Productive Pessimism: Life Coaching Case Study

Are you a pessimist wondering whether life coaching would actually support you? 

A question many people ask us is: "Does life coaching work for people who are pessimistic?"  

Many people will tell you it doesn't, that pessimists don't have the open-mindedness required to engage effectively with life coaching.

At The Productive Pessimist, we firstly don't just work with other pessimists - we actually like to work with people who have a different outlook to us, although, obviously, we have a natural connection with our fellow pessimists who are looking to become more productive.

If you're wondering whether life coaching from The Productive Pessimist is for you, the following extract from our book "People Have a Problem With Your Attitude", which is available to order for just £4.99, or is sent free when you book a life coaching, business coaching, or business consultancy session with us
(email us at theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com to order your copy, or book your support session), gives an overview of how our life coaching services can help you when you feel overwhelmed, and need some help to move forward. (Names have been changed for privacy.)

Morgan (F, 30) was struggling to find her place in the world as a neurodivergent woman who was also trying to manage physical health challenges.

She reached out to The Productive Pessimist when an encounter with burn-out, in a job she loved, with manageable part-time hours, which allowed her to work remotely, made her realise that she may need to reshape her life path, and her perspective on employment.

We started off by discussing what Morgan’s most significant challenges in daily life were; these included impacts of her physical health conditions, which are much worse first thing in the morning, and her ability to keep track of what she needs to do in order to achieve a goal.  (Morgan has no problems setting realistic goals for herself, but she then struggles to hold on to the steps she will need to take to realise those goals.)

Morgan’s responses to our initial questions gave us some clear sign-posts we could point out to her when it came to employment; if you’re experiencing significant pain, extreme muscle stiffness, fatigue, and breathlessness in the morning, then you’re not going to get very far if your focus in life is agreeing to work in the morning.  Morgan then realised this had been a major contributor to her burn-out; while she talked enthusiastically about the job, and had clearly enjoyed the role, she admitted feeling pressured into agreeing to taking on additional responsibilities, which came with the expectation that she would attend morning meetings, whereas initially her meetings had been in the afternoons.

Morgan then extended this self-knowledge to the realisation that she needed to focus on work opportunities which would exclusively be in the afternoons.  This led to a mutual decision to spend our next session exclusively examining the potential options open to Morgan. At the end of this session, she was able to present an understanding of how beginning ‘from scratch’, with carefully-selected volunteer positions, stepping up into connecting with local businesses to offer services at entry-level rates, and moving to building up a viable self-employed business where her core working hours were 1pm-9pm, with a USP that she would be able to support busy executives without requiring them to interrupt a densely-packed working day.

This then raised the priority of supporting Morgan to find and embed a way of managing her cognitive load when it comes to keeping track of the steps required to achieve a goal.

The first part of this process led to Morgan realising that she tended to assume a goal was “the step I need to take”.  It became clear that she struggled with breaking down a goal into small steps, which we worked with her to create a ‘route-learning-practice’ to embed as a default cognitive experience.