A Self-Coaching Example
In my last article, I explained how to coach yourself when you’re having a problem. It’s always helpful to see an example to know how to apply the concepts, so I’m including one here.
We moved to a new city in 2017 when I had kids in high school, middle school, and elementary school. We picked the city and neighborhood in part because of the reputation of the local high school. We heard that it was a great school that excelled in academics and athletics. We were excited to be a part of it.
My enthusiasm quickly waned, however. Our second daughter had a difficult time there. She came to the school as a junior and never really made friends. The other students were kind to her but didn’t invite her to join their activities very often. When they did include her, she didn’t feel welcomed and had a hard time breaking into the groups.
The school itself was also a disappointment. It was rundown and dingy. At the end of our first year there, they realized that the building was sliding down the hillside because the foundation hadn’t been built properly. Cinder blocks fell from the tops of the walls as the walls warped away from the floor. They could contain the danger for a short time, but the school would have to be rebuilt.
In addition to the physical condition of the school, I was also dissatisfied with the attendance policy, of lack thereof. My daughter told me that the students come and go as they please and there are no consequences. She heard that there used to be consequences for lack of attendance, but parents had complained and so they did away with them.
Now, it was a completely open campus where students roamed free and went to class occasionally. Consequently, she started ditching class herself. She mostly asked me before she left campus, but then I was put in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether to let her skip. My principles about the importance of attending class competed with her arguments that everyone does it and also that she didn’t have any friends to be with in class or at lunch.
There were other parts of the neighborhood that we didn’t like. We often wondered if we’d made the right decision in moving there. But my frustrations focused on the high school. After a few months of this, I decided I didn’t want to feel negative emotion about my situation any longer. I had been practicing mind management for a while and knew that I was creating my own experience, and I wasn’t enjoying this experience. So, I determined to do some self-coaching and see if that could alleviate my distress.
I began by allowing the feelings. I reminded myself that this disappointment and frustration were part of the normal range of human emotions. It’s okay to feel them; nothing has really gone wrong here. I spent time processing the feelings, finding them in my body and describing them in detail to myself, all the while remembering that sentences in my brain were causing them.
At times of high emotion, this helped. When I was calmer, I began to take a look at my thoughts to gain awareness of what story my mind had developed. Here is my thought download:
The high school is not as nice as I want it to be.
The building is literally falling down.
The kids who go there are unkind.
They should have an attendance policy.
It’s not the right school for us.
My kids haven’t found friends there.
It’s a crappy school.
There’s a culture of not attending class.
Too many kids skip class.
My child asks to skip class all the time.
It would be better if the kids went to class on a regular basis.
This school isn’t as good at sports or activities as I thought they’d be.
The other high school in town is better.
I found comfort in writing these thoughts out and looking over them. It was validating but also it separated me from them a little. They were out in front of me now; I could observe them and work with them.
Next, I filled out a Model. There were a few circumstances I could have used, such as “The school sent an email explaining that the building needs to be replaced” or “My child has been invited to two parties this school year.” But I chose to focus on the attendance policy because that seemed to bother me the most. I didn’t know the exact percentage rate of attendance at the school, but the number itself doesn’t matter anyway. I decided to pretend it was 60%. Here’s how the Model looked:
Circumstance: The attendance rate at the high school is 60%.
Thought: Too many kids skip class.
Feeling: irritated, dissatisfied
Action: Talk bad about the school to others, including my kids; spin in my head about how bad it is; disengage with the school
Result: My child doesn’t want to be there/wants to skip class
I was surprised when I got to the result because I could see that I created a situation that reaffirmed my thought. No wonder my child feels negatively about the school — I’d been trash-talking it all year.
After filling out the Model, I was ready to question my story. This is the time to explore the Model and investigate how the mind composes its narrative around this experience. Between each question, I write what I think my coach would tell me. These are the questions I contemplated:
- Do you see that the circumstance is neutral?
Yes, I know it doesn’t matter what the attendance rate is. Only my thinking about that attendance rate makes a difference. I’m expecting the school to provide a certain experience for me. I’m looking at the circumstance as if it gives me my result. It doesn’t — my beliefs do.
I know that none of my irritation, disappointment, or dissatisfaction comes from the state of the school, the building, the programs, the type of kids there, or the attendance policy. Isn’t that crazy!? My brain really wants to believe that these things cause me to feel the way I do.
My negative emotion comes from some variation of the notion “It shouldn’t be like this.” The building shouldn’t be like this. The kids shouldn’t be like this. The attendance policy shouldn’t be like this. That’s a lot of shoulds! Looks like I have a manual for the high school, and it is not following my manual. I have a lot of ideas about what it should be, and I’m not letting it be whatever it is.
The high school is exactly how it should be. How do we know that? Because it is like that. My brain wants to say, “That’s fine, but we shouldn’t be there.” But it appears we should be there. How do we know that? Because we are.
So this high school should be how it is, and maybe — maybe! — we should be there. Maybe this is happening for me instead of to me. My mind wants to say, “This is wrong, and this is wrong,” etc., but maybe my brain doesn’t know how things should go. It’s possible that we are right where we are supposed to be, and this high school is how it’s supposed to be. Try to embrace what it is.
We know the high school should be this way because it is this way. Should high schools be dumpy? Yes. Should high school kids skip class? Yes. These are all things that should and do happen. Resisting them does not put you in a good mindset to problem-solve around them. Resisting them closes off the answers.
2. Can you see that your thought is a story?
Yes. When I drill down on the statement, “Too many kids skip class,” I can see that it has no inherent meaning. What does “too many” even mean? Do I even know how many? What if it was one or two fewer, would that be the right number? Where does it cross into “too many”?
3. What if you allowed the feeling?
It’s OK to feel irritated and dissatisfied. My mind takes that as proof that the thought is true, but it’s not. The emotions come because of ideas my brain has offered. There’s no problem with that; this is what humans do.
4. How do you want to feel?
I would love to feel enthusiastic and proud of the school. In order to feel that way, I’ll need to look for specific things that are great about it. So far, I’ve directed my brain to look for ways the school is wrong, and it’s done its job! But the truth is it’s a story either way.
Remember — it doesn’t matter what other kids do; my child is having the exact experience she’s supposed to have. My mind wants her experience to be the same as mine (a fun time in high school with lots of friends). My brain thinks it’s a problem if it’s not, and my mind wants to hold on to that notion.
But my children won’t have my same experience. Maybe it’s okay if they have a different experience than me. Maybe they’re not supposed to have the same experience as me. They have other lessons to learn and other needs.
Remember the 50–50 principle. They have a different 50% happy. My mind tells me that if they don’t have my 50% happy, then they don’t have any or enough happy. But that’s not true. They’ll have a different 50% happy and a different 50% negative emotion, and that’s okay. Maybe that’s what they need.
This is how I self-coach. I bring my thoughts out in front of me and examine and explore them. I try to untangle the threads, pulling them out one at a time. After I wrote this out, I closed the notebook and went about my day. I must have ceased thinking about how bad the school is because I did not return to this topic for self-coaching. The school didn’t get much better, and I can’t say I’m in love with the school, but it stopped bothering me. I didn’t create unnecessary pain for myself after this. I just let it be what it is.
Try this on: “Maybe my child is having the exact experience she’s supposed to have.”
Want more about Mind Management? Clap and Follow!
Find an LCS-trained coach here.
“Disappointment comes in the gap between expectation and reality.”
