Jonathan Sibley's Coaching & Psychotherapy Blog

New Year's Resolutions (pt 2) and Performance Appraisals - How to Succeed

At this time of year, many of us find ourselves choosing a New Year's Resolution that we've tried before, or see items on our performance appraisal under "needs to improve" that have also appeared on previous performance appraisals. Why is it so hard to make and maintain progress towards these goals? In many cases, it is because of something that Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey call our "immunity to change."

New Year's Resolutions - It's that time again

What is your track record with New Year’s resolutions? If you are like most people, it has been difficult to make lasting progress with most resolutions.

What if 2013 were different? What if you could take steps to maximize the chances that you will be successful this time? Now is a good time to be thinking about your resolutions for 2013, so let’s start by thinking about why each resolution is important to you.

The Power of Multiple Points of View

How often have you had a fight that felt like a tug-of-war, with each of you pulling as hard as you can for a different position? If you are like most people, fights like this don't feel good. And, not only do these fights feel particularly bad, but they also are usually quite ineffective at changing either person's mind about the issue at stake. One of the reasons this approach often fails is that each person is fighting so hard for his or her position that the other position seems like it is not being taken seriously.

Why most New Year's resolutions are doomed to fail

Most New Year's resolutions are, at best, valiant efforts doomed to fail. It's important to ask why so many efforts, repeated year after year, fail within months, if not weeks.

I believe that there are at least 4 reasons that most New Year's resolutions are ineffective and discarded long before achieving our goals:

New Website for Montclair Psychotherapists Counselors and Colleagues

Happy Holidays!

If you are a psychotherapists or counselor in Montclair NJ or in neighboring towns, I have created a website that will allow you to network with colleagues.

For now, the site will be for professionals, only. In the future, I expect professionals to be able to let the public know about their specialties, groups, workshops, etc.

Please take a look. Click the link for the new website for Montclair therapists.

How to Improve Communication - Did Your Partner Expect You to Feel What You Are Feeling?

Just as the message received by your partner may not be the message you thought you were communicating, the message you think you have received may not be the message your partner intended to communicate.

Your partner may say something that leaves you feeling:

  • Hurt
  • Embarrassed
  • Ashamed
  • Angry

Your brain may react almost instantaneously, so quickly that it seems obvious that your partner must have known you would react like this and that he or she must have intended you to feel this way. Sometimes, this may be accurate.

What is Coaching? - New Coaching Research Now Available

Recently, my co-researchers, Tatiana Bachkirova and Adrian Myers, and I completed research funded by a grant from Harvard’s Institute of Coaching. Under this grant, we developed an 80 item instrument that can be used to describe what happens in a coaching session.

How to Improve Communication – Dealing with Misunderstandings

One of the most common sources of misunderstandings and fights in the couples I see comes from an assumption that our partner is understanding what we communicate the way we intend them to understand it. You may be familiar with a game called “telephone”, in which a message gets passed orally from one person to another – often, the message has been completely transformed by the time it reaches the last person.

How to Improve Your Relationship with Someone You Love

Welcome to the first installment of a new series of articles on how to improve your relationship with someone you love.

How many times have you had a fight about something and thought “Why did we fight about that? Why was it such a big deal?” Often, we wonder why something makes our partner so upset. Sometimes, we wonder why something makes us so upset.

New years resolutions 2011 - Immunity to change coaching can help

Another year, another set of new years resolutions. Make this the year you succeed at keeping your resolutions, with a coach who knows how to help you overcome your natural immunity to change.

We all have immunity systems that make some changes difficult, but not impossible. Here are the steps I would use when helping you reach your goal with immunity to change coaching:

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