Deborah Reeds. Life Coach: 3 Ways Professional Women Sabotage Their Happiness

For many years, I commuted, fitted into desk life, rode the ups and downs of office politics and tried very hard to be the model of sophisticated success. I now realise I, and those around me, were consistently sabotaging our potential for experiencing deep happiness in our lives. Sure, we regularly ‘had a laugh’ but this masked misunderstandings about happiness. Here’s what I’ve learnt….

You have nothing to prove.

Quite likely you haven’t consciously thought about your desire to prove yourself to those you love and admire. We can find ourselves driven to show how we can be responsible and reliable, earn good money, be a perfect daughter/girlfriend/wife, have lots of friends or party wildly. Or perhaps even that we are better than …………….? This drive comes from a belief we built up as children that we need to be a certain way in order to deserve approval and love.

A coaching tip to bring to the surface your desire to prove yourself is to consider the key achievements of your life so far. For each one ask yourself- If this achievement was a message for someone, what would it be communicating and to who?

The next step is to ask if the assumptions you made about getting love and approval are true. When we overtly ask our loved ones if we really must to be in a certain job/relationship/earning’s bracket to win their love and approval the vast majority drop all requirements and confess that they just want us to be happy. And those who don’t, do you really want to give control of your precious life to them?

We sabotage ourselves by focussing on pleasing others and that keeps us from getting in tune with our deep desires and asking ourselves what we really want, the starting point for true happiness.

Choose your habits wisely.

We all have habits or rituals that we adopt as short-cuts in our lives. We use them to take care of ourselves and others (cleaning our teeth morning and night, doing the washing on Saturday), to make sure we keep our obligations (getting the 7.30 train to be at work on time, paying our bills on time) and to connect in relationships (calling Mum on Sunday night).

We might also have habits like eating too much, drinking alcohol or coffee, smoking or getting ultra-busy that deaden our feelings and help us avoid fully experiencing our feelings. These can help us to feel better in the short term but have a negative effect in the longer term. They sabotage our happiness by creating health problems and keeping us from experiencing life to the full. We need healthy ways of handling our feelings and this means developing new habits. Habits that help with feeling and processing our feelings might be meditation, wild dancing, walking or running in nature. We may need to experiment to find out what works best for us.

It seems a paradox that habits can also develop our creativity and keep life fresh. Have you tried going somewhere new each week, buying and cooking a new ingredient each shop or taking a different route to work on a specific day?

Falling into habits that don’t serve us sabotage our happiness and keep us from habits which would lead us to experience more happiness. Changing them can be a challenge. One of the best strategies is to investigate what that habit helps us with in the short term and then find a healthy, sustainable way to meet that need.

Your best friends might not be as good for you as you think

Talking through problems, having a good moan and putting the world to rights; in the workplace and in our private life communication helps us express ourselves and find solutions. However, it can also keep us stuck.

Often the impetus to follow our heart’s desire comes when we experience a low in our lives. Friendship and a feeling of belonging can go a long way to convincing us that life isn’t that bad and change is not worth the risk. Nights out with friends keep us feeling just good enough or we are on the brink of leaving our job/relationship/town when a heart to heart with a friend encourages us to give it another try.

We need to realise our friends are not as unbiased as they sometimes seem. Most often friends have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. If you made the changes you wanted to, they could lose your friendship and, what’s more, they might run out of excuses for the changes they need to make. Without any intention to, our friends can sabotage our happiness.

My suggestion is to enjoy your friendships for heart to hearts, celebrations and sharing and to have independent help with learning the life strategies that will work best for you. In nearly 10 years as a Life Coach, I have helped many professional women discover their personal passions and use their unique strengths to build rewarding careers and relationships.

Come and meet me at the Crawley Mind Body and Soul Fair on Sunday 7^th and connect through the social media links below for news of an exciting new programme for making 2015 your happiest ever.