There is a trend I see with women generally around the country. A lot of women when I’m coaching and training, talk about having basically three issues, that I’d like to see eradicated.
The first one is Perfectionism Disease. The second one is often the inability to say NO! The third one is People Pleasing. Do you recognise any of these issues?
Perfectionism disease
Perfectionism Disease is more serious than you realise. In my eyes, I see it as leaving good workers starving at the end of each day. Never feeling satisfied.
What I want you to try, is evaluating your day and seeing if rationally you feel you did your best. Can you start being satisfied with your work and your service each day.
Rather than beating yourself up, practice being “gentle with yourself”.
Try asking yourself did you do your best? Could anyone have done a better job? How high was your care factor? If you can give yourself a good report card, then don’t beat yourself up anymore and go home and enjoy your evening. Knowing that you did a good job.
Also know, that there is no such thing as perfection. There is only continuous improvement, and that is what we should be striving for, not something that doesn’t exist.
Saying NO
The next issue, the inability to say NO. When do we ever say straight out NO! Straight up NO, is rarely used.
So, start asking yourself how can I elegantly and sophistically reply? Seeing it in that way, will allow your brain to come up with elegant ways to express yourself while at the same time letting people know where they stand. Be honest, be professional and practice communication at a high level, rather than saying yes to everything and then feeling resentful.
If I am resentful about something, then that is my signal to myself, that I need to say no. So, I start planning, how I am going to say no, elegantly and sophisticatedly. At this stage, I don’t do anything I don’t want to do, I just find a way to express what is going on for me and the real test, is to see if you can say no, without needing to give an excuse at all. But that is quite advanced and at the early phase, feel free to justify your no with why. If it makes you feel good, then do it. Just make sure you say no and avoid any resentment in your life, wherever possible.
People pleasing
To me, this is the same as the inability to say NO. It indicates a need to be liked. Which is a natural human trait.
However, aim to be highly thought of as a professional, the go to person, the one in the know. Rather than the people pleaser that just says yes to everything and everyone.
People pleasers tend to lack confidence in themselves, which goes hand in hand with assertiveness.
Confidence
Confidence is checking in with three things. Your self-belief, your self-value and your self assuredness. If all three things are in balance, you will be confident on that issue.
Often, you will be out of balance with one, two or all three things, thus the lack of confidence. When I coach clients, I check in and ask:
Do you belief you can? (self-belief).
Do you believe it will add value to your life/career? (self-value).
Have you practiced enough, to get good at it? (self-assured).
What I am listening for in their reply, is not what they say, but how they say it and at what speed. I am looking for tone, how quick they answer and whether or not I can hear commitment to the questions. If someone, says ummmm, arrrrrrr, yyyyyyeeeeesssss, sort of. They are clearly not committed to that answer.
What I am listening for, is what to work on with the client, as self-belief might be fine, but its self-value on that issue, that could be the problem. If so, we work on turning up the value it adds to their life to get their commitment to get confidence overall.
Assertiveness
Assertiveness is your ability to speak up and speak out about things that are worth it for you. Most women, seem to be challenged with speaking up and out for themselves and what is important. They just keep quiet, get resentful, say yes, when they mean no and haven’t got the confidence to change this way of behaving.
Once women understand that assertiveness is not just for the loud people in the room and they understand that everyone has a right to have an opinion, they start to re-imagine their behaviour and learn that speaking up and out, is important and allows people to respect them and their thoughts.
Confident and assertive people are very attractive, those that lack in those areas tend to miss out on life, career and business opportunities, because we didn’t even know they were in the room or in the game, playing at all. So start to speak up and speak out, get heard, get in the game of life and stop robbing us of your genius. How dare you, not contribute, everyone else is, why can’t you?
If you’d like to do a FREE evaluation, to find out where you sit with your confidence and assertiveness, then send me an email katrena@katrena.com.au and I’ll send it to you.
Call me to discuss your developmental needs in 2018 in any of the areas listed above on 0412 537 053 and organise your FREE Career Coaching Session.
