Gold Nugget Coaching

Last time I showed you how to spot your “life-limiting negative self assessments that drag you down.” They are a form of self-sabotage that can get in the way of your career advancement, erode job satisfaction, deepen middlescence doldrums and, in fact, undermine every aspect of your life.

If you’re thinking, “That’s not me, I don’t do that.” Perhaps you don’t. But if that’s the case, you’d be defying the odds and about 3,000 years of evolution!

So let’s look at how you can deal with the potentially devastating effects of negative self assessments.

It’s actually not that difficult to deal with these effects, but it does take commitment and practice. So for this to really work for you (vs. just being interesting information that you file away in your memory), I recommend that you actually do what I’m about to describe. But first, make sure you’re “playing with live bullets.” That is, think of a big, ripe, juicy negative self-assessment. If you don’t have one, read the previous post for ideas on how to spot one.

OK, got one? Great. Now, with pen and paper in hand, what you’re going to do is simply “ground the opposite” of the assessment. By that I mean, you’re going to write down as many of the situations in your life that you can think of for which that negative assessment is NOT valid. You’re going to gather real evidence (from your own life) that demonstrates the opposite of your negative assessment.

For example, let’s assume your negative self assessment is that you’re not a good team player. With that idea in mind, write down times in your life when you were in a cooperative effort with other people and you were, in fact, an effective and contributing participant.

Perhaps you were on the fund raising committee of a non-profit or a community group and you helped the group meet the fund raising target. Perhaps a neighborhood child was lost and you and your neighbors formed a search party and found her. Look in all the corners of your life and as far back as you can remember. This list that you generate is what I call “grounding the opposite.”

But also notice something else in the example. As part of the process, I identified a “measurable definition” of team player that was meaningful to me. Further, my definition included distinctions that I could check my facts against. The distinctions were:

• “Cooperative effort,” as in, working with other people

• “Effective,” as in, the outcome had value or made a recognizable contribution to a goal

• “Contributing participant,” as in, I took actions as part of the cooperative effort to help produce the outcome. Even if what I did was kept the coffee hot through the night so the searchers could keep going, that was my contribution.

With a measurable definition I’m able to get out from under the limiting stereotypes that “team player” may instantly bring to mind. For example, I won’t get hooked by the old memory of not being chosen first for the stick ball team when I was nine, and not even having the chance to be a team player. Instead, I’m choosing to deal with my negative self-assessment in a grounded way to see if it’s truly valid as a sweeping summary statement about me and how I live my life.

In this “grounding-the-opposite” exercise, you may come across situations in which the assessment is valid. If that’s the case, you can use it to refine your assessment.

For example, “When I’m at a company meeting and everyone is brainstorming about how to solve a specific problem, I’m not able to make my ideas be heard.” But that may actually be a bit different than not being a “team player.” It may point to something else—a very specific breakdown, e.g., “I have trouble speaking up in large groups.” With that as a grounded observation, you can then deal with the specific breakdown by perhaps learning some new skills, getting advice from other people whom you respect, and starting to practice what you’ve learned.

By taking the time and effort to ground the opposite, I can guarantee that you will find you have a great deal of evidence that your negative self assessment is not valid everywhere in your life, in every situation, all of the time. Then the question is: Do you have the courage to give up your negative self assessment? That will be up to you. If you decide not to give it up, at least you’ll know the only person limiting you is yourself.

 © 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching