Uncovering your blind spots and achieving real self-awareness is hard. In the next 60 seconds, your One-Minute Coaching™ will help you turn knowledge of your self-talk into actionable insights. Ready? Set. Go!
Your One-Minute Coaching™
In last week’s post, we covered a powerful exercise—that of carefully recording the exact words you use in your internal monologue. By doing this several times per day over the course of a week or two, you can reveal surprising truths about how you perceive your world.
If you’ve been working on this exercise since last week, review your notes/recordings now. Reflect on your inner monologue.
- What sticks out to you most?
- Do you see any trends?
- How hard was it to be non-judgmental of your own thoughts?
Negativity in Self-Talk
You may be surprised to see how critical and negative your words are at times. That does not necessarily make you a negative or critical person. Most executives tend to be hard on themselves—that’s the way the executive brain works.
One experiment with University of Texas business students used an exercise much like the one we just completed. It found that on average, about 65% of the students’ thoughts were negative, even though most had initially believed the majority of their thinking was positive.
Influencing Your Self-Talk
Understanding and hearing our self-talk enables us to influence it. It explains much about how we see and respond to various aspects of the world. It also influences how others see and respond to us. And most importantly, it unlocks executive growth.
This self-awareness exercise helps us manage not only our own emotions, but the way we are perceived by others as well. The better we understand our own thinking, the better we understand others’. This enables us to feel more empathy and compassion for others. It’s the reason why self-awareness is so valuable. We must know and accept ourselves before we can form strong connections with others.
Are you ready for transformation? Would you like change toward optimal performance and greater satisfaction with your executive career? Talk with your SOLID coach to get the most out of the revelations you’ve had.
If you are a CEO or other bona fide executive and still haven’t given us a try, click the button below to start the conversation. We will provide you with THREE complimentary coaching sessions to experience what SOLIDleaders executive coaching is all about.
Coaching Questions
As you review your self-talk, how often do you find you misperceived or misjudged a situation?
What negative messages are you sending yourself?
How is this limiting your performance?
By controlling your self-talk, you will improve your overall functioning as an executive.
Be sure to record your insights. Keep them together with your complimentary copy of our executive development ebook, Eliminate Executive Blind Spots.