Ouch, I had quite a few clients this week calling themselves names.

I’m working with one client on employment transition issues. She has recently gotten a promotion and is being challenged on a lot of levels including: more responsibility, more pressure, becoming the boss of former co-workers, mentoring, leadership, not to mention self-doubt, triggered insecurities, and this-was-a-huge-mistake-i-can’t-do-it-itis.

It’s a lot of change, and she’s understandably stressed. One thing that’s important in setting yourself up for success in times of transition and stretching yourself is to be sure YOU are on your team.

So when she said,”I’m being a baby.” Of course, I had to call an immediate TO(timeout) and draw attention to it.  And, guess what?

She didn’t even realize she had said it.

In fact, she almost didn’t believe me when I assured her she had. It was quite the moment of awareness for her, and frankly for me. The sneaky power and influence of unconscious actions, thoughts, behaviors is so massive.

It’s so great that it happened – the whole experience allowed us to draw her attention to the autopilot nature of the negative story she was telling herself as well as the way that she was not undermining herself with her negative self-chatter. I work a lot with clients on reactivity and responding rashly with others. This was a great opportunity to turn that work inward, to raise awareness and tune in to her internal process and makes shifts from the inside out.

I mean how on earth could she gain respect, be viewed as a leader and be overall successful in her new endeavor if she didn’t start telling herself a more positive story about herself?

People, please check in with your internal soundtrack. Does it need some fine-tuning? It’s the opportunity to make external shifts happen by getting to the source of the issue.