I listen intently to the words that people speak because it tells me instantly who's in charge; their Gremlin or Genie. Now I'm not one to say anything to someone about their Gremlin unless it's a client or a friend, but while going through my physical therapy session for my knee yesterday, I couldn't keep myself quiet any longer.
The assistant who helps my PT guy took over when his next patient showed up. I thought nothing of it until she kept saying things like, "Ooh, I hate this exercise. It's really hard." Or "This is one that a lot of people struggle with so don't get frustrated if you have a difficult time with it."
This went on with 3 different exercises until I finally said, "Please stop telling me how hard something is going to be. You may have a problem with this program but I don't."
She looked at me for a moment and then became very quiet. Yes, I felt bad and gently explained to her why her saying the things she kept saying was not doing me any good. She then shared with me that she wasn't offended by what I said to her. She became quiet because she was in deep thought about how she never realized it before, but she does this with clients all the time and how important it was to stop doing it.
She then explained how it's her tendency to look at her life in general this way. Everything's a struggle. Everything seems hard. Right then and there she declared to change. And she would start at work because she knew that would be easier and then work her way into her personal life.
I complimented her ability to hear what I said and not be offended and to take it a step further by making changes for the better with it. She was obviously ready for this next step in her life!
We moved on to the next exercise and she said, "This is a piece of cake. You'll do fine with this!" Then we had a good laugh.
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