Anaya’s Preview with FIRST
After four weeks of coaching Ananya on Review, she had built up about 12 SQAs she believed in. This gave us plenty to work with, so we began to include Preview in our work.
Previewing Ananya’s Challenge
There was a big issue looming for her. Her unit faced a shake-up, and everyone had to reapply for their jobs.
“This played to all Ananya’s doubts; she was stressed and not sleeping.”
Thinking about the trial ahead was so uncomfortable that she refused to face it. So she blocked it out of her mind. She wasn’t even thinking about this interview. With no preparation, a crushing failure awaited her.
But Preview and FIRST gave her a logical process to think about the threat. Beginning with an Outcome turned her focus away from her fears and towards a happy ending. This immediately made it easier for her to address the challenge.
And, I’m happy to say, it went really well. Here’s what O.R.E. helped her to come up with;
Identify Your Outcome
For the interview;
- I want to be calm and composed.
- I want to find my words and be clear and concise.
- I want to show I know my stuff.
Note how this is all framed in Anaya’s everyday language. Her style of speech comes from her System 1. It fits her Edited Reality and, thus, makes a natural kind of sense for her.
For example, the phrase “Find my words” contained a lot of meaning for Ananya. It meant speaking with flow and elegance with no stumbling or stuttering. But those are my words, and she doesn’t relate to them as well as her own.
And “… be clear and concise…” came after I coached her away from negative commands. Her first stab at this Outcome was to “… not be rambling and confused…”. Which was her style of speech when she was nervous. And so, after some thought, she phrased it in the “towards” style you see above.
Realisation
You can see from her notes that Ananya accepts she will feel the effects of nerves. To deny this would be a fantasy and leave her vulnerable when they cropped up in the interview. Instead, she is going to use them to lift her performance.
I often coach athletes in elite sports to ‘breathe in’ their nerves. They commonly feel a surge of adrenalin as they step over the white line. But it only limits them if they fight it. I want them to accept it and use it. After all, it’s part of the FFF, designed to make them stronger and faster.
So they use the 7-11 breathing to stop their System 1 brain from shutting down System 2. At the same time, they breathe in the adrenalin and feel it coursing around their bodies to make them sharper. And this is what Ananya did too.
Ananya’s mental state was profoundly different once she decided to utilise her nerves rather than resist them.
Explore S.Q.A.s
She carefully selected the below SQAs from her growing list as the ones that would be most valuable to her in the interview;
- Determined,
- Hard Working,
- Reliable,
- Intelligent,
- Fast learner.
We discussed them at length, discussing how each would help her be at her best in this challenging time. This discussion forced her to imagine herself using these qualities in the interview. As she did so, she began to accept them as part of her make-up.
In this way, she began to coax her System 1 brain. In effect, she sent it a memo that said, “With these SQAs I’m safe, I belong, I’m respected. I’ve got this!”
I felt she needed more, though, to crush the limiting Identity Beliefs that lay in wait to undermine her performance. So I showed her how to do High-Performance Imprinting (HPI).
She rehearsed her performance in this 7 Skills guided visualisation tool every night, just before bed, for a week before the interview.
And, Review had taught her what her process was for becoming alarmed.
- Hallucinations of the challenge leading to humiliation.
- Her heart thumping
- A surge of adrenalin.
- Panicky, unable to collect her thoughts.
- Stuttering and waffling.
- The Limiting Identity Belief, “I’m useless”.
And so this week, she refused to accept the hallucinations. She cut the process off before it got going by repeating her Identity statement, “I’m a strong capable woman”.
It’s impossible to overstate the effect this all had on Ananya. Please note the simple but crucial steps that took her to success.
- She had started to believe in her SQAs.
- She stopped focusing on approaching disaster. And so was no longer emphasising to her System 1 the “danger” of the approaching challenge.
- She was rehearsing her SQAs and how they would lead her to success.
- HPI immersed her System 1 in the role-play and emotions of a successful interview. This taught her System 1 that the moment wasn’t a threat, so it didn’t need to fire the FFF response.
The Transformation of Ananya
Now Ananya will tell you she was like another person in that interview. She said she knew she would impress the panel. That there was no doubt in her mind that she would be, in her words, at her “irresistible best”.
This was nothing short of a transformation for Ananya. The nervous wreck I first met at the seminar where she couldn’t count backwards from 1000 in front of an audience had conquered her fears and excelled in an interview to keep her job.
This was no magic trick, even if that was what it felt like to her. She had simply coached her System 1 brain to accept that she would be safe in the interview and that she belonged, would be respected, and capable. Which meant that there was no need to run away or freeze.
And this was the first major milestone on her journey to a High IDQ. Our work stopped after the interview, but Ananya continued with R&P.
A Surprise Gives Ananya Confidence
About 4 months later, she noticed something that gave her a big lift. Her boss unexpectedly asked her to present a performance summary to the board.
In the past, this would have triggered a meltdown. Instead, Ananya was immediately aware of her SQAs and how they would help her succeed. She knew it was a significant milestone in her High IDQ journey.
Ananya’s High IDQ
I caught up with her for a coffee twelve months after our coaching had ended. Ananya had moved into the High IDQ area of the Identity scorecard. She felt confident, capable and successful. Just over twelve months earlier, that would have been unimaginable for her.
She was still doing R&P and had no plans to stop. She enjoyed the process, which was an important part of her daily routine. And I reaffirmed that this was vital to keep the gains she made and continue her progress.