The phone rang early one drizzly fall morning. The voice on the other end of the line sounded frazzled.
“Hi Brian, my name is Bill. I’m really angry. Do you think you can help me?”
To be honest I wasn’t sure. From Bill’s tone it sounded more like rage than anger. But, that’s what introductory coaching calls are for. If it’s a good fit I can help anyone no matter where they may be in their process. If they’re really motivated to take responsibility, and get over their problem, it works.
That introductory call clarified my initial thoughts. We’d be dealing with anger, annoyance, and full-on rage. Bill had tried to work through it himself. He had chipped away at his deeper issues but hadn’t been able to get to the root. He knew that, together, we could complete the process he’d started
Bill had recently experienced a very painful and unexpected breakup. He wanted to focus on relationships and the fury he felt over having been dumped. Anger and rage had been patterns for him for a very long time. We would work on Bill’s underlying emotions and beliefs before we tried to tackle his relationships head on.
During our initial session he released rage then anger. His homework, with a couple of techniques I taught him, was to clarify more specific incidents as he remembered them. I work with clients on the big stuff during our coaching sessions, then they work on the simpler things on their own.
Over the next several sessions we checked in to make sure his anger was staying balanced. Anger is fine as long as it shows up appropriately and subsides quickly. Things were proceeding very smoothly. It was time to start working on his relationship values.
Values are the things that are important to us. They’re concepts. Bill had some pretty serious conflicts in his values. Facial features, body shape and age were important to him. But, they were competing with love, companionship and honesty. To work well, values need to support one another.
One of Bill’s values was youth; he authentically preferred somewhat younger people. Another was companionship. We discovered that for Bill these two values were opposed to one another. Bill did not believe that he could find someone younger who would also make a great companion. Once we took care of the conflict between those values, they shifted. Youth became more about being youthful and could support companionship instead of competing with it. The result was that Bill was open to a wider range of people, making it more likely he would find someone that was a good fit.
As we worked things through Bill started to be attracted to people who shared his most important values. The changes we made in his relationships also rippled out into other areas of his life.
People’s top 10 values are often the same, or similar, in every area of life. Though the order is usually different. Working on one area can have unexpectedly positive impacts elsewhere. Bill found that he was more creative, and handled rejection better than he had previously. He was more open to change. He could move on when it was time rather than getting stuck in the familiar. He also began to see his sensitivity, which had been his biggest flaw, as a strength.
That’s what I love most about what I do. I meet clients years later who talk about how the shifts continued to roll out in unexpected ways long after our work together was done.
Visit getnakedguru.com for more information and to sign up for a free introductory tele-seminar.
Brian Madigan
Founder, Get Naked Guru
getnakedguru.com
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