Personal leadership and how we attune our internal dialogue to our choices and challenges are very often an important topic to work on during a fuel session (link). Do I give myself the mandate to expect things from my organisation, the team, the co-worker, the boss? Do I allow myself to let go and to live with a ‘just-enough’ approach or result? Am I not too demanding to my colleagues or to myself? Or do we avoid crucial conversations (link) because we are afraid of the reaction, afraid of the other not willing to work together anymore or being angry because we addressed something in his or her behaviour, … Very often we shoot ourselves in the foot … we restrain ourselves or we push too much out of our carefulness, exaggerated conscientiousness, demands to the world or ourselves, our perfectionism or confrontation avoidant behaviour. We put ourselves under an unneeded pressure, we’re sometimes very unhappy with how we dealt with a situation, even getting angry that ‘again’ we did not succeed. Or being frustrated because the others won’t do what we find normal. Therefore, it can be a liberating, clarifying and normalising exercise to put that part of yourself on the empty chair and you aside to it. Just to have a good chat with yourself. A chat full of curiosity for the underlying reasonings, needs and interests (what’s the difference that this part of yourself is willing to make). And very often this will help you to find ‘a golden mean’, a more helping and constructive way of expressing what means a lot to you. A chat which leads to a more workable internal dialogue, positive and helping thoughts, less ‘have-to’s’ – away irrational beliefs and wrong reasonings (disaster thinking, fanatic perfectionism, love junk, demands to the world, …)
