Archive for the ‘Personal Development’ Category

Building Personal Power
(excerpted from Six Keys to Creating the Life You Desire)
by Mitch Meyerson

(Before developing the GMC Program, Mitch Meyerson was a prominent therapist and author of three personal growth books. Here is an excerpt of one of his articles. He coaches on personal growth issues as well).

Penny, a thirty-one-year-old public relations specialist recalls her worst experience. “Basically, my job was to convince feature writers at the local newspapers to write a story about a client’s charity event. I phoned the first reporter on the list and went into my pitch.

“Look,” he yelled, cutting me off mid-sentence, “there’s some damn charity event in this city every other week. Why are you bothering me with this?”

“I started feeling like an idiot. “But this is for muscular sclerosis,” I stammered.

“Big deal,” he said, hanging up.

“I knew he was just a jerk, but I couldn’t make another one of those phone calls the rest of the afternoon. I felt completely shut down.”

Shut down. That sinking feeling that begins like butterflies in the stomach then turns into something that feels like a fist is an event most people can identify with. Like a balloon deflating, our entire emotional state sinks down in seconds. We become quiet, withdrawn, ashamed. Curiously, only certain situations and people tend to “shut us down” and make us lose our personal power. One person criticizes us, and we shrug it off. But another person so much as looks at us the wrong way and we’re devastated.

What shuts us down? Usually it is a combination of the following: Read the rest of this entry »

by Mitch Meyerson and Laurie Ashner

It took Beth, a bright, motivated, 30-something manufacturer’s rep months to figure out that what she was feeling wasn’t paranoia. “I had to sell out of the showroom five times a month. I’d be with a customer and glance over at my boss. He’d be whispering to the vice-president. His hand was cupped over their mouths. I stared straight at them, and they kept whispering. It was totally unnerving. How can you function with your boss walking around whispering about you when you’re trying to work?

You can’t. By some strange serendipity Beth met a woman at an industry function who had dated her boss. They became fast friends. “You’re not imagining things,” the woman said. “He once told me that the only reliable management technique is fear. One night he got totally drunk and passed out on my couch. Before he went down he told me that his goal in life was to rip off every person who walked into his showroom.”

Welcome to the dysfunctional work environment–DWE, for short. Beth’s experience may sound extreme, but she is hardly alone. Read the rest of this entry »