Jonathan Brink » Coaching

Getting In Touch With Your Emotions

Jonathan Brink — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:00:54 +0000

In my work with coaching people, I often find that people are afraid to feel. In learning to avoid the negative emotions that produce pain, we inadvertently learn to turn off our emotions entirely. Much of the journey as a human being is often relearning how to feel.

Each week, I will post a photo and ask two questions. What is the emotion you see in the photo? What do you think is the story behind the emotion?

Engage with me.

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Coaching Offer: Are you living to your fullest potential? Are you stuck behind an obstacle you just can’t seem to overcome? Are you wrestling with anger, frustration with work, or family and long for a deeper, more meaningful experience with life. Consider Leadership In Life, a life coaching program for those who want more out of daily living. Call me today at 916.952.0934 or email me and receive a free half hour introductory session to explore your story, desires, hopes and dreams.

Coaching Insight: A Courageous Life

Jonathan Brink — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:20:38 +0000

What is the most courageous thing you think you can do?

This past week I’ve had several conversations and a coaching session around courage. And one person shared that he needed to do something really crazy courageous. As I asked him why, he thought that he needed to challenge himself in a way that would get him out of his comfort zone. While I agreed that getting out of his comfort zone was a good thing, I also challenged him to consider something deeply courageous that was practical: to love the unlovable.

He didn’t bite. He wanted outrageous, and sexy. He wanted something that would get noticed.

In today’s world, it’s easy to assume that courage is about doing things that are off the charts. Courage is taking on bank robbers, entering a burning building, or visiting the moon. And while each of these things does require courage, for the most part, they are out of the realm of every day life. Even the firefighter only visits a fire 1-2 times a month. So how do we display courage in an every day world?

What if courage is found in the act of love?

We all have our comfort zones, those little spaces of relationship that only a few people can get inside. We think anyone can get it. But the moment someone enters, we’re likely to usher him or her out, into the safe confines of an arms distance. Love requires the courage to see a larger kingdom, one that is inclusive, inviting, and might even produce some irritation. It requires seeing that there are no boundaries.

We like our boundaries because they provide the false comfort that they will protect us. But once we build a wall to protect us, we build a wall that imprisons us. And sometimes we even find ourselves outside of our own circle. When Jesus called us to love, it was for our own sake. It was for the sake of our own restoration. To love, to tear down the walls that keep us from engaging relationship, meant tearing down our own obstacles to healing and life.

Love is courageous because people can hurt us. When we leave our protective barriers down, we run the risk of people stepping into our comfort zones, or worse, inflicting damage. But what if the intrusions aren’t really about the irritation, but instead our inability to love when it really matters. Every relationship provides an opportunity to love.

People always ask me how far love should go. And I always ask back, “How far do you want love to go for you?” If we examine Jesus as a courageous life, he was willing to stretch out his arms and say, “This is how far I will go to show you that you are worth it to me.” Jesus lived a courageous life because he was willing to take on love even unto death. But in doing so, he got to experience resurrection.

How are you choosing to love today?

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Coaching Moment – Getting To Half Way

Jonathan Brink — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:02:10 +0000

Recently I was working on a very large project for someone and I could just feel the burn. Everything inside of me was fighting the process of completing the project. And what was worse is that the resistance was coming form nowhere. I was competent, and capable. I had the resources. I just didn’t want to finish. The resistance was completely internal.

And as I was working on the project, I noticed that each section was numbered. So I could count my progress as I worked through it. And at the beginning this worked against me. I could quickly calculate that I had 90% left to go. My burden was huge. The numbers were reminded me of how far I still had to go.

But an interesting thing happened. Just as I hit the half way mark, I notice my energy began to lift. I had reached the point that I was always accomplishing more than was was left over. And by the time I hit 90% it was all good.

What are you working towards that you just need to reach the half way point to become re-energized?

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Coaching Thought – What Doesn’t Define You

Jonathan Brink — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 11:00:07 +0000

Coaching Thought: I often wonder is life is the stage where we discover our mistakes and failures don’t define us.

A little while ago I was coaching a guy who was wrestling with failure. He was lamenting the things he had done that had caused significant problems in his life. He was captivated by the idea that everyone saw him through that event. It was like a scarlet letter pounded into his chest. Yet when I asked him who had said anything about it, he couldn’t recall one name. He was the only one reminding himself of the event.

