Why people do what they do…

…and why they don’t do what they could do.

Developed by

Thomas J. Leonard

Welcome to You…

On the following slides,

you will see many different

sides of yourself.

Some you know well,

others you are already know,

others you are working on,

and others that may be new to you.

The Purpose here is…

… to expand your awareness

and understanding of the

many elements that affect your life,

your aspirations, your priorities,

your success and your quality of life.

The Benefit to you…

With this information, you will immediately start making better

choices and set better goals

in all areas of your life because

you more fully understand the range of dynamics that drive, trigger, inspire, orient and even define you.

You will also…

…more fully understand, be able to live with, support and enjoy others more because you will recognize much of what drives them and that their behavior (good or bad) isn’t so much about you; rather, it is come from

these elements.

This is good because…

Life then becomes less ‘personal’

which then makes intimacy

possible and much more interesting.

And if you’re in the business of developing or supporting people, you can help them know themselves more fully, leading to quicker growth.

Ready to discover?

What follows is

a brief description of the 25 things

that greatly affect what we as humans do

and what we don’t do.

Please note…

Some of these 25 elements are limiters, meaning they hold a person back or prompt behavior that’s silly.

The others are expanders, meaning they accelerate the development and evolution of the individual.

Both are equally important to know.

1. Self-awareness level

• Self-awareness is your ability to feel, see and understand who you are, where you are coming from, what you are doing, why you are doing it, how you come across and what your body, spirit and mind is experiencing and tell you.

• Through self-awareness you come to know yourself and understand why things happen they way they do, including your own reactions, and you tend to make better choices that fit well.

• Without self-awareness, one tends to repeat patterns, ignore intuition and miss out on the rich subtleties that life provides.

• A coach can help you increase your awareness.

2. Breadth of Perspective

• Perspective is both the angle you see yourself and life from, but also the viewing height.

• The higher the perspective, the clearer the view.

• Narrow perspective results in

– Lack of context | Single paradigm | Self-referencing

– Minimal understanding | Small choices | Reactions

• A coach helps clients increase perspective by asking challenging questions, introducing paradoxes, distinguishing distinctions and co-creating stimulating environments that expand thinking.

3. Personal Values

• Values are personal priorities – that which is most important to you, for whatever reason.

• There are hundreds of values; each is valid.

• Values are thought to be genetically wired in and thus virtually impossible to change during one’s lifetime.

• Values are sometimes hidden by unmet needs.

• Discovering one’s values affords alignment and integration and reduces life stress

• When values are clear, fulfillment occurs.

• A coach can help you discover and orient yourself and your life around your personal values.

4. Unmet Personal Needs

• Unmet needs cause a person to spend 10-95% of their time/life expensively chasing people and events to get these needs met.

• Personal problems and delayed development occur when needs are treated like options, instead of like true needs.

• Needs are not personal; they are just needs.

• Needs are satisfy-able once they are discovered.

• There are 100’s of needs; pick 3 or 4.

• When you satisfy needs, you have more time and more space to enjoy your life.

• A coach helps you identify and satisfy your needs.

5. Nothing better to do

• Humans default to the familiar, even if lame or proven not to work.

• If you want to change, make the need, cost or opportunity for the change compelling, really compelling.

• Changing your environment can quickly give you something worth doing.

• Coaching works because it creates a wide enough gap so that the person has a reason to change, go for something or to evolve

6. Rigid, self-defining roles

• Many people define themselves by roles.

• Roles then dictate thinking, priorities and behavior, sometimes at great cost/loss.

• Roles are tribal in origin and thus survival-based.

• You are more than your roles in life.

• You can become role-free and yet fulfill your obligations.

• A coach helps you release restricting roles, integrate larger/evocative roles and operate independently from roles.

7. Addictions, compulsions

• Addictions and compulsions eliminate or significantly reduce your ability to choose.

• Addictions/compulsions choose for you.

• There are many more addictions than “just” alcohol and drugs.

• As life becomes more complex and stressed, addictions and compulsions provide welcome numbing and diversion, but at a high price.

• A coach can help you see where you are being driven/controlled; a counselor or therapist provides recovery assistance.

8. Emotional damage, triggers

• Past events leave permanent memories and scars, both of which dictate future behavior.

• People, situations, events trigger us emotionally.

• People ‘close down’ or have ‘open wounds’ as a result of past events.

• Emotional damage is not personal even if it occurred to you. Emotional damage is working its way out of life.

• Terrific opportunities are missed/avoided because of fear of potential pain or failure.

• Solution is to heal emotionally and/or put yourself in situations and relationships with others who don’t trigger you emotionally.

9. Tradition and status quo

• People do things the ‘old way’ because the get a sense of identity and inclusion from those who also operate this way; affirming.

• If one goes against tradition, the tribe rallies to convince or exclude them, as a perceived threat.

• Rituals and traditions work better as choices, not self-defining requirements; if there is pressure, then it’s a requirement.

• A coach helps person to develop their own traditions and helps client to replace tribe with community.

10. Personality type

• Personality type is genetically wired in and culturally reinforced; difficult to change.

• There are many ways to measure and describe personality types; more are on the way.

• Usually, it’s best to fully accept your natural tendencies and leverage those to your advantages vs. trying to fight yourself.

• The more you know about how you operate, the easier it is to accept yourself and others.

• A coach helps you make the most of your personality type.

11. Upbringing and family

• First 2 years of infancy dictate a lot of your way of thinking, perceiving, relating.

• How you were brought up reinforces certain tendencies of yours, both good and bad.

• Familial expectations and rules become deeply imbedded and can take years/decades to release.

• Rejecting your upbringing/family usually doesn’t release their effects on you; better to accept and integrate all that occurred and then evolve.

