Create a Breakthrough to Your True Potential
Coach: Cathey
To understand how we learn to hold ourselves back from our own potential, we've created a model that we call our Circles of Self. It's the bottom line for understanding the process of making permanent and lasting change.
At the center of each of us is an experience of ourselves and our values. For most of us, this is the part that we call our heart and soul or who I am.
Over time, more and more of this central core of inner strength and being can become hidden beneath layers of fear, anxiety, doubt, and years of habitual behavior that no longer represent who we really are. Even well-meaning friends, family, teachers, or managers often provide so-called “feedback” in ways that can make us feel there's something wrong with us as people, as opposed to our behavior or performance.
At some point, we then move into a middle layer of who I'm afraid I am and begin to forget who we really are. The resulting fear and doubt lead us away from behaviors consistent with our most deeply held beliefs and values. We begin to live in this middle layer as if it's the truth and our feeling of worth is eroded.
Most of us are too smart to walk around demonstrating our doubts and fears. So instead of letting them be seen, we pile on yet another layer, who I pretend to be. This is where we create a persona to hide our failure self, and that's the layer we present to the world.
Meanwhile, we continue to stay stuck in the beliefs we've embedded in that middle layer of our being. We begin to believe that's the real us.
The resulting doubt and fear lead us away from behaviors consistent with our most deeply held beliefs and values. As uncomfortable as it is, cognitive dissonance and the emotional distress that comes with it becomes a way of being. Some people refer to this phenomenon as imposter syndrome.
Part of the Best Year Yet® process helps you move your awareness back to your center, reclaim your inherent strength and power, and get you back in touch with who you really are. This is the self that can clear your path to a life and career that are true to what matters most to you - the real you.