Carol The Coach Blog

Have you ever noticed that we give away our power? We allow others to take control of our emotions by giving others too much power!

Elanor  Roosevelt said it best and I paraphrase when she said “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”

The next time someone is angry, disappointed or in conflict with you….apply the following tools to put it all in perspective.

The Art of Dealing with Conflict Without the Criticism

Conflict in a relationship can be scary because anger and criticism are typically at the root of conflict and most of us have not had formal training in how to resolve it.  Our parents did not teach us to handle conflict appropriately.  Instead, we were taught what not to do if we felt angry, e.g. don’t say bad words, don’t hit her, just ignore him, turn the other cheek, etc.  Today, I am going to encourage you to think about adding a life skill to your repertoire that will benefit you in most of your interactions with others.  The skill is to learn how not to take the criticism that accompanies conflict personally.  This is very difficult to do, but once you learn the skill you will be forever changed in your interactions with others.  Now, I know this may be confusing to you, but here’s how to stop taking criticism personally.  

When people are in conflict with you there is usually an inherent criticism.  Human beings oftentimes take things WAY too personally when this occurs.  I am going to ask you to do two things when conflict occurs:

§  When criticized, look for the behavior that is offensive and ask yourself, “Would it be helpful to change it?”  Most likely there is a behavioral change you can make to improve the situation.

§  The next thing to say to yourself—and certainly it is the most difficult challenge—is, “This is not about me, this is about __________.” (Put the person that is criticizing you in the blank.)  In other words, you will be telling yourself that this is not about you, this is about the person sharing the message. 

 

When human beings take things too personally they usually find themselves feeling lousy as a friend or a partner.  It can move them into a place where they berate themselves for all their inadequacies.  That’s the process that needs to stop.  That immobilizes us in the process of conflict.  When you repeat the key sentence, “This is not about me, this is about _______”  you don’t take on that feeling of inadequacy and you move through the conflict with more focus and confidence. 

 

 Let’s look at some examples. 

§  Your boss yells at you because the department isn’t producing.  You glean from his conversation that you need to come up with a creative solution.  Then, as he continues to berate you, you practice saying, “This isn’t about me, this is about Mr. Hill.”  Most likely, Mr. Hill is reacting to previous feelings of frustration from an earlier occurrence or event.

§  Your husband yells at you for spending too much money on groceries.  You “file” his concern so that you will be respectful of his worry, but as the liturgy continues and he starts faulting you for being late and not keeping up the house or scheduling the kids’ activities too tightly.  You remind yourself that his criticism is about something that has to do with him.  Again, you say to yourself, “This is not about me, this is about him.”  You don’t react to his act of ranting and raving and you don’t feel like the “whipping post” that partners typically feel after a fight with their spouse. 

 

Conflict is inevitable and it is important to respect the concerns, but most of the verbiage that occurs has nothing to do with you.  It is really about the sender.  Try to remember this so you can avoid personalizing it.  You will be a healthier individual and the conflict will be more focused because you won’t be reacting to issues that weren’t even a part of the original concern. 

 

So, again, I am going to remind you the key statement is, “This is not about me, this is about _____.”  Write it down so you won’t forget it.    Now, I know that you will have an opportunity to use it in the next couple of weeks, because conflict is a normal part of life.  In later blogs you will learn how conflict can actually bring you closer to your spouse or friend.  Conflict is a good thing, and I will show you how to use it to get your needs met.  

 

Let me know what you think!  Make sure to watch my video on you tube on conflict…under Carol the Coach

 

 

 

Are You Really Ready to Set Your Goals?

