Systemic Coaching for Next Level Performance
Like most of you I have been watching the Olympics for the past couple of weeks. This time with even more interest than usual as I have watched athletes crumble and cite the need to attend to their mental health.
They describe the inner voices that knock them off course. In systemic work and constellations, we notice that these ‘systemic sentences’ may originate in a prior event in their lives or a multigenerational pattern generated by an event and the decisions made about those event. They can cascade through the generations echoing through the current member of a family system and can knock them off course right at the point of success. Let me explain.
Let’s look at the athletes. They speak a lot of the voices of doubt, unworthiness, fear. It shakes them to their core but where did they come from? As a systemic coach we listen carefully to the words a client uses, we ask about feelings and where they are in the body and enquire about limiting or repetitive actions. And then we ask: “Did anything like this ever happen to anyone else in your family?”
Physical DNA isn’t the only thing we inherit. We also inherit patterns of throughs, feelings, and actions. They buzz around in our subconscious just waiting to surface and pounce when we least expect them. They can announce themselves loudly at moments of stress but there’s good news.
These inner sentences when well explored are offering the step beyond the limiting pattern. Well-worked they can be transformed and rewired consciously turning a struggle into a mighty strength.
Limiting inner sentences like: “I’m not worthy/capable/allowed” can be transformed into “I’ve earned this”, “I’m capable”, “This is my gift to the world,” “When I win I pave the way for others”. The first set of words are the old limiting and sometimes multigenerational pattern waiting to be set down. The second set explores the future and the pattern that’s trying to emerge through us when we consciously explore our thoughts and feelings and embody a new mindset in a way that moves us in a deep and elevating way.
Now inner critics can be shaped to become inner champions.
We are all Olympic athletes in a sense. All capable of great things, once we know how to go looking. All shaken by twisties, and inner voices. But on the other side of those inner critics lie the wings that also elevate us.
Here’s to the inner champions in all of us.