Quite often, when working in the coaching relationship I will hear a coachee expressing a self limiting belief.  As a TA coach, there are a couple of different TA theories I could apply when this happens, and in this blog, I am going to talk about one of them, the concept of Rackets.
One of the ways of describing a Racket is when we hold a belief about ourselves, formed early in our childhood.  We manipulate our environment and filter out important information in order to prove to ourselves that we are right to hold that belief – so keeping us stuck with an unhelpful, self-limiting view of ourselves and what we can expect from life.
For instance if as a grown up, I hold a belief like “I can’t think clearly” I may act accordingly: waffling, hesitant, stumbling over my words etc.  This belief may then get reinforced as the person I am talking with gets impatient and shows it, interrupts me or in other ways shows me they are not listening to me. 
I can then say to myself: “See! They think I’m muddle-brained too!”
The point is, I have created my reality by not giving myself time to think clearly, to marshal my thoughts before I speak.  This becomes a closed-loop system – we go around and around, stuck in the same place.
As a coach I will be listening for the signs that alert me to my coachee running a racket and will positively challenge: what are the ways we can break this loop – at the reinforcement stage, or the action stage or go for the root cause, the belief itself?  What exploration does the coachee need?  What action do they need to take to stop running the racket and support themselves with a more positive focus?
Awareness is the key.  Once people are aware of their rackets, the patterns of behaviour they see themselves in, they can do something about it.
My role as coach is to help them see that behaviour so that they have choices to change if they want to, and ways to make the desired change.
If you are interested in learning more, please make enquiries through our website (www.trianglepartnership.com).