I wanted to share with you here an exercise that my coachees and I have found very useful, as part of a coaching programme I run based on Prof Steve Peters’ ‘Chimp Management’ mind model. Below is an example of how to manage your ‘Chimp’, your emotional responses.
It involves drawing up a number of personal ‘Truths of Life’ that we subscribe to, beliefs and realities that we operate with. They provide us with grounding and direction to help us navigate life’s ups and downs, and these beliefs/realities encourage and enable us to remain calm and ‘level’, and settle our ‘chimp’ – our emotional response – when things don’t go how we’d planned or we meet adversity.
Exercise
Firstly, think of an area of your life/situations where you have unhelpful or unwanted emotional responses.
Then, work out some ‘truths of life’ that will lead to a more useful outcome for you, that resonate and are meaningful for you. Write them down; put them on your mobile phone.
Just some examples here:
✔️ ‘The goalposts move’
✔️ ‘Things don’t always go to plan’
✔️ ‘The darkest hour is before the dawn’
✔️ ‘Everything must change’
✔️ ‘I can change me, not others’
✔️ ‘You can’t control everything’
✔️ ‘The sun will come up tomorrow’
✔️ ‘Everything is temporary’
✔️ ‘The journey is more important than the destination’
Do get in touch if you’d like to know more. You can find details of the Mind Management coaching programme here.