In my work with hundreds of clients over 30 years of coaching and consulting I have discovered a startling fact – feelings are overrated! Now, I am not saying that feelings are not important, or desirable or real – I am saying that they are simply overrated in terms of the focus that we give to them.
My clients, for the most part, begin their coaching journey by describing what they ‘feel’ – “I am afraid, I am depressed, I want to feel more happy, I feel like a failure, I feel like nobody will ever desire me, I feel rejected, I would do anything to not feel this way.”
I listen and honor their sincerity and desire to experience something different in their lives.
Yet as I listen, I shift my focus to what they are thinking and are telling themselves about their situation and what they believe to be true about their life or the things that they fear the most.