Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Question Your Limits:Two Breakout Stories

Most likely all you need to thrive and be happy is inside you already. But over time we limit our own potential. How can you set it free? Here are two examples.

You can never be too successful to question your own self imposed limits. A successful coach came for an afternoon of Breakout Coaching. How successful? Try multi-gold-medal winning olympic coach!

Actually, he sort of got dragged here. The person who dragged him was upset because he did not spend enough time with her. Every time I asked him a question, she answered, until I asked her if she could let this be his time, especially since she thought it was his problem.

The man was stressed to the max, working frantically to keep a growing throng of people happy. He dreaded disappointing anyone. He believed if someone was disappointed in him it meant he had let them down. He also believed if he let people down he was a failure.

We pondered these questions. Do any of them apply to you?
  • Do you control what others expect of you?
  • Do you believe it's up to you whether someone else is disappointed in you?
  • What are you concerned would happen if you still wanted to do your very best, but felt OK if someone else was disappointed?
  • If they understood how hard you try could they feel better?
  • If you love two people and one wants to be alone with you at the beach and the other wants to be alone with you in the mountains are you a failure if you cannot do both?
I watched him grow bewildered and then relax into a bigger space with more room to breathe. Then I had a question for his friend.

Can you cut him some slack. With total good will and tears in her eyes, she answered a wholehearted, yes. They left happy, with him grateful for the dragging.

What if you can't even read? One of the greatest adventures in my life has been teaching 3 adults how to read. Each one of them believed they were stupid. All three of them were very bright. Can you imagine going through life like that?

We rode emotional roller coasters together as we broke in to literacy. Richard was my last reader -- in his late 60's, in ill health, with memory problems. But he did it!

I'll be you can't guess one of the major challenges Richard encountered. As he began to really read, infomation jumped out at him from everywhere. A stroll down the aisle at the supermarket almost did him in with overload from the labels on the shelves. They used to be just colors, now they bombarded him with words, words, words!

Richard died about a year after we worked together. His obituary mentioned that he had recently learned to read.

I hope these stories demonstrate how unique each of us is. And one thing we all share in common, each and everyone of us lives within limits we hold in place ourselves. We usually don't know what they are or that we are doing it, though.

That is why I hope you will come to the Breakout Coach Training in the Netherlands in May. You may have to break out from some limits to pull it off, bu in four days you can learn the basics of Breakout Coaching. What you do with it, is up to you! Here's the link with all the details.

Let's stage a breakout together!

Love,
Mandy






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