Archive for September, 2010

Accountability Will Help You Achieve Your Goals

Monday, September 27th, 2010

Think of the times you’ve attempted a behavioral change but didn’t get very far.  Chances are you started off with lots of enthusiasm, but the effort got lost somewhere along the way.

Change is hard.  The path of least resistance leads straight to the familiar ways of doing things.  The demands of your busy life distract your attention from your behavior change project.  Old habits have a way of reasserting themselves.

Accountability Will Help You Succeed!

In life coaching, accountability is one of the most powerful tools for helping people succeed.  Accountability literally means making an account.  When you know you are going to make an account to someone else, you are more likely to follow through with the steps you’ve committed to for reaching your goal.   An on-going relationship with someone to whom you make an account  helps you stay on track over time.

Involving another person in your behavior change program helps you strengthen your commitment and maintain your focus.  When things go well you have someone to celebrate with.  When problems arise there’s someone to help you identify what went wrong and figure out how to get back on track.

Here are three ways you can create accountability in your life:

1. Enlist a Friend:

You have probably noticed that you’re more likely to stick with an exercise program when you find a buddy to participate with you.  If you just don’t feel like getting up early one morning to take that run, you’re much more likely to get moving if you know you’ll let your friend down if you don’t show up.

You can make a contest of it, seeing who reaches a weight loss or savings plan goal first.  You could also make a bet with a friend or family member.  If you succeed at your behavior change, you win your bet in addition to the satisfaction of achieving your goal.

Engaging a friend or family member will not only help you succeed.  Working toward a shared goal will provide companionship and strengthen the relationship.

2. Join a Group or a Class:class.jeannette

When you make a group or a class a part of your weekly schedule, you improve the chances that you’ll follow through.  The structure of a weekly class or group creates a routine in your life that becomes a regular habit.

It can be much easier to get to the gym for an exercise class, than to work out on your own.  If you try doing it at home, it’s easy to get distracted by the kids, the TV, or the thousands of other things you need to do around the house.

Participation in a group brings you into contact with others who share your interests or goals.  Other members can offer encouragement and support.  If you are motivated by competition, comparing your progress to others’ can provide an incentive.  Twelve Step, weight loss, and smoking cessation groups all provide ongoing support to help you establish and maintain healthy behaviors.  Joining a book group provides social interaction and stimulating conversation, in addition to making sure that you get those books read.

If your goal is developing a new skill, such as photography or playing the guitar, or pursuing an interest such as becoming a wine connoisseur, a class provides information and guidance in a systematic manner.  You can also expand your social network when you come into contact with others who share your interests.

3. Hire a Life Coach:

A life coach is a professional, with expertise in helping you achieve your goals.  Your regularly scheduled meetings keep you focused on your objectives amid the distractions of your daily life.  Reporting on your progress, both in and between sessions, creates the accountability and support  that maximize the likelihood of your following through on action steps.  The feedback you receive, whether celebration of successes or problem solving to address unexpected challenges, will help you to succeed.

Whatever your goal, you increase the chances that you will succeed if you create accountability.  And achieving your goals will make your good life better.


Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon.  Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine.  Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.

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Create an “I’ve Done It List”

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

If you’re like most people, you live with a tottering tower of ‘to do’. If you are on top of what needs to be done, chances are, you keep a ‘To Do’ List.

To Do Lists are terrific for managing your ‘to do’s’. You don’t need to worry about forgetting what it is you need to do. You don’t need to keep track in your head of the multitude of items once they are written down. When you’ve accomplished a task you can check it off your list, providing a momentary sense of triumph.

Here’s the problem with To Do lists: they are like the hydra, the many headed monster of Greek mythology. When any one of the hydra’s heads was cut off, two grew in its place.

to do list

If your ‘To Do’ list is kept electronically, the completed items disappear as soon as you delete them to be replaced immediately with the next tasks which arise, or those you’ve been postponing. If you maintain your To Do List with paper and pencil, you cross off the completed items and add new ones. When the list becomes too much of a mess, or you turn the page to begin a new week, you copy over the not yet completed tasks and start all over again.

Either way, no matter how many items you accomplish, there’s a never-ending phalanx of new items ready to immediately take their place. The focus always remains on all of the things you have yet to do, while your accomplishments disappear out of your consciousness and into the ether (or your waste basket).

This can become daunting and, ultimately, discouraging. You may feel like a hamster scurrying furiously on its wheel, never making headway against the constant torrent of To Do. The sense of never being able to accomplish enough undermines your confidence and self-esteem.

To get legitimate satisfaction from all that you’ve accomplished, and build your confidence and self-esteem, create a companion for your ‘To Do’ List: an ‘I’ve Done It!’ List.

It’s easy to lose track of or minimize your real accomplishments. Keeping a record of what you have achieved provides you with concrete evidence you can use to provide encouragement and build your confidence.

When you complete a task, rather than simply deleting it from your electronic To Do List or crossing it off your paper and pencil one, transfer it to your ‘I’ve Done It!’ List. Make a habit of referring regularly to your list of accomplishments to remind you of the progress you are making on important projects in your life and boost your self-esteem. Any time you feel overwhelmed or discouraged, get out your ‘I’ve Done It!’ List, and enhance your confidence by reminding yourself of how far you really have come.

By focusing on your accomplishments, you will build confidence that energizes and empowers you to tackle your ‘To Do’ List with renewed vigor. The increased self-esteem you experience will lead to further success, helping you to make your good life better.

Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon.  Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine.  Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.

