by Gundula Welti
06 Apr 2020
As all my friends know, I love giving people big hugs. I like the physical contact with the people I love, I like giving a hug to someone who is in distress and I like giving a celebratory hug too. Any excuse, in fact.
One day I was giving a coaching class and I saw that one of the participants looked a bit dubious, as if he were struggling. Once we’d finished what we were doing, I asked him if he needed a hug. He looked down at me from a great height and said. “I’d have thought that you need it more than me, don’t you?”
Upset, I quickly turned away and found someone else who needed a hug. And it was then that I began to understand. He was right. I’d asked him if he wanted a hug not for HIM but for ME. I had projected my need on to him.
A bit later on, I told him what I’d discovered – after all, this was a coaching session, the perfect place to have this kind of discussion – and he explained to me how he worked it out: “Whenever my father wanted to eat, he said to my mother – darling, the children are hungry!!”
What about you? Do you project any of your needs onto someone else?
by Gundula Welti
06 Apr 2020
“If only the walls could talk!” said the beauty therapist at a meeting of small business owners. “You can’t begin to imagine all the things my customers tell me.”
I smile to myself because it’s the same with my Italian teacher. She asks me what I did last week, what I’m doing this week and what I’m going to be doing in the future. This gets me practising the three verb tenses and, if there’s been some kind of misunderstanding and I regret not having done something, the conditional puts in an appearance too!
Sometimes, I think of her as my own personal psychologist (expresso style, of course!)
When it comes down to it, psychologists, coaches, beauty therapists and Italian teachers are just trying to get us to talk. None of them has the solution to our problems. That’s for us to find. But saying something aloud shines a different light on a situation. It’s not what someone else says that makes us progress, it’s taking the time to listen to our own voice.
A personal psychologist who knows how to listen without providing a solution or giving their opinion is a rare beast. If you have one, you know it.
Tell them how much they mean to you. They’ll like that. And I’d like to say to Laura, sei la migliore! (you’re the best!)
