Transform Your Thoughts, Transform Your Life

The quality of your thoughts determines the quality of your life.

As humans, we generally experience two categories of fears:

1) physical fears in response to tangible danger, and;

2) irrational fears (thoughts of non-existent danger).

Fear is a response to danger. Danger is the anticipation of pain. However, your brain does not differentiate between physical danger and imagined danger.

If a man stands in front of you with a large knife, you feel physical fear and will either knock the knife out of his hands or run away. This is an example of the first fear.

"The main danger known to Western man is thought."

== Martine Delfos, author and scientist

The second form of anxiety usually deals with the fear of rejection or the fear of the repetition of a traumatic event.

You were once laughed at during a speaking engagement in elementary school when you were 6 years old and every time you have to say something in front of a group the anxiety sweat breaks out and you start shaking even though you are now 41 and know the subject by heart.

Coaching is learning to separate fact from fiction

The key, then, is to value thoughts that make you think danger is lurking. In other words, by separating fact from (your own) fiction.

That is the purview of a coach. To empathetically facilitate an individual's sustainable discernment between factual data and subjective interpretation.

In her seminal work, ‘Verschil mag er zijn’ (Difference is Allowed), Martine Delfos delineates nine cognitive distortions:

1) Dichotomous Thinking: The categorization of one's attributes into absolute, all-or-nothing characteristics: I never accomplish anything correctly.

2) Labeling: The erroneous equating of oneself with one's errors or inherent traits: I am simply a contemptible individual for engaging in such an action.

3) Overgeneralization: The interpretation of a singular negative event as an indicative, recurring pattern of failures: I invariably perform that action!

4) Mental Filtering: The propensity to transmute neutral or positive experiences into negative cognitions, and to perpetually ruminate on them: She appeared amiable, but she undoubtedly harbors only pity for me.

5) Mind Reading: The projection of one's own negative self-perceptions onto others: He undoubtedly perceives me as puerile.

6) Fortune-Telling: The predictive assertion, akin to a 'seer,' that an outcome will be adverse: I anticipate severe disfluency if I am required to address the group.

7) Emotional Reasoning: The derivation of one's cognitive frameworks from one's affective state: I currently experience feelings of inferiority, therefore I AM inherently inferior.

8) 'Should' Statements: The critical imposition of imperatives, obligations, menaces, or other stringent demands upon oneself or others. This cognitive pattern is characterized by phrases and lexemes such as: 'Must...', 'Should...', and 'If you...': I ought to exhibit less indolence. If you genuinely cared for me, you would more frequently organize the kitchen.

9) Self-Blame: The exclusive attribution of culpability to oneself for an event for which one bears no, or only partial, responsibility: Had I merely refrained from contention, that mishap would never have transpired.

These nine cognitive patterns detrimentally affect one's well-being, necessitating their systematic avoidance to the greatest extent possible.

One's perceived self-identity is intrinsically linked to one's cognitive constructs.

A coaching engagement thus commences with the meticulous observation of one's thought processes, specifically identifying cognitive distortions. This process fosters an awareness of one's cognitions, subsequently leading to their thorough examination.