 

Are you one of those people who have certain goals that never seem to get accomplished?  Have you been saying for years that you will lose weight, get out of an unhealthy relationship, get up earlier or exercise and you haven’t been able to effectively master the task?  Don’t beat yourself up about not reaching your goals.  You likely have not created a plan that fits your lifestyle.  People fail at achieving their goals because of three very common reasons:

·         Lack of motivation.  Before you even get started, check your motivation.  Out of a possible one hundred percent, how motivated are you to really work at achieving your goals?  Do you really want to change?  I have clients that say they do, but when I assess their motivation, they want the goal without the work.  Give it a percentage, and if you’re under 85%, you are not ready to accomplish your goal. 

·         Assess your mindset.  Do you immediately focus on how you have failed in the past, how you can’t succeed, and how you are doomed to fail because you focus on what you will lose as opposed to what you will gain.  If you aren’t positive about the changes you are about to make, you are not ready to meet your goals.  Clients sit in my office indicating that they want to attain a certain goal, but their mindset is that the work will be too agonizing.  I have a magic wand in my office and I frequently ask my clients if they would like to use it to accomplish their goal.  They grin and tell me they wish they could have a magic wand or could be hypnotized to get, or keep, themselves motivated.  Although I do hypnotherapy, I never work with a client who is not willing to go 110% to get the work done.   Discipline, coupled with a positive attitude, builds the character assets needed to accomplish your goal. Look at your goal with excitement.  It’s important to have a positive attitude about your mission.  Are you the type of person who sets a goal and then avoids it?  To accomplish a goal, you have to psych yourself into wanting it.  Don’t look at it with dread, but as an opportunity to enjoy the changes.  Be excited that you have the knowledge, ability, skills and energy to change.  If you can’t muster positive energy, you won’t be able to stick with a plan for obtaining your goals. 

 

·         Are your goals global or specific?  Your goals need to be broken down into doable steps.  People want the quick fix—they don’t want to rely on small steps that contribute to getting the job done.  Small steps are the key to a good action plan.   Create a lifestyle that supports small goals.  If you really want your life to be different, you need to have an action plan that keeps the goal at the forefront of your daily life with very doable, accomplishable steps. 

 

What’s your plan for achieving your goal?  

·         Assess your motivation.

·         Write it down.

·         Break it into small steps.

·         Focus on what you will be gaining, as opposed to what you will be losing.

·         Be positive! 

 

If you meet these criteria set before you and follow the plan, I have no doubt that you will be successful in reaching your goals. 

So now what are you goals and what are you doing to make them happen.  

Have you formed the right mindset to make them real.

You must have the right motivational energy to produce results….find ways to get excited and blog me and tell me what you did.

Carol the Coach

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I am the believer of miracles….In may of 02 I sat with a colleague drinking a margarita and told her that I believed we could change the lives of millions of women if we could……just get ourselves on Oprah!

So we spent hours putting a women’s manual together of the more than 2000 groups that we had facilitated and all the exercises that had helped them. I sent the manual weekly for over a year only to find out that Harpo did not accept packages! What happenned to the 50 + manuals that we sent?

I had two people hand deliver the manual to producers of the show with no call back.

I made numerous calls with no real response.

And then last week, I emailed Deborah Way, one of the editors of The O Magazine and her assistant called back to say I could submit my articles for consideration.

So what is the meaning behind this BLOG? You must never give up because life continues to open doors but it seemingly is never on “our time.”

What goals are you working on and what steps are you taking to make them happen?

Each week I invite you to join me in taking your life to the next level and put out the energy to make it happen. As you know there is no guarantee that Ms. Way will like my submissions but “what I know to be true” is that when I put it out there…..it goes somewhere….and when it is intended to help others….it will always come back!

All the best!

Carol the Coach

Life has its ups and downs and I recently found out that my “Sex, Love and Relationship Show” got cancelled after almost 2 years. The bad news is that I loved that show! The good news is that I am viewing it as an opportunity to go bigger and better and take the idea to a larger audience.

I am not sure whether I will look for syndication, or will do some TV or do an internet gig but whatever I decide….one thing for sure…I know that a setback is really an opportunity for bigger and better things and that is why I think this next article will help you to see it from my perspective.