As we prayed, he could begin to see Jesus in his midst. He even allowed Jesus to wrap his arms around him and just hug him. It was a moment of shear terror giving way to delight as my friend began to see himself how Jesus saw him. Love had not defined him by what he did, but by whose he was. And with that, the fear was gone.

Grace is often a tough concept to grasp. At some point in our lives, we fail. Circumstances speak to us with a bullhorn and shout to us that we’ve done something wrong. And at this moment, we’re often exposed to some of the deeper fears that reside just below the surface. “Am I worth it? Can I do this? Or, Why should I even try?” We see the failure as indicative of who we are, rather than indicative of the lies we are believing in.

But when we begin to see that these “failures” don’t actually define us, we can begin to embrace the deep and abiding love of God that is already there.

May you discover the love that does define you.

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Coaching Thought – Projecting Fear

Jonathan Brink — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 22:15:31 +0000

Coaching Thought: How much of our fears reside not in what is happening but what we think will happen?

Recently I had the pleasure of working with someone who was really standing up to his sense fear. It was awesome to watch. And in the midst of our conversation, he had moments where he became captivated by his fear. It was highly circumstantial and from my perspective, not likely to happen, unless some really serious events occurred. In other words, his fear was unfounded. Yet as we spoke, he kept getting paralyzed by it. He was projecting his future back onto his present and living in that reality.

Much of my work in coaching people is processing assumptions and assessments, and teaching people how to think pro-actively, learning to ground their perceptions in the moment. And when they do, it reduces the fear they experience in the moment. Learning to do this is not impossible. In fact, it’s a very really practice that anyone can learn. It just takes time, intention and attention to learning again. As my friend began processing the fear, he began to master it, which allowed him to change his realization of the future. And when he did, he could live in peace with the future.

The amazing thing about being created in God’s image is our capacity to “realize” a perspective of what we think is reality. We dream up a possibility that hasn’t even happened yet, and we live into that reality in the present. When it’s good, it gives us hope. But when it’s bad, it paralyzes us with fear.

How much of what you are afraid of is a project of what could happen versus what is actually happening, and how much are you suffering from that projection?

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Coaching Moment – Leting Go Of The Victim

Jonathan Brink — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:34:40 +0000

It’s easy to play the victim and it’s hard to play the victim.

Recently I was coaching someone who was learning to move beyond the victim mentality. She had spent significant amount of our time recognizing the physical, emotional and psychological toll that went into holding onto the false identity of victim. She had gone through some significant work in her life to confront the victim staring back at her in the mirror. She had wrestled with the angel/demon and won. What changed was not the event in her life, but the judgment she was making about herself in the event.

The image now staring back at her in the mirror was new and fresh. It was beloved. She was really taking great strides to embrace her dignity as a child of God and let go of the old victim in the mirror, one defined by hopeless tragedy. We were exploring what it meant to let go of the victim inside and live life from wholeness and love.

As she wrestled with letting go, we explored how hard it was to embrace God’s original image for our lives, the ones that look like Jesus. Living into that image meant she had to do some really hard work. It was scary and hard and exhilarating all at the same time. And then she said something that really caught my attention. She said, “When I played the victim, I knew what to do. When I stopped, I didn’t know what to do.“

One of the significant costs of letting go of the victim, or any false identity, is that we’re like children again. Born again with nothing to tell us how things should be. We have to learn all over again what it means to be whole. We have to learn how to hold our dignity, and the dignity of others, even in the face of conflict, criticism, and public examination. Our automatic response often acts from our old story, ready to remind us that we’ve been duped once again. Our own bodies create evidence of doubt.

But it is in these space of failure that we learn again. God allows us to be tested, not so we can get it wrong, but that we can discover how much we’ve overcome, how much we’re growing. Each time my friend returned to remembering her dignity, it was rebuilding her story. Each time she remembered her new story it was deepened in a way that she was restored…again. Saying good bye to the victim meant doing the hard work of engaging restoration, but now she had evidence to suggest that it was already true.

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Note: Photo by nirrimi

Getting In Touch With Your Emotions

Jonathan Brink — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:00:27 +0000

Each week, I will post a photo and ask two questions. What is the emotion you see in the photo? What do you think is the story behind the emotion?

Engage with me.

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Coaching Moment – Making It Through Suffering

Jonathan Brink — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:00:37 +0000

A friend of mine called me this week. I’ve coached him on and off throughout the last couple of years. We talked for about an hour sharing stories about our families, our work, and our journey. He and his family have encountered some hard times during the recession and he’s still struggling. But the tone in his voice was noticeably different from many of our discussions. In the past, any time trouble would come up he would fall into a state of panic, and do something rash. Many of his decisions then became attempts to relieve his suffering, rather than logical choices.

