Kaleidoscope Life

December 28, 2022
Emmanuel F. Silan, PhD, RPsy
Emotions are the booster for behavioral changes. Cognition and language fortify these changes.

The pandemic years have brought me hard-earned realizations in the context of life coaching, counseling, and psychotherapy. Here are a few insights that I believe most of us can benefit from in the context of the helping relationship.

Don’t belittle people who say they want to change but don’t seem to really want to change. Because they keep on doing the same things that keep them in the same unhealthy place, in the same toxic relationship, and situation.  There are several reasons why this is so.

One is that they may have built an identity out of being what they say they don’t want. Like a “broken-hearted” person. Or a “victim of circumstance” or a “loser” or any other thing that they say they don’t want to be anymore.

The other reason is that life has dealt with them “failures” in the past that they become so desensitized to the feeling of “failing.”

And that both these reasons have become their “normal” realities.

Yet if they badly want to change the circumstance of their life, they actually can. It means having the courage to say, “I need help.” And driven by a soul-deep emotion that springs from deep-seated conviction and the silent desperation of the need to improve their situation in life.

Emotions are the booster for behavioral changes. Cognition demands the planning, execution, and continues feedback of the change process. While language and emotions shape our perception of the world.

Slowly, their language flow from I can’t to “I will!” and with the hard work that goes with the process of change, they will eventually say, “I can.” Finally, years down their path of transformation, they will say, with silent prayer of gratitude, “I am.”

May you experience magical moments of your of personal transformation.

And may you live the life you have always dreamt you were; finally seeing your beautiful soul in this kaleidoscope life.

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art work: Richard Faust, Birdie Bliss

About the author

Emmanuel F. Silan, PhD, RPsy

Noel is a registered Psychologist and has taken his Master’s in Counseling Psychology at Ateneo de Manila. He is an NLP and Coaching Master Trainer certified by International Association of NLP Institutes (IN) and International Association of Coaching Institutes (ICI). He is an NLP-CBT Coach-Counselor, Transformative Psychotherapist, and a Hypnotherapist. He is currently taking a PhD in Psychology at Ateneo de Manila University with special interest on “Leadership Archetypes and the Filipino Unconscious” and on “Imprints of Pagkabalisa (Emotional Distress) on the Filipino Psyche: The Unconscious Map of Mental Suffering of Filipinos.”