After you read the article, I would love to hear how adversity turned into opportunity in your world.

Resiliency:Adversity or Opportunity

You Decide

 

 Most people who come to therapy have been traumatized by rejection, abandonment and other adversities.  When they make their first appointment, they share their story which brings them validation and acknowledgment.  I encourage them to feel the feelings, and then I help them to decide how they want their life to be different.  Most often, they tell me they want their pain to end.  “Ending the pain” requires that they acquire a set of coping skills to strengthen their ability to move on and better their life. 

 

Some people seem to be born with a resiliency that allows them to deal with life while others have to learn this skill.   I ask myself why do some people succeed while others, who are equally as passionate, falter?   Why do some people grow stronger from their adversities while others allow their crises to beat them down? 

 

Each person is different, but there are clearly mindsets and strategies that separate the winners from the losers and the successful from the disparaged.    When people possess the strength of resiliency they are able to move past their situation and grow stronger.  Resiliency is a mindset.  You aren’t necessarily born with it, but you can learn it by modeling others or cognitively changing your thinking so that you shift from the negative toward the positive.

 

Healthy individuals can weather all sorts of trauma, loss and disappointments if they can rationalize it as a “part of life”. People with little resiliency seem to take disappointment very personally and have difficulty letting go. .Part of resolving life’s issues is feeling the feelings, letting them go and then moving on and trying again to find success in life, love or business.

 

Assess your resiliency by and decide what areas you need to strengthen:

·         Do you fight change, or embrace it?  Do you ask yourself if you can benefit from an experience? This allows you to gracefully accept a change instead of fighting it.  Use it to your advantage!

·         Do you ask yourself what you can learn from a situation so that you will grow stronger and not necessarily repeat the same mistakes?

·         Do you balance your needs with the needs of others?  There will be many opportunities for you to pick the choice that benefits you.  How do your decisions affect your environment?  We have spent the last two decades focusing on “self”.  Making healthy decisions means balancing what is best for you with the needs of others.   Ask yourself honestly, “Can I achieve this goal without compromising the needs of my loved ones or coworkers?”

·         Do you know your strengths, gifts, and talents?  Do you use them with confidence?  As Marianne Williamson says, “Playing small doesn’t serve the world.”  Identify your positive qualities and then use them to define who you are. 

·         Do you accept your imperfections?  This often requires that you learn how to work with them.  Many people spend their lives hiding from the truth.  Acknowledge your weaknesses and develop a strategy to cope with deficits. If you lack follow-through with goals, create structure that includes one daily task, and a time to tackle it.  Working with weaknesses means that you know what areas to work on and you take it to the next level to create a strategy of dealing with it.

·         Do you build relationships? This requires a mutual give-and-take of energy. Do you regularly spend time fortifying relationships with others?  Are you able to ask others for their time and energy? Assess whether you’re a giver or a taker, and practice the opposite interaction.  If you’re a social isolationist you will need to practice the skill of interaction.  Call someone to connect, ask someone to lunch or e-mail a colleague to check in.  Do this with regularity.  

 

If resiliency doesn’t come natural, develop the coping skills to maneuver through life. You get to chose whether you give in to the pain or learn from it and let it go.  If you are the type of person who is still licking your wounds after several years, then you will need to make the effort to view what happened to you in a different way!

 

Carol the Coach

I am really excited to ask you to participate in an experiment with me. I believe that we can achieve anything  if you think positively, feel the feeling of “already accomplishing it” and then living in the gratitude of what already is.

Sounds simple doesn’t it and yet feeling the feeling can be difficult if you have limiting beliefs that stop you from believing in you and believing that you can do anything.

Now here is the challenge….I am absolutely convinced that I should have another radio show and yet there seems to be many daunting tasks to  getting the job done.

I must confess that I have said to my self that this town may not have any more opportunities for me in radio……Now that sure is playing small and so I am going to document from this day forward all the things that I am going to do to prove to you (and myself) that I will have another gig in the near future.

