Saturday 28 December 2013

Change - Discovering Issues



Change – Discovering Issues

In the process of becoming more self aware to work out what you want to change, discovering your issues is an important step. You may consciously know what your issues are but sometimes it helps to clarify them and write them down. To start, make a list of the things that you both admire and cannot stand in others. Those things you have a strong reaction to. For the negative, it is important to admit that it belongs to you in some way, and for the positive you yourself have the capacity to achieve those same qualities even if you don’t think you have right now. Now you have some issues to think about and maybe at least one possible goal that you could set and achieve.

Another way of discovering issues is to look at patterns in your relationships. Pick a type of relationship to look at. It might be boss-employee, partnerships or friendships for example. Think back and write down your observations of how each instance went – how it started, what happened, and how it ended. When you have as many relationships as you can remember look at each instance and note if there is a pattern. If the same thing happened each time, or most of the time, then this is a pattern and is an issue for you. Then look at the underlying emotion or state – for example it might be jealousy, not being assertive enough or something else.

Once you have named it, then you can call it a theme in your life. You might have been working on this theme for a while already, and you might need to continue working on it. But having identified what the issue is, you can now take steps to work on it specifically through setting a goal around it and changing your feelings about it. Then you will be able to act differently when a similar situation arises again. At the very least you will be able to make progress around your issue and no doubt this is what you want.