12. Assumptions and beliefs

• Assumptions save us time and filter information, so they come in handy…to a point.

• Beliefs are assumptions we’ve internalized.

• Problems occur when we:

– Accept other people’s assumptions without thinking.

– Hold on tightly to our assumptions; they don’t evolve.

– Base our life on our assumptions; we don’t evolve.

• A coach can help you reorient around values.

• In a rapidly evolving/chaotic world, beliefs are passe’. Better to believe than to have beliefs.
Note: I am not referring to religious beliefs here.

13. Models and examples

• We tend to do what we do because we’ve seen other people do it and it worked for them.

• And as life becomes more complex, we tend to rely on models and real-life examples to provide the picture we need to get from A to B.

• A coach has scores of life models that expand a clients thinking and awareness and thus their choice of goals and approach to reaching those goals.

14. Wants and desires

• Desires is genetically wired in and attempts to control or suppress it can be quite expensive.

• Wants usually come from unmet needs.

• Better to first come to understand the source and nature of your desires (intellectual, physical, emotional and/or sexual).

• Desire is energy and can be channeled to your advantage.

• Desire is a wonderful thing, not a bad thing.

• If desires become unmanageable, then they have become compulsions.

15. Support structures

• The more personal and professional support we have, the more we can achieve with less stress.

• In an increasingly chaotic world, structure provides a necessary framework, personal attention and a system to get things done.

• As humans become more creative and experiment more in new areas, endorsement, encouragement and collaboration provide a baseline of support.

• A coach provides the proper amount of support and structure that empowers vs. restricts or overwhelms.

16. Rewards and incentives

• Humans are easily motivated with the most fitting carrot or stick; if in doubt, as the person.

• Your carrot is not my carrot; your stick is not my stick.

• The more evolved a person is, inspiration usually works better than incentives.

• We are subject to subliminal and primal messages via advertising, all of which reduce our ability to choose freely.

• Coaches can help you clean up your motivators so they are healthful, natural and good for you.

17. Vision, possibility

• The clearer the vision, the more focused a person can be.

• To have a vision, one needs to have a sense of possibility far beyond reasonable thinking.

• A vision is one of the most powerful motivators and evolvers.

• A coach can help you see your vision and begin to express it.

18. Resources, tools

• If people have the necessary money, time, space, network, style, knowledge, access, technology and/or experience, they can accomplish almost anything.

• Without a critical resource or tool, people fail or don’t even start.

• We all have hidden talents and resources we don’t know we have; these can be leveraged.

• A coach can help you make the most of what you have.

19. Lifestyle

• Having a lifestyle is something that people are either striving for or are eager to protect.

• The process of designing and choosing a lifestyle is a new experience for most people.

• Lifestyle has a life of its own.

• Sometimes, lifestyles limit our evolution; sometimes, they accelerate our evolution.

• The people your lifestyle attracts to you will affect you who are becoming and what you choose.

• A coach can help you simplify, customize or expand your lifestyle.

20. Living environment

• Where you live, who you live with and how you live affect your goals, personal direction, assumptions, expectations, dreams, desires and rate of personal development.

• Improve or personalize the environment and different priorities naturally emerge.

• People have far more choice and permission today to live exactly where and how they wish.

• A coach can help you craft and build the perfect personal environment for you.

21. Work environment

• Where you work, who you work for, the industry in which you work, who you work with, your career/job function, physical work place/office, how much support you receive at work and your compensation/incentive plan greatly affect your quality of life and what becomes most important to you, both professionally and personally.

• Improve, change or perfect your work environments and you evolve professionally and personally.

• A coach can help you design the perfect work environment for you.

21. Fears

• Fear examples: Fear of emotional loss, spiritual deprivation, success or physical harm.

• Fear of failure is stronger than fear of not succeeding, thus we take fewer risks than we can actually afford; humans tend to be “loss averse.”

• Fear can be/is a good thing, not a bad thing. The trick is to use your fears to advance yourself.

• Sometimes it is best to give into fears vs. trying to overcome them.

• A coach helps a client to integrate and use fear instead of be used by fear.

22. Unclear identity

• Symptom: One is overly influenced by external events or influential people, a.k.a. ‘anchoring.’

• Synonyms: Doormat, low self-esteem, chameleon, co-dependent, low self-worth, spineless.

• It’s not unusual – or necessarily bad -- for people to not know who they are; you can still be happy.

• A therapist can usually help if the unclear identify is psychological problem or source.

• A coach can sometimes help, using values and Personal Foundation Program.

23. “Availability heuristic”

• Definition: Tendency of people to focus on a single fact, element, event rather than the bigger picture.

• People do this because the fact, element or event is clearer, more understandable or fresher in their mind, thus they have their arms around it.

• The bigger picture requires contextual thinking, an embracing of uncertainty and additional personal RAM.

• A coach helps a client think “bigger picture.”

24. Ignorance

• Definition: State of being uninformed, unaware or uneducated.

• We’re all ignorant to a degree, especially in a highly creative and specialized world.

• To keep up with new information, concepts, technologies and strategies, you have to be highly connected with others who are well-connected.

• A strong, diverse network = reduced ignorance.

• Ignorance = missed opportunities.

• A coach can help to fill in the pockets of ignorance that we all have.

25. Preferences

• Preferences usually come from a combination of influences.

• People are more willing to trust their preferences even if not logical.

• Preference-based choosing is a skill set that includes intuition, inklings, wants and whims.

• A coach helps a client to get clearer on what they most want, not what they should want, could want or used to want.

Thank you!

What did you learn about yourself?

What did you learn about others?


copyright 2000 by thomas j. leonard. all rights reserved.
http://www.thomasleonard.com/