Now what I would like for you to do is follow my progress and join my team…and challenge yourself to take your life to the next level by opting for something in your life that is “extra”ordinary.  What goals would you like to accomplish and what do you need to do to make it happen. Follow my blog and my video blogs on the web site and through You Tube to make it happen.

Keep the faith and watch the magic unfold as we take our life to the next level!

“Faith”fully yours,

Carol the Coach

Welcome! I am Carol Juergensen Sheets LCSW  PCC and I wanted to share lots of valuable information that I typically give to clients who come in to see me for personal life coaching or psychotherapy. This will be my own personal space disignated just for us to dialogue about life. I have been writing as a columnist for almost 10 years.

I also am doing a radio show on WIBC on 93.1 on Saturday nights from 8-10PM. It is an advice show called Sex, Love and Relationships with Carol the Coach. I hope you get a chance to check it out!

In the meantime, I would love  for you to take this test that measures your resiliency.  It will help you measure your strengths and I am all about strengths….so take the test  and see for yourself!

The Personality Inventory Test

 

It is important to be well balanced and know your own strengths so that you can “walk your talk” in your own life. Answer the following questions to assess your own life skills.  

 

This quiz will help to learn more about your personality and how it affects your ability to manage your life effectively.  Below are ten indicators of a well adjusted “life manager”.  These indicators are reflective of your personality style.  How many of the ten life skills do you employ in your day-to-day life? 

v      Self-Enjoyment

1. Do you enjoy life, especially the simple moments?  People with a healthy zest for life are able to get excited when they walk outside, watch their children play, or pick up a good book.

v      Flexibility

1. Are you flexible?  People who go with the flow and adapt to daily changes manage their lives more effectively. 

v      Assertiveness

1. Do you ask for what you need?  Successful life managers have no qualms about delegating their work and then trusting in the process.  Contrary to what you might think, good life managers do not micromanage their employees, their children, or their spouses. 

v      Goal Setting

1. Do you strive to meet new goals?  A person who wants to better himself is always in the process of self-actualization.  They typically challenge themselves to move out of their comfort zones to experience new opportunities for growth. 

v      Reframing

1. Are you a positive person?  It is important to see the good in any situation.  This requires that you train yourself to learn from difficulties and struggles and stay positive about what they can teach you. 

v      Self-Fulfillment

1. Do you contribute to life?  Every individual needs to believe that they make a difference in this world.  Take a look at your relationships.  At work, within your family, and in your community.  Do you see yourself as having a positive impact on them? 

 

v      Mindfulness

1. Are you mindful of the moment?  It is essential to be able to spend time “just being”, whether you do this through meditation, prayer, yoga, or any activity that allows you to calm yourself and empty your mind of all the clutter that occurs on a daily basis. 

v      Feeling Identification

1. Do you recognize your feelings and deal with them appropriately?  People who are comfortable with their feelings are less likely to repress (store them), suppress (stuff them), or minimize them.  As a result, they not only have a greater sense of how they feel, but they also end up being more connected to their true selves.  When you recognize and express feelings appropriately, you have better self-esteem and you build better relationships. 

v      Balanced Lifestyle

1. Do you pace yourself and have a manageable load?  A well-adjusted life manager takes the opportunities, but balances them with rest, relaxation, and stimulation.  They do not take on too much; consequently, their energy is well maintained for their projects, family, friends, and themselves.  In other words, they don’t feel fragmented. 

v      Self-Esteem

1. Do you consider yourself to be well adjusted?  A person who has a healthy self-concept is happier and more successful in life. 

 

SCORING:  If you possess eight out of the ten life skills, you are doing a great job of managing your life.  If you identified five- to seven of the life skills that you are currently using, you might want to look at some of the other skills and work on adding them to your repertoire to make life more manageable.  If you use less than four of these life skills, you will likely need some support from a professional coach to help you to shape your life differently.