COACHING
It seems best to start any self-development path with unconditional acceptance of self and others before any other area. You may notice that with the development of self-acceptance some of your problems may not seem that important and some of your goals not that attractive anymore, and you may re-prioritize. At the same time, personal aspirations vary and diverse life’s challenges have different causes; hence, self-development paths are unique and various.
Below outlined self-development areas are listed in the generic order of importance. As stated, your personal goals, circumstances, and level of emotional stability may warrant a different direction.
- Unconditional Acceptance of Yourself, Others, and Life – basic precondition of mental health
- Clarification of Personal Values, Vision, Mission, Purpose, Goals – find your ‘why’, ‘what’, & ‘how’
- Emotional Literacy & Management – understand, recognize, and verbalize how you and others feel
- Assertiveness and other soft skill courses, feedback giving, etc. – to express self with mutual respect
- Time-Management – to be able to organize yourself
- Problem Solving – to be able to resolve problems
- Mindfulness – to see things for what they really are, increase awareness and concentration
- And so on…
Unless you have a reasonable level of unconditional self-acceptance, then:
- Your goals and purpose may not be authentic (it may not be what you really desire and want). You’ll unconsciously confuse someone else’s goals as yours, like those of society (i.e. ‘have kids’, ‘buy a house’, ‘get a 9 to 5 job’, etc.) or that of your manager (i.e. learn some technical skill that you are really not interested in);
- Your emotional literacy and emotional self-management capacity will be impaired. Knowing to differentiate, recognize, and verbalize different emotions is one of the cornerstones of EQ and meaningful relationships. But if you don’t accept yourself or others, you will not be able to self-regulate when feeling inferior, superior, hurt, shame, etc.;
you will also be unable to forgive yourself or others. - Your assertive capacity will be impaired by incongruence and inability to calm yourself when you feel superior, inferior, angry, and so on.
- Time-Management will be ineffective if you are working efficiently toward inauthentic goals.
- Problem Solving may be impaired due to inability to “regain the sense of self-worth” when dealing with the problem about which you feel hurt or inferior.
- Awareness and concentration decrease with judgments of self and others because acceptance is at the cornerstone of Mindfulness (definition: awareness of feelings and thoughts without judging them). Also, mindfulness is mentioned last not because it’s least important but because if you’re overwhelmed with psychological and practical problems and do not know how to resolve them, meditating will have limited positive effects, if any.
Schedule your free consultation to discuss your professional or personal development priorities.