.
Now confidence, or lack of, is a gross generalisation… There have to be things that we are confident about or we would soon cease to exist, we wouldn’t have the confidence to eat something, or breathe.
And that’s why I love generalisations, when I hear them in conversation I look forward to challenging, because they just don’t stand up to even light scrutiny.
“No confidence? Not even when you are deciding what to eat?” stuff like that usually gets a response, because people don’t think of stuff like that as things that they are confident about. And this is the way, because what ever you do that you think is easy and doesn’t require any confidence, I guarantee that there are people out there wishing that they had as much confidence as you in making that decision.
So back to this guy. We identified some particular areas that were really limiting him, and I asked him a really simple question.
“Imagine you could go back in time to a time when you felt like that, and give yourself resources, that would have really helped you.”
Hindsight is 20:20, the cool thing is, if you know how, you can actually use hindsight to go back to the experience and modify it. The brain gets this really quick, and it will integrate the change in to future situations.
Unfortunately he said “No, if I had the resources I would have used them.”
Damn, ok let’s try something else.
“Do you know anyone that has the resources, the skills or characteristics that could help you?”
“No”
Double damn.
“How about anyone on TV, in the movies?”
“Yes, Jack Bauer”
“Cool, ok the guy from 24, right?”
“Yes”
“Ok, ok, so can you get a sense for what qualities Jack Bauer has that could have helped you in that situation? Good, ok so lets now go back to that situation that was a problem for you and let’s now take those Jack Bauer qualities and notice how you feel different.”
The behavioural change was obvious, his whole posture changed. Of course there’s more to the text here. However what was interesting here is that the guy was able to summon the resources he needed to make a change. And where did he get them? Not from Jack Bauer because he’s not real… he got them from HIMSELF! He had all the resources he needed to affect that experience, he just didn’t know how to access them. For him, Jack Bauer embodied that which he didn’t think he had.
I was then able to help him imagine himself in similar situations in the future (future pace), and to notice the triggers for the bad feeling that would now trigger the Jack Bauer response. So now when he even thinks about those situations, they just don’t generate the same response any more. He’s changed his personal history…. Not the facts, just the emotional response coded by the experience, or the anticipation of the future event.
So next time you find yourself thinking that you don’t have it in you to do something, or behave in some way, and you just can’t think about who does, see if Jack Bauer can help you.
Or Spider-Man
Or Erin Brockovich
Because whatever qualities they have, you access those yourself when you imagine that person behaving in that way.
Interesting, don’t you think?
