Joe’s coaching move is elegantly simple: he asks the woman to look him in the eye and say “I want to control what you think of me, Joe.” When she does, she immediately laughs — the desire, stated plainly, reveals itself as absurd. No further argument needed.
This is the gap between the unconscious pull of approval-seeking and the conscious recognition of what it actually asks for. We all want to control others’ perceptions, but when we name it directly, we can feel how ridiculous and impossible it is. None of us will be remembered in a thousand years. The need to be important is, as Joe puts it, “a selfishness of itself.”
“Joe, I want to control what you think of me.” — “It feels ridiculous.” — “Totally absurd.”
“None of us are going to be remembered in a hundred years. None of us.”
The coaching technique itself is worth noting: rather than arguing against the belief, Joe asks the client to fully own and express it. The embodied experience of saying it out loud does the work that logic never could.
Related Concepts
- You cannot judge the value of your own input
- Micromanaging comes from feeling out of control
- We judge others for exactly what we’re doing ourselves
- Teaching children to reference themselves builds their internal compass
- Your coaching expression must be yours, not your teacher’s
- Feeling your essential nature dissolves avoidance behaviors