“Here’s my advice,” the track coach told me. “You are not doing your best. If the performance I’ve seen you do in the past few days is your best, quit now and save me the embarrassment of being seen with you as your coach. Right now, you’re not even average, let alone competitive. Stick with me, do as I say and maybe, with lots of sweat and effort on your part, you can improve and make something of yourself.”

Wow, what a bunch of useless advice! Here I was as a young man, trying my heart out to run fast and make the team and the Coach comes along and discounts me and my efforts. I felt guilty. I trusted him more than myself and I was ashamed. Three reasons this was the worst advice I ever got: I felt guilty for being so bad; ashamed I’d even tried out for the team; and thirdly, I lost faith in myself.

I floated around a few days in a daze after that little coaching session. Sure, that was the way Runner Coach treated everyone: motivation by put downs and intimidation. Sure he knew more about running than I did, but did he really know more about me than I did?

The learning and gift from that episode was a decision I made to trust myself, first, about myself. Second gift was the awareness of what I don’t do as the result of ridicule and negative criticism: better. I look back now into the tracks of my life and I can find no instance where I did anything better as the result of feeling bad or being criticized. Not one.

In fact, I think it is not within the laws of nature for human behavior to change for the positive and sustain that improvement as the result of external negative input. It’s as impossible as getting rich by studying poverty or harvesting rice from sowing apple seeds. It won’t work. That’s not to say people don’t or can’t change in the face of demeaning coaching, but the changing will not ultimately be seen as success.

Motivation comes in many forms. Negative coaching may be one of them. But coaching is like trees: we know the tree by the fruit they produce and lemon trees cannot produce peaches. Where you end up has everything to do with how you were coached to get there.

Now for some advice I think does work well. When approaching any task or goal or struggling with a decision, use these four guidelines:

1.Show up. Be here, be now and present with as much focus as you are able to produce.
2.Tell the truth without blame or judgment, especially about and to yourself.
3.Be open minded and not attached to particular outcomes. No one controls their future. We control how we relate to it. Keep options open.
4.Pay attention to what has heart and meaning for you. Follow your light within.

Practice these precepts and I guarantee you will turn your best in the success you desire.

A licensed psychologist, Paul W. Anderson, Ph.D. has coached people in their careers, relationships and business aspirations for many years. He helps women believe in themselves and men use their emotional intelligence. He is experienced in working with family business snarls and people in personal chaos who need strategies that will turn their best into success. You may reach him at http://www.bulletproofcoach.com

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