In my last blog I summarized a presentation Fiona Cosgrove and I gave at a national corporate health conference and looked at some current research around coaching with compassion and coaching with compliance. The takeaway points from this presentation and research were:
“Coaching with compassion targets positive emotional attractors in the brain and the session becomes about hope for the future, possibilities, dreams, optimism for the future, a sense of joy and physiological arousal of the parasympathetic nervous system.”
“Coaching with compliance targets negative emotional attractors in the brain and the session becomes about defensiveness, threat, guilt, feelings of depression and anxiety, unpleasant engagement with the environment and physiological arousal of the sympathetic nervous system.”
How can we use this information to increase our chances of success in our approach to our own health and fitness programs?
When we are starting a program or a different approach to the way we are living our life do we look at programs and approaches that can fix the weaknesses in our lives or do we explore programs and approaches because of the possibilities that they open up for us?
For example if we are having trouble starting an exercise program and decide the answer to fix this problem is a personal trainer to provide us with the discipline we need and keep us on track because we are not motivated enough to do it ourselves. Straight away this approach is concentrating on a weakness in our life and is going to arouse the negative emotional attractors of our mind and the relationship with your trainer will be about guilt and the threat of reverting to our old habits if we don’t have this relationship in our life. I question if this a long-term solution and a solution that is creating the real change we craved when we started the relationship.
If we approach this problem from the point of view of searching the possibilities that health and exercise can bring to our life then we are concentarting on hope for the future on optimism and not limiting what we can achieve. So using the personal trainer example searching for a trainer that can open our mind to the possibilities of health, that can educate us and that can provide us with structures that create real change in our life.
A relationship that opens you up to safe exercise keys on your way to results.
I learn to make safe exercise choices with my trainer because exercise is health.
A relationship that opens you up to the possibilities of change and choices rather than deprivation.
I choose the smaller coffee each morning to help me reach my health goals.
I choose to now eat breakfast because of the energy it generates for me to allow me to chase my dreams each day.
I choose to take the stairs at work and I choose to park further away from work three times a week because exercise is not just about the gym but all the activity I can fit into my day.
Are you continually concentrating on weaknesses in your life and placing ceilings on what is truly achievable or are you opening yourself up to the possibilities of change and reaching for your dreams?
