Three Surprising Steps to Help You Succeed

Jim is a new client and he began his first coaching session with me wondering what had gone wrong in the past year. He was doing well at work, but had failed to get a significant promotion and that had shaken him up. His marriage of 22 years was also on his mind - he felt he needed to fix it. Jim had given a lot of thought to why things had "gone wrong"--but I wasn't interested in that, much to his surprise.

It's not that I wasn't empathetic or that I wasn't interested in Jim; far from it. But I knew that talking about what had gone wrong and why it had gone wrong was only going to make things worse. What Jim was doing is what many of us have learned to do--we analyze what goes wrong and we try to figure out where we messed up. Instead, we should do the opposite--we should analyze what has been going right and how to do more of that.

I interrupted Jim’s pattern and began to ask him about his strengths, his passions about the successes he has had in the last year at work and at home. Why? Because what we pay attention to matters.  Where we direct our energy matters.

With that in mind, I began to help Jim to recall his past successes and focus on what he wanted, why he wanted it and how to get more of it. At the end of the coaching session, I gave Jim three small coaching assignments that I also encourage you to do at the end of the day:

Record your success: Write down one to three things that have gone well that day.

Relish your successful moments: Play a mental movie of what went well and enjoy it all over again.

Reward yourself: Compliment yourself for something related to what you wrote down and played a mental movie of.

Remember that what you focus on grows. Pay attention to the success you create and you will likely get more of it.

-Alan Allard, Leadership Coach/Life Coach
www.alanallard.com