What's Missing Reflection

You know those times when two clothing items randomly end up next to each other in the laundry, and you see a new outfit?  No, just me?

Well, anyway, I had a similar thing happen as three situations juxtaposed together to open up my thinking. The first one involved a couple of group sessions in which I introduced them to a coaching tool called The Model. A second was writing a blog series about common physician thought distortions. The third involved a coaching session with an individual resident with The Model. The adjacency of each of these in time, created a new insight for me.

Some of you know how I like to separate facts from the story we have about those facts to get the Circumstance (C) line. The physician I was coaching was really great at pulling out facts from thoughts. With the C line created and her automatic thought uncovered ("I'm not good enough."), we filled in the rest of the model for awareness of how that thought was affecting her.

Then, given my recent blog series on mental filters and dismissed the positives, I followed a hunch. I asked, "What is missing from the C line? What facts have you left out?"

Her brain started working overtime and provided a list of positive interactions, feedback, and her own internal feeling of pride for something she had done. She had filtered out the good stuff from the C line! When we started filling in the rest of the facts, the automatic thought shifted naturally to a much more empowering thought. There was no need to poke holes in the original automatic thought. She had evidence that she could see and believe right there that she did, in fact, offer value - she was enough!

So, I ask you, where are you dismissing positive interactions, compliments, feedback in a manner that results in you creating a biased set of facts? What is possible when you tell yourself the WHOLE truth?