Have you ever decided to improve your productivity, your relationships with others, or your well-being? I imagine so, and also that it was not an easy task. If you had a coach, it was easier and more efficient, as the support was consistent, you took full advantage of your potential and found your own solutions. Even so, after a year, some of the habits I wanted to lose started returning. So, what can you do to make a more sustainable change?
At this point, we already know how to train the brain to free itself from habits and ways of thinking that harm us. And we also know how to activate wise ways of thinking that create habits that make us feel good and make us more efficient.
In fact, with recent advances in functional MRI, scientists and psychologists have now been able to witness the functioning of the brain in real time and see the impact of Mental Fitness. This one is pretty simple and enjoyable and only requires seven weeks of 15-minute-a-day training.
Let's look at the case of a Director of a multinational who had Coaching and Mental Fitness. José had a very extroverted and rational personality. He liked to plan everything and was very organized. Every day, José tried hard to do his job well and had very good results. He had ambitions to climb even further in his career and thought everything was well on his way to that. One day, the Administration at headquarters asked for an assessment of his skills and the result was that he should not be promoted because, despite having many skills, he lacked empathy and was very critical of his employees and peers.
José was very shaken by this result, but ended up accepting it and deciding to do Coaching. During the Coaching he worked on empathy, the way of leading and his critical spirit. He measured his mental fitness and did mental training with the Positive Intelligence® platform for seven weeks.
At the end of the process, the results were already visible: their stress levels dropped. With others, he was more attentive to what they did well, and when something was wrong, he gave constructive feedback instead of criticism. With his employees, he started coaching and talking about the purpose to inspire them. After nine months he took a new assessment where he significantly improved his leadership and empathy skills. At the end of that year, he achieved what he had always wanted – becoming General Director.
If you want to have consistent change like what happened with José, have powerful conversations with a coach to find out what you want to change, and how to do it. At the same time, develop mental muscle to master the art of activating the thoughts you want and deactivating the ones you don't. In conclusion, to have excellent mental aptitude, it is not enough to have insights. You also need to build mental muscle.
Isabel Freire de Andrade, Bright Concept CEO
This article was published in the fall edition of Líder magazine. Translated to english.