Hello Courageous Pals,

Discounting! This isn’t an amazing deal on your favourite ice cream flavour, it’s a mental technique that everyone uses to ignore, minimize, avoid, or throw a tantrum about a problem which just seems too big. We all do it.

Discounting is a specific set of mental processes accompanied by behaviours that you can actually see yourself, or someone else, going through when the discounting process is activiated. To demonstrate, I’ll show you my ‘spiral of discounting’ from last night’s Courage Pie session:

Typically it’s referred to as a ‘ladder’ of discounting if you’re looking it up - but I like to think of it as a spiral, as in “spiralling out”, because it’s like you’re gaining momentum and nervous energy every time you go up one of the rungs of the ladder.

So how do we get ourselves off the spiral? What’s the discounting off-ramp? The most important thing is to recognize all the skills, resources, values, and empowering beliefs that you have to hand. Sometimes it can be helpful to have a reminder, if you’re feeling stuck! When I was learning about discounting in coaching training school we all went around the room and gave each other observations about positive attributes each of us has - here are some nice things people said about me.

What are some resources you have which can help you get off the discounting spiral?

Science behind the slice

Discounting is largely based on Ken Mellor and Eric Schiff’s concept introduced in an article of the same name in the Transactional Analysis Bulletin in 1975 (sorry about the paywall.) I’ve written up two summaries previously, one on the concept of minimising (a sub-set of discounting…I am probably the only person who re-wrote Britney Spears’ Womanizer to explain the idea, though) and one on discounting overall. These are hidden in the secret, exclusive, unlisted archives of Caitlin’s former coaching blog, so I hope you enjoy them!

Next month…

In honour of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which takes place every August in my chosen hometown, we’ll be covering the drama traingle! That will be Tuesday 26 August at the usual time of 7 PM and I hope you can join us. Bring some dramatic pals along! I can guarantee you some audience participation…

Very best,

Caitlin