Mind mechanics and low self-esteem

Published on Wednesday 27 October 2004 12:27

IT’S often said that if you think you can, then you can. And if you think you can’t - then you’re probably right. One would suggest you are familiar with your own abilities, while the other could suggest you’ve yet to be made fully aware of them.

To a couple of Edinburgh businesswomen, what makes us the people we are is the way we think about ourselves.

And Veronica Mawdsley and Angela McCusker should know - having faced the sort of adversity in their lives that either makes or breaks you. "It’s all in your head," they state - and clearly, too.

Further, they’ll argue that when you find fault with someone, it’s just as likely that you’re really reflecting one of your own psychological fault-lines.

That’s the workaday philosophy they use to go about their business of personal development. The foundation that underpins it was forged in the furnace of bitter and damaging personal experience.

However, the physical and mental damage to self-esteem caused by a 21-year battle with the booze and a debilitating period of pneumonia-turned-myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)- or "Yuppie Flu" - respectively have been repaired and the duo are using that experience coupled with their business skills, to help foster lasting change in the minds of others.

"The problem is that not many people really know themselves," says Ms Mawdsley.

And that she suggests, is because the fears and inadequacies inherent in all of us, have never been fully explored - because only when they have been, can they be corrected.

"I’ve worked with thousands of people at multi-nationals and with some of Scotland’s top businessmen. All have had some fears or inadequacies that were holding them back in business or other areas of their lives," Ms Mawdsley explains.

Both Ms Mawdsley and Ms McCusker have run their own individual businesses - the Personal Development Company Scotland, and AMC Coaching respectively - for a few years now.

But they have over the past year worked together under the project banner People4People in personal development guidance situations where their coaching skills have complemented each other and helped their growing client base.

Between them, the two mind mechanics have helped clear the mental insecurities and fears of countless self-doubters across a spectrum of business executives, international sports stars and hundreds from the professional classes over the past few years.

And business is booming. "We’ve been so busy we’ve had to turn business away," says Ms Mawdsley. "It seems to be just the pressure of modern life and people doing what they think they should be doing."

Their success stems from having a seemingly clear run at the market for the type of service they provide. That, they believe, is due primarily to the very deep personal level they take their clients to in rooting out the reasons for below-par performance.

Glasgow-born Ms McCusker explains: "We’re addressing people’s fears on a very deep level. I’ve been on dozens of performance and personal development courses and never once have I been taken to the levels we work at.

"Many of the courses have given people the tools to do their job better, but not to make them a better person as well."

Ms Mawdsley concludes that in almost every instance when a new client comes calling "it’s almost always about self-esteem or some kind of inadequacies".

"They’ve always seen a limit to what can be achieved," she adds.

Remarkably, it affects every layer of society. Ms Mawdsley recalls one current high-profile Scottish international footballer she recently worked with who, although legitimately injured, was hiding himself behind the injury because he actually doubted his ability as a footballer.

Then there was the businesswoman whose low self-esteem was found to have nurtured itself in a rocky relationship with her parents.

Similarly, Ms McCusker, who first met up with Ms Mawdsley when she was battling back from illness, was also intent on blaming her parents for the cards she’d been dealt.

Having explored the inner demons with Ms Mawdsley as her client, she learned that was not the real reason.

Ms McCusker, a high-flying chartered accountant before her illness, says: "I blamed them for 40 years - but it was not their fault. I hooked into playing a victim simply because I enjoyed being a victim.

"Now through recognising the patterns that kept me hooked and working on them, I now have a fantastic relationship with my mum and dad.

"We all hook into things that keep us stuck just because it’s easier to blame others than blame yourself."

The seemingly self-destructive need for us to always look outwards when appointing blame is equivalent to internal sabotage, Ms Mawdsley states.

Professional footballers, pop stars and boardroom bigwigs are all prone to being the architects of their own limitations.

"We all sabotage ourselves because there are many, many somewhat successful people who believe that they’re not good enough to be in the position they’re in. We all do it at some level to save us from the pain of rejection or failure.

"We think an addiction to something, whether we’re an alcoholic or a workaholic, is saving us, but it’s actually sabotaging us. It does not matter who comes to me, there’s an addiction to some form of behaviour there," she states.

Ms Mawdsley is credited by Edinburgh singer Nobby Clark, a founding member of the Bay City Rollers, for straightening his alcohol addiction out, which he says stemmed from the lack of recognition he felt he deserved for his role in the creation of one of the biggest bands of the 1970s.

As a bottle of vodka a day alcoholic, twice-married Ms Mawdsley says she believed she was actually was doing the right thing in drinking every day.

She says: "It wasn’t until I went to talk to someone I knew would be honest with me that I could be honest with myself and get myself on the road to recovery."

Edinburgh-born Ms Mawdsley says she’s also having success with groups of long-term unemployed people between 18 to 25 years, who are now finding work for themselves.

Essentially, through People4People, Ms Mawdsley and Ms McCusker act as a catalyst for clients to identify their own limitations. They see themselves as gatekeepers to personal self-discovery and self-awareness - and definitely not counsellors or lifestyle coaches.

Ms Mawdsley explains: "We’re not in the business of changing people, we’re in the business of helping them change themselves.

"Only they can do that. People come to us because they want something and by increasing their self-awareness of that at a very deep level that brings the type of permanent change from which there’s no going back.

"Most of the people who come to us have been everywhere, been on all the development courses. They have had success to a degree, but when they come to us it’s like finding the part that’s been missing."

Initially people come to the duo, blow off steam and in the process reveal the readily identifiably patterns of doubt that betray their real difficulties.

Ms McCusker believes "people who come into our lives that affect us are basically a mirror of us", inadvertently flagging the flaws we choose to ignore.

In terms of business, the pair see no competition for their People4People venture. "For us, it’s not theory - its experience," says Ms McCusker.

And there’s unlikely to be any genuine competition, she believes. "Not unless they have done the journey we have been on."

Duo aim to help clients climb every mountain

ANGELA McCUSKER was a career-climbing chartered accountant who boasted high-ranking finance posts with the likes of international sports giants Ellesse and Reebok on her CV.

But the Glaswegian soon tired of the hectic business life that London offered and found herself questioning what she was all about. So she quit and moved to Edinburgh and trained in personal coaching. However, before long she caught pneumonia, which later turned into Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), or "Yuppie Flu" and laid her low for 18 months.

At the time she’d been planning a walking tour of Mont Blanc, in the Alps, but her doctor ordered nothing more strenuous than a ten minute walk a day. While recovering she met Edinburgh-based personal development coach Veronica Mawdsley at a business networking event and with Ms Mawdsley’s guidance and support she recovered enough to be up one of Scotland’s highest mountains just months later.

"I started working with Veronica on a very simple level, removing the emotional blocks I’d built up," Ms McCusker says. "Within three or four months I felt cured,"

Now the pair plan to do more work on a professional level under the People4People umbrella which they have created.