Power Tool: Excitements vs. Anxiety

A Coaching Power Tool Created by Simone Noussitou de Rham
(Life & Career Coach, SWITZERLAND)

Introduction

In one of my early teleclasses, one of the student mentioned his win for the week: he just got promoted not only to a new job, but to a new assignment in a new country. This meant for him leaving all he knew behind and moving his family to this new place. When he started to share this, you could hear the anxiety of the unknown in his voice and how this anxiety was holding him still. And then he started to share what he will find there, the new challenge but also the new possibilities, the learning, the good weather; the curiosity was taking over and he shifted by himself to excitement. You could feel that by this shift, his voice was getting lighter and you could just imagine the smile on his face, action was just at the fingertips of his hand. At that time, I took a note in my Powertool One Note folder: excitement vs. anxiety.

This idea then sat there for months unnoticed until last week it all came back vividly in a peer coaching session. We moved through the session from anxiety and tension about a future training my client had to create, and how this anxiety was negatively impacting her attention & focus, to excitement and enthusiasm about what this outcome was all about and all the actions that the client could implement in order to offer a thrilling experience to the future trainees. At the end of the session, we discussed together what shift in perspective happened, and we recognized together that being able to move out of the anxiety and get excited about the future training helped her to set into action and liberate her ideas.

In this split second, my own anxiety to write a power tool was lifted by the excitement that this specific shift worked very powerfully for my client, so here I am sharing my thoughts on this power tool.