What is your mental operating system and how well is it serving you in your work as a change agent, and in your life overall? 

Are you ready to make some upgrades?

Welcome to Psychology 101 for Change Agents: A Self-Guided Coaching Sequence

With this post I'm sharing  the first segment of a 12-session coaching curriculum called "Understanding and Evolving Your Psychology."  This is a coaching sequence that we use with the social entrepreneurs in the Joyful Impact Accelerator.   It's all  about taking a self-guided journey towards greater insight about what truly makes you tick.  Getting familiar with a working model of human psychology and self development gives you the chance to re-wire yourself to better advance your goals, break negative behavior patterns, and positively engage with other people and world around you. 

This kind of insight can be valuable for anybody, but it's especially important for all of us who feel that deeper calling to maximize our positive contribution to the world around us.   You are the folks that this blog and this website are here to serve! 

Here's the good news and the bad news all wrapped up together: when you feel that kind of deep call to serve others, your personal joy and your impact out in the world are inextricably linked.  You feel called to serve as powerfully as you possibly can--and by definition this level of service is outside of your current comfort zone.  So you owe it to yourself to step up your own level of personal and psychological development, and figure out how to grow yourself to better live out your vision and your mission, and to show up as your highest, best and most joyful self with all those you love. 

 "What we can be, we must be...."   -Abraham Maslow

A little bit of background 

 These videos are excerpts from group coaching sessions I do as part of a livecast series for members of the Joyful Impact Accelerator.  Along with the videos there are worksheets that go with each session.  We wanted to share this material with as many of you as want to make use of it--I hope these sessions can generate some deep insights and breakthroughs for you in your journey to more fully answer your own call to serve.   Additional sessions will be posted every other week to the Joyful Impact blog as the livecast series makes it way through the 12-session curriculum.  To download the worksheet for this session, click here.

Session 1: Breaking the Reaction/Regret Cycle

This kick off session for the Understanding and Evolving Your Psychology coaching sequence is all about seeking some deeper understanding of why we sometimes do things that we later wish we hadn’t.  Even more so when this is a repeat pattern for us—when we keep encountering a situation that triggers us into a snap reaction that we later regret.  When that happens we call it the “Reaction/Regret Cycle."

How great would it be if we got to have a “replay” feature in life--if we got to wind the clock back and try again when we end up regretting our actions after the fact?  I can’t promise you a do-over feature, but what we’re going to be working on in this coaching session will help you break patterns where you find yourself in the same unfortunate situation repeatedly, and you keep doing the same thing over and over again, and feeling bad about it, over and over again.    It could also be that the pattern you want to break is one where you keep failing to take a particular action in the moment--for example not stepping up when you have the opportunity to take a stand against systemic bias.    

No more!  It's time to break that cycle!

Check out the video and make your way through the worksheet.  It will help you identify one of these Reaction/Regret Cycles in your own life and gives you some tools for re-wiring yourself around a more positive, thoughtful response.