Past, Present & Future Results: Performance Coaching
By Sonia Khera
Does your past limit your future or can it be used to achieve great results? Is past performance a good indicator of your future? Ever wondered why some people can achieve great results the first time, every time? Do you believe personal success is based on the laws of karma, luck or pure chance and rarely to do with sheer effort paying off? If any of these beliefs ring true then perhaps you are too busy hosting your own ‘pity party’ with you being the guest of honor. More seriously, you could be playing it small and not living life to your fullest.
Do you falter at the starting blocks by doubting or procrastinating, just so you don’t have to take risks and deal with the change it may bring? Are you in denial of what you want, where you want to be and who you could be? Are you limiting your expectations here and now because of your experience to date? In a nutshell, are you wasting your potential and paying for it personally and professionally, day in, day out?
Thinking the odds as stacked against you and that you are not in control of your success factors is a commonly held self-limiting belief. As Nelson Mendela quoted ‘our worst fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. Playing small doesn’t serve the World. We are born to make manifest our full potential. As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same’.
Human nature knows how to shine naturally, without effort. So when was our transformation from silkworm to butterfly or in our case, child to adulthood sabotaged? When life happened?
It is safe to assume that most of us were all once happy, carefree and contented. As babies and toddlers we could do no wrong, we were accepted for our uniqueness and applauded for our persistence and willingness to try! Till we learnt to interpret the meaning of the most powerful word ‘no’! Why? Well, with each ‘no’, our inner child learnt to experience everything through the lens of judgment. Suddenly, things were good, bad, right, wrong, positive and negative. So, in other words either you won or lost acceptance, love and attention. Each action had a consequence attached with a judgment. It was so black and white that it left no room for flexibility, for learning, reflecting and for trying again. It meant that each action was now associated with the fear of failing. Failing meant not being enough and ultimately not been accepted or even loved because of it.
There are few of us who did not process this austere experience of judgment and develop the skill to make it mean something and store in our memory bank. This bank of fear is now so successful that its’ riches are fertile it does not require fresh deposits. Accepting living in and with fear is common for most of us. In fact, for most of us ‘fear’ is the automatic pit stop for all hopes, dreams and aspirations.
Ironically, our psyche protects us from experiencing this fear when it helps set limiting goals, so that we just cannot fail. The dark side to never failing our goals is that only our worst fears bears fruit and never our hopes, dreams and aspirations. We get the experience we ask for and so our results are never enough and never measure up to our real potential. This legacy is well established as the self-filling prophecy. You can’t fail if you don’t try! For most it predicts our future! However, there are some people who did not experience these life lessons with such absolute harshness, there are the odd few who seem to be unaffected by the negativity and pessimism. On the other hand there are some who are on a mission to break this cycle of limitation and use it as their motivation.
Those who despite their experience, good, bad, positive or negative believe in trying, taking action tenaciously with have a strong desire to experience and achieve great results in their future. They are different from most as they focus on their desire and not their fear; they take small steps to re-emerge into their natural magnificence. Their attempts develop their strength of character and in the process lead them to succeed. Examples of these results dates back to remarkable historical inventors like Alexander Fleming and Alexander Graham Bell who gave us penicillin and the telephone. Thankfully they did not give up after many years of trying and their countless ‘failed’ attempts. Perhaps we are not all destined to produce groundbreaking results adding to the quality of life. However, we are responsible for trying to lead a life of quality without fear and limitation if we decided to.
My clients dare to dream, are willing to take the action and keep trying so that a new positive and energized reality can be achieved in their life. They choose not to dwell on their past with deep regret, instead they are thinking about their potential, they aware of the possibility and value of what could be and are not stuck in a rut thinking about what has been.
Coaching their excellence began with them. They sought me out. My role was to keep them company on their adventure often by just being there, raising their self-awareness, giving support, encouragement and helping them to focus and add clarity. Sometimes motivating, other times being catalytic or simply an objective sounding board for their ideas. I was their most ardent supporter and believed in their natural brilliance to achieve their goals. Criticism and judgment did not figure in our relationship or in their success plan.
Maya; a fitness instructor enjoyed her work but did not earn enough in a poorly paid industry. In reality, she was both a trained fitness instructor and a novice self-employed business owner. She was faced with learning about and implementing business strategies to provide her service and grow her business market. It meant being good at sales, marketing, planning, accounting and administration to name a few skill areas.
Her dream was to be working in the media, presenting to an audience the latest music, interviewing the hottest stars and simply wowing an audience with her great personality. She had been trying to follow her dreams for 3 years. She had varying degrees of success to date but had lost her motivation however did not want to give up. She was aware that starting again and being persistent needed more of motivation, time and energy. She was frustrated yet determined to succeed when we started working towards her goal.
Together, we explored her aspirations, we defined her inspiring SMART goal, we weighed up her real and perceived fears that were blocking and limiting her progress. She moved her goal from being a wish into a probability, and then locked this with her total faith and belief in her success. We planned the actions and explored the options with a reality check at each stage. She set a goal to get a job as a presenter within 12 months; Maya achieved this in 6 months!
