When Tammy grew up and went out into the adult world she developed challenging problems in her personal and her work relationships so she came to me for help. When Tammy began my SuccessEsteem coaching program she had a menagerie of intertwined ineffective ways for motivating herself that created much more self-sabotage than success.

Through our work together Tammy uncovered three specific problems with her inner self-motivation system.

First, she realized that, even though she was a very nice, very friendly person, she only knew how to be a controlling parent type personality. This personality type was effective when she was actually parenting her younger siblings, however, in the adult world other adults don't want to be controlled, parented and told what to do.

The second problem Tammy uncovered was that she only knew how to be a critical parent to herself. When she made any type of mistake in her adult life she only knew how to inwardly punish, scold and berate herself, and she regularly told herself that she "let people down."

And the third problem Tammy uncovered was that she had a very deep sense of anger and sadness regarding her childhood.

Through the SuccessEsteem coaching program, I worked diligently with Tammy to help her develop a healthier, more effective inner self-motivation system, but the one piece she had to do on her own was the forgiveness work. There were many people to forgive; her mother for leaving, her father for putting her in the parent role and being so critical of her, and herself for not knowing any better than to believe her father's negative and critical words to her.

More recently I coached a client, Jim (not his real name), who had what he describes as a "normal and happy childhood" and yet Jim also had an inner network of ineffective ways for managing himself that constantly left him feeling like a failure.