We talked a little about what had changed. And he said, “I’ve learned that I will make it through through the suffering. I have hope.” I smiled when he said that. Isn’t that what were all looking for? We’re looking for hope. And hope is the realization that we can make it through. Because if were honest, we know that suffering will come. It’s part of life. But what we’re looking for is the strength and courage to make it through suffering, not to avoid it. When we try to avoid it, we usually increase the suffering by prolonging it, or making choices we’d never make. But when we face the suffering, we usually learn from it. And my friend had learned something very valuable. He was strong enough to make it through.

Before I my friend and I ended our call, he said to me, “I know I’m going to make it through. I already have and I know I will.” The sense of resolve in his voice was calm and collected. He wasn’t panicked, even though he was facing some significant issues. And I had to smile. It was nice seeing my friend reach a deeper state of peace, even in the midst of suffering.

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Coaching Moment – A Powerful Story

Jonathan Brink — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:41:50 +0000

What is the story behind everything you do?

A little while ago I was coaching someone who was trying to overcome a deep sense of fear. This person was afraid God wasn’t going to like who she was if she was honest with herself about her own failures. So instead of being honest about them, she would overcompensate for them by trying to be everything she thought her world wanted her to be. She was successful, talented, bright, and funny. Yet, a deep sense of fear kept creeping into her world, and especially her sleep. She would have terrifying nightmares about showing up to work and six deadlines would have been missed.

As we began to explore her story, it became obvious that much of her fear resided in failure. She had learned a long time ago that failure was not an option in her household, and it was just better to overcompensate than face the failure. In running from her failure, it was beginning to overtake her. The more she tried to pretend it didn’t exist, the more she would become captivated by it’s presence.

I asked her when she first remembered hearing that failure was not an option. Her first memory was the day her dad had lost his job. He came home angry and visibly upset. When she had forgotten to wash the dishes and do her homework, he tore into her. A searing thought ran through her mind. “What if my dad would only love me if I’m perfect?” She remembered running up to her room and crying all night, terrified by the idea that he wouldn’t love her.

As strange as it may sound, the idea had stuck with her for most of her life. And to make matters worse, she had never taken the time to really re-appraise the moment as an adult. She had learned to avoid it at all costs, afraid that if she looked at it again, it just might be true. But now the fear had created enough disturbances in her life that she was finally tired of avoiding it.

I asked her to imagine herself back in the kitchen, and for the first time look around the room to find Jesus. To her surprise, Jesus was standing next to her dad.

“Ask Jesus if it’s true,” I said. “Ask him if you have to be perfect for your dad to love you.”

She listened for a second and then said, “No, he always loved me.” The news came as a surprise to her. It was as unsettling as it was good. “Then why was he so mad,” she demanded.

“Ask Jesus,” I said.

She sat silently for quite a while as she closed her eyes and imagined the moment again. And then she started to weep. “I never saw that she said,” burying her face in her hands. She sat for about five minutes and just process her experience again for the first time. Finally, she looked up and said, “Jesus said my dad was afraid that we wouldn’t love him if he failed.”

In avoiding the moment, she had missed out on seeing the truth for most of her life. She had picked up the very same lie her dad was wrestling with. But once she was ready to face it, she could uncover it and remove it from her life. And once it was removed, it no longer had the power to captivate her.

We live in stories. And a big part of those stories are the judgments we make about ourselves in the stories. What lie are you believing that is shutting you down?

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Getting In Touch With Your Emotions

Jonathan Brink — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:00:54 +0000

Today I’m starting a new series of posts on Fridays called, Getting In Touch With Your Emotions. In my work with coaching people, I often find that people are afraid to feel. In learning to avoid the negative emotions that produce pain, we inadvertently learn to turn off our emotions entirely. Much of the journey as a human being is often relearning how to feel.

Each week, I will post a photo and ask two questions. What is the emotion you see in the photo? What do you think is the story behind the emotion?

Engage with me.

———————————————————————

Coaching Offer: Are you living to your fullest potential? Are you stuck behind an obstacle you just can’t seem to overcome? Are you wrestling with anger, frustration with work, or family and long for a deeper, more meaningful experience with life. Consider Leadership In Life, a life coaching program for those who want more out of daily living. Contact me today and receive a free half hour introductory session to explore your story, desires, hopes and dreams.