Indecent Proposal?

[Madimel]

I would like to get some opinions from other professionals in this field on this particular situation. I have been trying to coach a non-registrant with 8 years of experience trying for some time to pass the ARE. She took multiple sections of the test on multiple occasion and have yet to pass any one section, so she has developed mental road blocks along the way. Her family have come into financial hardship recently and her father-in-law loaned them $25,000 and recently gave them a late model mini van. Now he's offered to forgive the loan in its entirety if she passes the ARE. She was offended by that gesture and I really do not understand why. It's not as if the loan was predicated on whether she passes the test, the cash have been received some time ago. Would any of you be offended if such an offer was given to you?

[ml]

I scanned over the situation and I don't think that I would be offended if I received such an offer. The ARE is something she needs to pass anyway. Now, she has even more incentive, no?

[solidred]

Madimel, my guess is that this person feels her status or integrity or capacity is being challenged. Self-challenged but reinforced, in a way, by other people tempting towards those goals which she fears she can't reach. Her path towards these goals is paved with fear and feelings of inadequacy, in other words. What would help her most (and again, this is just a guess based upon your paragraph of text) is to remove that fear and sense of inadequacy by
a) reducing the stakes here. At the moment, she not only is facing a test of her capacities career-wise but simultaneously being challenged, via that, to be 'good enough' to pay her way in life financially. Each part of the test should be simply a little test, understood one at a time, in isolation, and not part of some life-changing process. That's too much context for anyone to handle at any given moment. She should focus on daily goals, not these scary, massive ones. They will be achieved as if by magic sooner or later by addressing the little issues successfully.
b) parallel focus on daily rewards that come for free... the sort of comfort blanket that comes from the fact that there will always be birds singing in the trees; it doesn't take long to save up for an ice cream or a new pencil etc. etc.

I suppose what I'm generally saying is from the point-of-view that there is an obsession amongst some of clearly defined goals and targets and achievements. Focus.
Is the goal of life therefore death?
Are the narratives of real life ever as neat as fictional stories?
In my opinion, structure and context operate most powerfully when they are assigned a certain place in one's life: as modulating and corrective devices in the background. Not in the foreground. In the foreground is the living person, shifting with incredible complexity and possibility from second to second.

[Madimel]

I understand we all go through fear of failure or of the unknown many times during our lives. But to take offense to such a generous offer is beyond my comprehension. She has taken the initiative to take those exams, it's not a matter of getting her to do something she does not want to do. Rather it is a financial incentive. To me, it's a win-win situation. My single tracked mind cannot see any negatives to solicit such a reaction. When I approached her about it, she could not give a reason herself for her defensive tactics. What did I miss?

[solidred]

Perhaps she's like me: profoundly motivated by everything except money. Perhaps she feels that it's a bit of an insult for someone to think that her ambitions are somehow switched on in earnest with the addition of a financial incentive.