‘I feel bad when I speak mandarin with my customers. It’s not good enough.’

‘First off, How do you decide that your mandarin not good?’

‘I can’t do the whole call in mandarin. I’m speaking 80% mandarin and 20% English.’

‘What happens in the call? How much do your clients understand?’

‘They understand.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘I wanna speak better mandarin. I wanna do my calls in mandarin 100%.’

(Well now that we know what she wants, we have a target, it’s easier!)

‘What would it give you if you did the calls in mandarin 100%?’

‘I’d be more professional.’

‘So how can you prepare for the words you don’t know how to say in mandarin?’

‘I can look them up before.’

‘How would you know which words you don’t know?’

‘..’

‘How about if you try what you learnt recently? Film yourself giving the presentation in mandarin, during which you have to use words that you may not know. And when you have to speak in English, take note of those words?’

‘True. That’d help!’

She’s noticeably happier.

‘What have we just done? What’s the process we just went through?’

‘Break down the paradigms. Evaluate their objectivity. Analyse their validity. Then identify what we want. Look for actions to get what we want. This helps us focus on what we can do rather than what we can’t do, so naturally we would be happier coz we are faced with the question of possibilities, not limitations!!’

Wow. Client came up with the profound realisation! #SelfCoaching!

Change the limiting paradigms to new paradigms.

You choose to be confident!