Coaching with the Brain in Mind

CHAPTER 5

Pillar—Optimizing Performance

Linda’s mother spent most of her life working in the health industry, so she knew the facts about smoking. She had also seen her husband die from smoking-related complications, and it was clear she feared a similar fate. Her family hid her cigarettes and lighter, but she would replace them and keep on smoking. They all knew there was no way to force her to stop until she literally couldn’t draw enough breath to inhale a cigarette. She died not long after.

All the advances of medicine and its willingness to incorporate non-traditional approaches have not solved the problem of compliance. Not the government, public health officials, alternative health practitioners, or licensed medical practitioners know how to overcome resistance to keeping ourselves healthy. Even the threat of death is not enough to motivate many of us to do what we are told we must. Alan Deutschman (2006) says chances are only 1 in 9 that we will make a significant change, even when we are told our life’s at stake, as in Linda’s mother’s case. Deutschman says this is because the three techniques usually relied upon to create change—facts, fear, and force—do not work. He has taken on the mission of replacing these with three approaches that work better: relate, repeat, reframe. Not surprisingly, these are built into the coach approach. They are part of the shift from a top-down control approach to a more systemic understanding of what triggers a person’s own motivation to ...