The CTL Blog
Stages of Coaching: Stage 4 - Remoralization
Executive Function is the learned ability to plan, steer our attention, organize our thoughts, and coordinate multiple tasks.
Executive Function coaching helps people learn and strengthen these abilities.
Our coaching process follows a pattern of personal transformation. People usually follow this sequence, but they also move back and forth as they encounter new challenges.
Contemplation: the awareness of an urgency to change as well as the need for help in doing so.
Collaboration: identifying a partner in change and creating a plan with actionable steps.
Rehearsal: doing the steps of the plan with feedback and support from a partner in change that focuses on the process as much as the outcome.
Remoralization: the experience of feeling capable and competent again after successfully rehearsing and executing plans.
Growth: working through inevitable setbacks and recognizing that success in one thing leads to new, bigger challenges. Then the process of collaboration, rehearsal, and remoralization repeats.
To better understand these stages, we will introduce you to “Erin”, a composite of many of our clients and a case study of what Executive Function weakness looks like in a young adult. Through her story, you will get a detailed sense of what Executive Function is and how coaching can help.
Think back to the first post in this series. If we arrive at a state of Contemplation and are cognizant of a desire for change, it’s often because we’re feeling demoralized. When we ask for help, make a plan, and successfully begin to rehearse it, we begin Remoralization, or the process of reminding ourselves that we are highly capable when we have what we need to stay focused and motivated. We even saw Erin encounter one of her common distractions (last-minute social invitations from friends) and stay on task successfully because she and her coach had prepared for such an obstacle.
Remoralization can also refer to the snowball effect of small successes. When we complete one task successfully, the positive emotions we feel can make getting other things done easier. Of course, unpredicted setbacks are inevitable. We can’t expect our energy levels and enthusiasm to remain constant from day to day. If we’ve been demoralized for an extended period of time, the contrast of remoralization can be intense in a positive way, and can also leave us susceptible to crashing into another low at the first sign of struggle. Therefore, it’s important not to hold Remoralization as your only goal. Like any emotional state, Remoralization is most useful as a form of feedback. It’s a clear message that what you are doing is working, and building an awareness of what it feels like for you will help you take advantage of its energy-giving properties while the feeling lasts.
Next post, we’ll dive further into demoralization, remoralization’s opposite. We’ll examine how both states are predictable, necessary parts of the Growth process.
In the meantime, if you performed a time audit, why not take a look at what you learned about your habits, and identify one opportunity for change? Write out your goal, and gather the resources you need to help you make a plan. Keep things small, simple, and achievable to start, and see if you can catch and ride your own wave of remoralization. What do you notice about your thoughts, feelings, and energy levels? And how long are you able to sustain the ride?
Stage 4: Remoralization
Can you recall the last time you began to learn a new skill? Perhaps you grew concerned about being too sedentary and feeling lethargic as a result so you committed to a new exercise program. You downloaded a 5K training program app and found a time to go for your first run. The app started you out gently with short intervals of jogging and walking, and you felt a sense of accomplishment seeing that first workout checked off. Buoyed by that feeling, you got up early the next morning for workout number two, finished it with ease, and made yourself a balanced breakfast; one healthy choice easily led to another healthy choice. Before you knew it, you were through the first week of workouts, and not only did your 5K goal seem attainable, but the promise of a healthier lifestyle, of feeling good like this all the time, seemed possible for the first time in ages.
If any of this process sounds familiar to you, whether or not it was with exercise, then you have experienced the warming glow of remoralization, the experience of feeling capable and competent again after successfully rehearsing and executing plans. Remoralization is a common occurrence in the early days of coaching, and a recurrent feature of the longer cycle of change. Learning to recognize remoralization’s place in the pattern of change and to therefore harness its effects is a key component of long-term growth. Last week, we watched Erin and her coach set up some systems to help Erin build awareness of her time. This week, we’ll see how that initial system creation facilitates Erin’s early successes.
Erin’s Transition to College
Erin wakes up on the first day of her time audit feeling motivated by yesterday’s meeting with her coach. Her eyes land on the post-it note she stuck to the wall: “I want to be a writer.” With her big desire top of mind, Erin chooses not to scroll through TikTok when she picks up her phone and instead opens her calendar app, and then her time tracking app. She labels this time as ‘Getting ready for the day’, starts her timer, and hops out of bed. She gets dressed, makes her bed, and grabs a yogurt and an apple. When she’s ready to head out the door, she stops her timer: thirty minutes. She looks at the clock and realizes that she has plenty of time to get to class, so she decides to treat herself to a coffee on the way. Enjoying the immediate feedback loop of the timer and the associated reward of a special coffee, she times her walk to class.
When she arrives, coffee in hand, she repeats her logging and tracking process. The activity of time logging makes her feel focused and in control; she takes detailed notes during the lecture, a skill that hasn’t come easily to her since high school. Immediately after her lecture class, she has a smaller creative writing seminar, where she receives her first big assignment of the semester. The assignment is open-ended, and her professor doesn’t provide too much clarification or context. When class ends, Erin logs her time.
On her walk home, Erin gets a calendar notification: “Lunch”. She opens her calendar and looks at the rest of her day: “Chore time” and then “Coaching check-in”. Erin feels motivated to finish her day strong so that she can share her success with her coach. While at the dining hall, Erin gets a text from a friend: “I'm bored. Movie?” For a moment, Erin considers blowing off chore time and asking her coach to push their appointment back by an hour. As she sits down to eat, she opens her time-tracking app and looks at the list of her day’s activities, and feels that little well of pride. So she replies to her friend: “I’m free later tonight.” She eats, anxiously watching her phone. Then, her friend responds: “Yaaaaa. I’ll get tix for 8 tonight.” Erin almost laughs. That was easier than she thought! She puts the movie date in her calendar, finishes her sandwich, and sails up to her dorm room, where she tidies her desk and does a load of laundry. By the time her scheduled coaching check-in time arrives, Erin feels like a superhero.