Knowing Your Values and Ditching Others’ Beliefs

Just come off a call with a client I coach. Love it, love it, love it! ❤

We’re now really drumming down to what makes this person tick.

They are becoming more and more self-aware,  able to challenge their thinking and be more flexible and adaptable in their thinking and behaviour to reach their outcomes.

And this shift in awareness and actions is not just impacting them, but their relationship, friendships and work life, creating more peace and harmony in a congruent, authentic way.

They are becoming more true to themselves each day and I love that!! They have worked hard and done their home activities to get there.

You have core values that often don’t change e.g. giving back, and you have values in each area of your life e.g. finances, health, career, etc.

This client could understand today that often when something doesn’t meet our values, we unconsciously sabotage it. We don’t finish that project, or we don’t do something we say we are going to do.

Let me give you an example. You want to be fit, maintain a certain weight and you know fitness is the one area you are lacking in.

But you have realised that by doing a dance class it doesn’t meet your values of it being cheap, and takes away from your value of spending time with family, but it does meet the need for social interaction and can be fitted around work.

So if your current selections don’t meet those values (what’s important to you), you stop doing it, sabotage it, feel guilty, get angry, etc.

But if you decided to do fitness with your family that you all want to do, and the choice fits everyone’s values, including day and time you do it….you’re setting yourself up for THE best chance of doing it! And meeting your values!

We talked also about that tricky little blighter called ‘secondary gain’, a fancy name for the real reason why we keep something going that may not be in our best interest, or isn’t serving us in one way, but of course it is in another.

Take alcohol.  I used to just have a 1/2 a shandy at events, because it relaxed me. But actually it was looking at my thoughts, beliefs, feelings and what parts of me were stopping me from relaxing that was the real eye-opener.

Do I need a drink now to get up on a dance floor or do karaoke….no!

I cannot tell you the last time I had a drink. I am quite happy to have water, or lime and soda, because it doesn’t mean I don’t have a great time, or that I’m boring.

And my client had the same scenario, people telling her they won’t have a good time if she doesn’t drink. 😮 She is not responsible for them having a good time…THEY are.

It is their belief that not having a drink is being boring. Now that may well be something they were told, have witnessed or even experienced.

But it is THEIR belief, not hers.

So my tip is when someone says something like that, I always say ‘that’s your belief not mine’. That is fact. It is. And then you can carry on having a good time 🤩

My client had an inner conflict – a part that didn’t want to drink, and a part that felt it had to because it believed she would be labelled as boring and wouldn’t fit in, and she didn’t want that, or the feelings that went with it – her secondary gain.

We resolved that through Parts Therapy.

I am so proud of my client and all that she has achieved in our time together and will continue to achieve as we go even deeper into this work. And I am so happy to see her feeling happier, more fulfilled, stronger within herself, and life becoming more enriched and satisfying, without her feeling by saying yes to others she is saying no to herself!