Research Paper: How Underlying Beliefs Affect Behavior (The Effects of Coaching)

Disempowering Perspectives

ICA list 15 disempowering perspectives that present as a barrier in one’s life (“Reframing Perspectives; international):

1. Filtering: focusing on all the negative details of a situation and over-looking the positive aspects. The example listed about in reference to the man who received a “B” on his paper could be considered as an example of filtering.
2. Polarized thinking: This person processes a situation as good or bad, wrong or right.
3. Overgeneralization: making a generalization off of inconclusive or some information. A person may put a person in a category based off of one situation, “He is a great cook”, “She is generous”
4. Mind Reading: Making assumptions about what one believes or how another acts and feels about you or a situation.
5. Catastrophizing: assuming that the worst possible thing may happen.
6. Personalization: perceiving that how people respond is in relation to you.
7. Control Fallacy: Thinking that you have control over everything around you. Assuming responsibility for everything; or that you are a victim and have no control.
8. Fallacy of Fairness: believing that one should receive favor in every situation and being resentful when things do not go right.
9. Emotional Reasoning: perceiving that what you feel is the truth. A person may feel unattractive or lost and believe that they are those things.
10. Fallacy of Change: Believing that unless others change around you according to your standards, you will not be happy.
11. Global Labeling: generalizing one or two qualities of a group to a global judgment. An example may be experiencing a treacherous car ride with a cab driver in Washington, DC and assuming that all cab drivers in DC drive recklessly.
12. Blaming: failure to take responsibility or blaming others for all wrong things in your life.
13. Shoulds: Keeping tabs on how the world should operate according to your vision and get upset when it doesn’t go according to the vision.
14. Being Right: do anything to prove that you are right because being wrong is not an option.
15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: feeling bitter and resentful when trying your best and you don’t receive the desired outcome (“Reframing Perspectives; international”).

In each of these disempowering perspectives, there were life event(s) that became deeply ingrained in the subconscious. The individual then responds to his environment based on those deeply ingrained disempowering beliefs.

In coaching several clients over the last few months, it was observed during the coaching process that most of the clients experienced underlying beliefs that were disempowering or stagnating the clients’ growth and preventing them in moving forward. Through the coaching process they were able to gain self-awareness of when and how the beliefs were formed and thus committed to healthy perspectives moving forwarded. In gaining self-awareness, there was a sense of freedom or release reported from all clients when the shift occurred. It is important to mention that the clients were successful and highly intelligent people such as a writer, actress/singer, psychologist, and other coaches.