- “When exactly do you feel most stressed? What happens at that specific moment?

- “Well, phone calls are happening all day long and I do feel overwhelmed and not prepared to answer”. (He works in the financial sector and get phone calls from anxious clients who are worried about their investments during this financial crisis.)

- “How many of the phone calls you receive are from this type of overstressed clients?”

- “About six of them”

- “Are those mostly the same six clients calling you?”

- “Yes!” , he replied.

- “Ok, and how many of them are really important clients that you cannot afford to lose?”

- “Two, and they call me almost every single day”.

- “How much time would it take you to study their file as your first job when you enter the office in order to prepare your answer to their questions?”

- “I guess about 5 minutes for each of them, that means 10 minutes all together”

- “Would it make a difference to you if you prepare as your very first job in the morning their file and call them yourself before they call you?” , was my next question.

He smiled and said “Yes, of course. I would feel much better. I would not be afraid to be overwhelmed by their calls any more!”

My client implemented the small change and felt more ‘in control’ of his work. After his first success, in our second session, he started to suggest other small changes that increased his impact on situations, and some weeks later, he could hardly remember how there had been a time where work was so unpleasant. This practical case study illustrates nicely what research has discovered already some decades ago. The researcher “Robert Karasek” discovered that the amount of  ’subjective’ control you have over your work situation, has a stronger impact on your distress level than your ‘objective’ work load. So what this case nicely illustrates is that helping someone see new solutions to increase (objective or subjective) control over situations, decreases distress and lower distress leads to more self-confidence and creativity to find even more solutions.

English                                                                  Lithuanian (simultaneous translation)

The topic of the training was: „How can Leaders and Governments resolve unemployment with „Solution Focused Reactivation Strategies“?

1. Reflect on your ‘Decision Process’:
   1. analyze how you take decisions in your life: become counscious of how you took your succesfull decisions and make reflecting on your decisions a habit. This will lead to creating a personal decision style.
   2. success is the consequence of the quality of your decision processes, and long term success of the quality of your improvement process of making better decisions
2. Selfconfidence: trust your own decisions
   1. Be consistent in your decisions by learning to trust your own decision process
   2. flexibility and adaptability to circumstances are not a contradiction to consistency on condition that you choose yourself your own strategy
   3. Keep following your plan, and do not let others distract you from your plan.
   4. choose your own style and play your own game

The reason why I want to share this with you, is because it correlates with the findings in our coaching survey: clients who have been coached succesfully, all report that the main added value of their coaching process is “reflection”: they all report that they have learned to reflect on their decisions.

Last saturday, I was interviewed in Budapest by Hungary’s psychiatrist & celebrity, Dr. Joszef Telkes about our new online e-therapy business:

Internet Assisted Psychotherapy interview by Jozsef Telkes.

1. First, I remembered that I started to develop this pleasant feeling right after my first years of being a professional. Probably one needs to build ‘competence’ first, to feel selfconfident in what one is doing. So, if you read this and are still building competence in your profession, just accept that learning takes effort. And that there will be a day where you feel ok with what you do. Your customers will let you know when you do a good job and that will reinforce you.
2. Second, this pure concentration on one person – no phone calls, no interruptions – gives our brain the time to tune in, the time to focus and as we know from litterature: focus is that what provokes “flow” in a human beings. Focussing relieves stress & tension and opens us up for joy. I remember from my philosophy classes the quote of Jean-Paul Sartre, in “L’Être et le Néant”, describing self-consciousness as  ”Conscience de soi de quelque chose” (being aware of yourself through being aware of something).  Now, years later, I start to see that we become more ourself, indeed, when we focus on something else with dedication and concentration.
3. Third, in working with clients, one knows -after years of training- that one can only focus on one small concrete result at the time. Your client needs this, or (s)he would get confused or lost in your words. Since you focus on small & measurable results, you automatically start to do that what is good for yourself too:  breaking big & complex projects into small measurable steps, so that you setup for visible success. Focussing on big & vague goals leads to confusion and “Learned Helplesness“.
4. Fourth, the feeling of contribution, is probably another important contributor to happiness. By focussing on helping others, one feels useful. And we are born “social animals“. We need contribution for our own personal survival and satisfaction. We exist partially in the eyes of the others, we become more ourselves through adding value to others.

There are certainly more factors that have contributed to my happy feeling this morning. I just wrote about those that came first into my mind. Paul

Paul studied medicine, philosophy and sports medicine at the Catholic University of Louvain. After his management studies, at the VLERICK School for Management, he was profoundly trained in systemic coaching, brief therapy an hypnotherapy in Europe an the U.S.A.

As a trainer, consultant and coach he served important business leaders and organisations like  Alcatel-Lucent, KPMG, BASF, Siemens, Borealis, IBM, Swift, Nextiraone, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Banksys, HP, Junior Chamber International, Haribo, Proximus, Belgacom, Delta Lloyd Life, Generale Bank, Belgian Military Police, Anco, Givi, Axias, IPPA, HBK Spaarbank, Vlaams Centrum voor Kwaliteitszorg,  Socialistische Mutualiteiten, Onafhankelijk Ziekenfonds, Arenberg Group, Partena, Prayon Ruppel, Pandora,  … He coaches fluently in 5 languages: Dutch, English, French, Spanish, German and studied Italian, Portuguese, Latin, Esperanto, & Russian.

Radio Interview with Dr. Paul Koeck about digital stress: Part 1 -  Part 2