About negative traits or why it is good to be a difficult man

In coaching sessions one of the most hotly debated topics by my clients is when we work on balancing and get to the question “How did you manifest yourself a trait you judge in person X?”

Here, you must have heard or read me already, when I said that we all have all the features, but their form of manifestation is different, depending on the HPP (hierarchy of personal priorities) we each have. That is, I can be ambitious in assisting customers to have a moment of transformation, a manager can be ambitious in achieving the turnover they set, an entrepreneur can be ambitious in starting their business, and my daughter in getting the highest scores in exams.

The form of manifestation of your ambition is different (depending on the HPP of each of us), but the essence remains the same – ambition.

And I would like to stress again that we all have all the features, however incredible that might seem.

The bad news is that we have all the positive and negative features.

All good and beautiful at the theoretical level, if you don’t have to admit that you are as critical as your mother, as aggressive as your father, as much of a perfectionist as your boss, as careless as your life partner, or as rebellious as your children.

Whereas it is generally easier for someone to accept or see that they have a positive feature, sometimes it becomes very difficult for someone to accept that they have a negative feature, especially one they are judging in someone else.

The more you fight to hide your negative feature, the more visible it becomes … for the others.

This principle is called the law of the eristic escalation, which says that the more you want to impose order, the more you create disorder. By forcing one thing, you will get the opposite.

Do you know the older ladies, who apply too much make up so as to hide their age? The more they strive to hide it, the more the others will notice it.
The more someone strives to hide that they are lying, the more visible the lie will be to others.
The more you refuse to accept that you have a feature, the more obvious it will become.

The story of the stutter and its lesson.

There once was a man who stuttered. He did his best to get rid of the stutter.

He bought books and read. He religiously did all the exercises for 21 days. Nothing changed. He was still a stutterer.

He looked in the mirror, as the personal development books said, and repeated the positive statements. “I’m speaking fluently”, he repeated in his mind a hundred times every morning. He did that for 60 days. After that, he hoped to see a change. After all, it was very frustrating! However, no improvement. Worse, he had started to stutter in his dreams too.

He took a therapist, spoke about all his childhood traumas, about shocks and moments when he was ashamed of himself. He spoke about the stressful and tense situations in his life for 4 years and noticed no change.

Two years of meditation and yoga followed. Acting lessons. Voice coaching and diction.

After each experience he made great efforts to apply what he had learned, and if he did not succeed, he tried to mask the stutter as he knew best.

It was too much already. He could not have a relationship, because it took too long to ask a girl, “W-w-w-would y-y-y-you l-l-l-like t-t-t-to g-g-g-go o-o-o-out?”

He didn’t dare go to interviews, because he didn’t manage to get past the phone interview. He was not invited by colleagues for Friday night’s beers. He was not doing any ball sports because he could not shout quickly enough “catch” and his friends were no longer calling him to football or basketball games, because they often lost because of him, thinking he was bad luck. Even his mother was rushing him on the phone, “Tell me faster ‘cause my food is burning!”

You see, the man felt completely lost!

In all these years, perhaps much had not changed in his speaking fluency, but he knew much better to hide his “flaw”. And yet his relations with others had not changed, even more, he was now quite alone…

On one of the darkest days of his life, on a foggy autumn day, the man stood in a coffee shop by the window, like a wet flannel. He was left without a job and alone, without friends and loved ones. He was sitting by the coffee shop window, wondering “why me?”, “why is this happening to me?”.

That is precisely when one of his acquaintances passed by, and when he saw the stutterer, gladly came in to greet him.
“Am I glad I run into you! I’ve really been thinking about you these days. I need someone… like you… in a movie. I know you stutter, but in this film, you’ll have to stutter 10 times more. You’ll have to be a professional in stuttering.”

With no other alternative in job prospects, the man accepted the role. For 10 months he had to stutter like a professional in front of the cameras and microphones. He practiced the stuttering every day, without guilt or shame, before all his fellow actors and the crew.

And… what a surprise! Ten months later he stuttering went away and he was fluent. Yes, he was speaking clearly, with command, fluently.

When you fight against the trait and try to hide it, it will become much more visible, especially to the others.

If you don’t try to get rid of a trait and you let yourself accept that you have it, owning this trait, this trait will transform and will not bother you.

Only when you admit you have a particular trait, you can do something about it.

Conclusions:
1. Don’t try to hide a negative trait, the others already know you have it.
2. Change this trait, and for that, the first step is to admit you have it.

P.S. Send me a message with a trait you would like to get rid of and the way you can assume it.
Monica Ion