TRAINER ZONE

As a Life Coach, you will be faced with the challenge of helping clients with low self-esteem. This might even be the reason that they hired you.

How do you help them?

First, you must have a deep understanding of what self-esteem means. More often than not, having high self-esteem is confused with narcissism.

Self-esteem can also be termed self-assessment. It is the beliefs about one’s self that have been developed since early childhood and can be either negative or positive. It is linked to self-worth, confidence, decision making, creativity, mental health, and will power.

Narcissism is the admiration of one’s self and physical appearance. It involves selfishness, lack of empathy, a sense of entitlement, and a need for admiration.

While both high self-esteem and narcissism can be described as a powerful belief in one’s self, holding the self in high regard, and being confident in one’s self, the difference is that narcissism can actually inhibit performance.

How can you tell if someone is narcissistic or has high self-esteem?

Those who are narcissistic do not hold themselves accountable when they make mistakes. They struggle with admitting that they are not always perfect and will not do what it takes to self-improve. This can affect their performance because their denial of failure can blind them from the lesson they need to learn in order to succeed the next time around.

Those with high self-esteem are confident enough to admit their mistakes and learn from them without beating themselves up over it. They see the lesson in the failure and are willing to try again. They believe in themselves enough to know that they can handle failure and constructive criticism without downward spiraling – as narcissists tend to do.

Having high self-esteem is important for those who are looking for ways to better their life. According to this study by the American Psychology Association, it may not be the exact key to overall happiness, but it can help those clients who have low self worth and no confidence.

What does low self-esteem look like in clients?

There are a few traits of low self-esteem that you can look for during your sessions with clients. Here are some:

• The words I can’t. This indicates having low self-confidence and a disbelief that they are capable of achieving their goals. Have a look here for a highly effective NLP technique that can be used to help these clients.

• Feeling shame or guilt after failure.

• Negative feelings about themselves.

• Irritation or hostility.

• Being highly sensitive to critique.

• Feelings of unworthiness or not feeling like they deserve better.

How to help.

As a coach, trainer, or mentor, it your responsibility to help clients overcome low-self esteem. Here are some ways to do so:

• “Comparison is the thief of joy” – Theodore Roosevelt.

Once your client stops comparing their mistakes, accomplishments, physical appearance, etc – they will learn how to accept them. We often compare our unfinished rough draft of Chapter One, with someone else’s draft five, professionally edited, completed and published hardcover book. We don’t see other person’s struggles, failures, and pitfalls that they undoubtedly faced along the way. We are left feeling inadequate and incapable when in reality, that person we long to be has been exactly where we are at now. The difference is that they never gave up.

• “I AM ENOUGH.”

Celebrity therapist Marisa Peer attributes her success in helping thousands of clients overcome some of the most extreme mental health issues by boiling everything down to one root cause: feeling like we aren’t enough. Does your client feel like they are enough as they are? If they have low self-esteem, then chances are, they do not. Marisa’s advice is to have the client write “I am enough” on their bathroom mirror, rearview mirror, or any other mirror they regularly look in. It serves as a constant reminder that they are enough, no matter where they are, what they are doing, or who they are with. You can have your client do this, or you can come up with your own unique way to have this reminder available to them whenever they need it. The truth is, we are all enough just as we are. Some of us just need to be reminded of it.

• Gratitude.

Practicing gratitude daily might seem like a simple solution. However, it is far more complex and effective than you might expect. If you have your client write a list of 20 things about their life and about their self that they are grateful for, for 21 days, it rewires the brain to always look for what they can appreciate about life and about themselves. This leads to feelings of confidence, high self worth, and a higher self-esteem.

A trainer for one of the iNLP Center NLP Practitioner Training courses was having a hard time with a rude students. She asked for advice. Here is the rundown!

In the classroom, there is a student who intervenes and corrects the other students each time. of course I apologize later with those who have been corrected (at the end of the lesson in private) and I tried to make her understand that everyone has its time then I always leave space to those students and I say that it is a time for them now, but do you have some advice to give me?

This morning she was doing exercises with me and a new student intervened and rude she said she was asking the question to me and not to him. how do you solve when it happens?

Thanks for asking. Do the other students appear annoyed as well?

They were a little bit frustrated and i think they prefer not to participate when she’s there.

onsider that she’s enrolled in eng class and she asked to be allowed also in it live sessions, i don’t know if steve has the same problem with her because maybe in english she doesn’t speak so fluently

Ok must fix this – there are three steps:

1) Discuss with her in private – over phone or Skype and simply tell her the problem and ask her if she is aware of it. Make her aware and tell her it needs to stop. Tell her that from now on you will need to intervene in class if her rudeness continues (and other students are affected).

2) If the rudeness does not stop, you must follow through and confront her in class when it happens.

3) If it still doesn’t stop, then when it happens you must remove her from the class.

It doesn’t matter how good or bad her English is – if other students are affected then it must stop.

Ok. i tried in a gentle way but it was not sufficient because now when she’s there noone want to so simulation together

I appreciate you trying in a gentle way – now it seems like it is time to be less gentle:)

And tell her you will confront her rude behavior in class if it happens again.
Also tell her you will remove her from class if necessary – you can kick her out of class as the instructor

And moreover she’s not my student so she has her class, so I prefer to lose her not my serene students if I have to choose.

If you have to kick her out of class – tell the students that you have worked with her a lot and warned her this would happen so they don’t think you are overreacting.

She cannot be allowed to ruin other students class!