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Replace Your Negative Self-Talk with Positive Beliefs

Monday, September 13th, 2010

If you believe you can and if you believe you can’t, you’re right.
-Henry Ford


How you think influences the way you act and feel in major ways.  Negative beliefs about yourself hold you back more certainly than external forces can.  You actually have enormous control over what you think.  It’s a matter of turning old habits of negative thinking into new practices of positive beliefs.  Doing this will improve your confidence and empower you to achieve your goals.

Negative beliefs fall into two categories:  self-criticism and worry.


The Problem with Self-criticism:

believe.jeannette

It doesn’t matter whether self-criticism addresses the past or the present or self-doubt raises concerns about the future.   Negative thinking always undermines you.  Beating yourself up about regrets from the past distracts you from what you need to focus on in the present and brings you down.  Doubt in your abilities saps your energy and confidence and holds you back.  The expectation that you’ll fail inhibits you from attempting new things.  It’s hard to succeed if you are plagued by negative thinking.

It may seem that negative thinking serves a protective function.  Many of us were raised with the notion that criticism is necessary for success.  We believe that focusing on what we do wrong will prevent us from making the same mistakes again.  It can also feel like self-criticism protects us from attacks from others. If we catch what we do wrong first, we may be able to correct it before someone else notices.  If we criticize ourselves aloud, others will know we’re already aware that we’ve done something wrong and may refrain from blaming us.

Of course it’s important to learn from your mistakes and it may be appropriate to acknowledge them to others.  You just don’t need to beat yourself up.  It’s much more effective to calmly notice an error and then focus on what you need to do to correct the problem.

Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon.  Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine.  Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.

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How to Change Your Negative Self-Talk to Positive Beliefs

Monday, September 6th, 2010


I am often surprised at how unconscious my coaching clients are of their negative self-talk. The first step toward replacing your negative thinking with positive beliefs is to pay close attention to what is going on between your ears.  Monitor your thought content for critical self-statements like, “You idiot!” or “How could you DO that???”  Listen carefully to the words that come out of your mouth.

Notice when you are harsh on yourself and ask gently, “Is that appropriate?”  If your self-criticism habit is firmly entrenched you will probably reply with an emphatic “Yes!”  Then ask yourself how you feel when you treat yourself so meanly.  If you are honest with yourself, you will notice that you feel deflated or discouraged or some other unhappy feeling.

think positive1. Jeannette

Now, gently correct that thought or statement.  Tell yourself, “Just because I did that, doesn’t mean I’m an idiot,” or “It would have been better if I had done that differently, but beating myself up isn’t going to help anything.”

At the beginning, you may need to watch out for beating yourself up for being mean to yourself:  “You idiot!  There you go again!  What’s WRONG with you? You’ll never learn to be kind to yourself!”  Use humor when old habits of negativity reassert themselves:  “Oops!  There you go again!” Or, you could even say something like, “Sweetheart, you do not deserve to treat yourself that way.  Life is too short for such cruelty!”

As you correct your negative thinking begin to replace it with positive beliefs.  If you do something you are unhappy with, ask yourself, “What can I do to fix this?” or “What is the learning here?”  Encourage yourself by affirming that you’ll do better next time.  Over time you will change the habit of negativity to the habit of positive, encouraging thinking.  As you do this, you will empower yourself to act free of the fear of beating yourself up should things not turn out exactly as you would like them to.  You will also feel much more confident and self-accepting.  All of which, of course, will help you to achieve your goals and make your good life better.

Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon.  Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine.  Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.

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How to Become an Expert on the Solutions

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

How To Become an Expert on the Solutions

First identify problem areas in your life that you’d like to change:

• It drives you crazy when your spouse does those same things you’ve been complaining about for years.
• You’d like to shed a few pounds.
• Sometimes you’re late paying your bills because they get lost in those mountains of mail on your dining room table.

The first step toward becoming an expert on the solutions is becoming curious about alternative choices you may never have considered before. Consider what you might do differently to impact on these situations.

You empower yourself when you begin to consider what you could do differently to achieve better outcome:

• You could react more calmly when your spouse does the things that annoy you.
• When you notice yourself going for that midnight snack, you could remind yourself of your weight loss goals and drink a glass of water instead.
• You could sort through the mail right away, throwing away the junk mail and putting your bills in a special place.

The next step is to begin the experiment of putting your alternative choices into practice. On the basis of these experiments you’ll learn what works by noticing the outcome of your new choices, compared with the way things used to be:

• You realize that your day doesn’t need to be ruined just because your spouse did something you don’t like. You might even notice that your spouse becomes friendlier in response to your greater calm, and begins to act more according to your preferences.
• You notice how proud you feel the next morning for making a healthy choice. Over time your weight loss shows you how damaging those late night cookies really were.
• You recognize how much better you feel, secure that you’re not missing a bill and free of mail clutter.

climber.Jeannette

Lasting transformation occurs through the aggregate of these small actions repeated over time. By focusing on the solutions – choices you can make to improve the situation – rather than getting stuck on what isn’t working in your life, you bring about lasting positive change.
By the third or fourth session, my clients become expert at answering the ‘different and better’ question. Then I know that they have shifted their focus from what isn’t working in their lives to what they can do to transform their situation for the better. You, too, can make that transition. When you do, you will achieve your goals and make your good life better.

Jeannette Samanen, Ph.D.
Jeannette’s professional development began with graduate school at the University of Oregon.  Her first post-doctoral position was at the Boston University School of Medicine where, as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology), where she specialized in stress management and behavioral medicine.  Jeannette has had over 30 years of experience as a life coach and psychologist and derives great pleasure from helping clients transform their lives for the better.

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