Most male clients come in because they know they're "in trouble", but more often than not, they don't know what exactly is going on inside and how to get out of it, or how to solve this inner conflict.
In short, I learned through my executive coaching experience that men, just like women, are struggling to be themselves. However, what stroke me is this statistic, published in New York Times article, that states: ...as men continue to fall behind women in college while outpacing them four to one in the suicide rate, some colleges are waking up to the fact that men may need to be taught to think beyond their own stereotypes...
Talking about the difference between men and women, a colleague showed me a home video he had found online: a small boy getting his first vaccinations. The father says: “Boys don’t cry! You are a man!”. This illustrates one of these cliches, how boys are raised, sometimes with the best of intentions, to suppress their emotions, and how the ground is laid for being disconnect from their inner world.
A man disconnected from his inner world is usually not a pretty sight or very easy to live with. When my male client discover that there is such a thing as an inner world, they absolutely agree that their inner world contains far greater richness than anything they can find in the outer world.
Male acting like a man is nothing more and nothing less than having the courage to be true to himself. This is the hero's journey so often present in mythology, fairy tales, and movie screens. Rather than slaying dragons, aliens, or enemies, the real challenge for most men in today's society is to understand the truth of his essential nature and then to vanquish whatever fears would prevent him from acting in accordance with his true Higher Self.
Another issue that comes up is being overwhelmed and often stressed, and I would even go as far as to say it's an addiction to busyness. So many high performers are literally living on adrenaline. They are driven by this feeling that they get from adrenaline. And there's a real fear of what would happen if they slow down. It's a hard thing for them to do because there is this addiction to busyness and work, or maybe other unwanted habits.
However, when they do slow down, it opens up a space for clarity, new doors and new ideas, creativity, and everything else.
Very often issues such as keeping up appearances, ego-games, competitions, body image, sexuality, self-worth, intimacy, and the crippling sense of disappointment and failure... However... approaching life the way they did is not what's going to get them to the next level. To move into the zone of true potential, it is required to shift from doing what you know to do, to doing what you are inspired to do. It requires the next level of experiencing and feeling - the new level of Core being.
Mentally and emotionally top performers seem to be more resilient, less vulnerable, and more likely to sustain performance over the long day-to-day grind that is the reality of professional life.
As a serial Entrepreneur and former Head of International Business Development, I am very familiar with daily stress, the pressure to perform, and the demands of everyday life. In situations where there appears to be a standoff, a high performer is much more capable of shouldering the burden. Therefore I have a great appreciation for their inner transformative journey.
Without the noise, they are then able to look in another direction, see a new perspective, and be open to insight. This insight, something even they haven't brought through before, might drop in during the coaching session. It may happen when walking down the street or it may drop in a week's time.
The most valuable thing for my client is for them to have the space to explore different directions, without any kind of judgment of other people on their teams or someone in their life thinking that they've gone crazy. It is really a place for them to explore, develop ideas and align with the energies with which they can go out in the world and create, expand and shift their model of reality to meet the expansiveness of their vision. Whether a person is in a top-performer space, wanting to start a new life chapter, or committed to doing life differently – it’s difficult to do it alone.
According to entrepreneur and bestselling author Tony Robbins says that success is achieved through a plan that is 80 percent psychological and 20 percent strategic.
How you handle those plateaus, psychologically, will determine whether you remain stalled there forever and your company ends up in the graveyard.
If you find yourself facing any psychological mental traps — deal with them, and you’ll have a chance of making it success and on the other side.
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