No-one knows you better than you do, become your own coach

 Nobody knows you better than yourself, can you be your own coach?

For me coaching is the process of facilitating deep insight in order to spark action towards a future desired state or goal. Who needs to become aware of these insights and who need to take the action? Well, the person being coached. The role of the coach is simply to help facilitate this process and t offer useful tools that can be used on this journey.

This got me thinking, shouldn’t we be able to coach ourselves? Sure, it would take a little more effort but who knows you better than yourself? To be clear, I am not suggesting that having a coach is not tremendously useful, I am simply saying we can develop the skill of self-coaching for everyday shifts we are looking to create.

Below I have taken my own personal coaching model: TO-MOVE (created during my time at The Coaching Center with Dr. Paddy Pampallis) and given some questions you might want to think about asking yourself as you go through the process of self-coaching. Before we dive in, lets set a few basic principles:

1)     You need to create the space for reflection. Distraction is the great dis-abler of reflection. Make the time and space to reflect.

2)     Know what works for you. For some it is journaling, others it is self-talk while others it may be long walks alone.

3)     Be honest with yourself, do not rush the process, be willing to go deep. Nobody knows you better than you know yourself.

4)     Be patient, real change take time.

5)     By the end of the process you should:

• Know your own personality type (if you need help with this check out this free Enneagram assessment: https://www.truity.com/test/enneagram-personality-test)
•  Have a clearly defined goal for your journey (The desired end state)
•  Have a plan for your journey
• Understand your why (This is going to be the fuel to drive you to change)

TO MOVE: This model is all about setting a clear topic and goal, digging deep and exploring what you current operating model: deciding what about this you would like to keep and what you would like to shift. Then unpacking what are the options for the way forward and lastly putting a plan in place to move towards the new reality for yourself.

 Topic: It is vital in your self-reflection session to set a purpose or topic for the coaching process. I first realized this with one of my clients early on. When he came in to coaching he didn’t spend the time setting the overall goal. It was very loose almost undefined. What I found is for the first few sessions we just drifted from discussion to discussion. He was always late, didn’t really do the homework and eventually at session 4 stopped coming to the coaching. As a coach I was wrong to not be more focused around having the client define this topic, don’t make this same mistake with yourself. You simply need to contract a change in topic. Think of this as the broad thing you are trying to achieve for example: Improve relationship with my boss, loose weight or improve my financial situation.

Mission: Similar to the topic knowing the “Mission” or the goal/ steps you think you need to take to get to the ultimate destination. I like the analogy of going on a road trip, you know that your end destination is Johannesburg, what you now need to ask is, what stops do I need to take along the way?  As soon as you start setting small goals for the end of each day or week, you will find that the movement seems to flow more naturally.

Observe: You can’t change what you don’t observe/notice. This is core to self-coaching. The vital step of where am I now? When you can paint a picture of the current, it gives you the ability to step back, look at the current objectively and then plot what needs to change. Many clients find the use of a metaphor can help them step back and describe their current reality. A great question to ask would be: “ if you could write a book about how things currently are, what would be the title of the book?”

Variable and valuables: In order to create real change, you must go deep into your own being. Basically what you are doing is looking at the current picture and the desired future state and asking yourself the tough question “What needs to shift in order for me to get there and what needs to stay the same?”

Execution: Now you are ready to articulate the action or next steps they you take in order to move towards your future state. Sometimes you need big action sometimes all that is needed are small shifts, either way action is needed to create movement, otherwise it is simply just an idea you have processed. A new desired way of being is just a dream if there is no action.

Below I have put some of my favorite coaching questions. These can easily be adapted to self-coaching. Using these questions and any others that you might find work for you will help you clearly define the steps in the TO MOVE model above.

1. What would it look like if you were entirely successful?

2. Follow up: What would you see if you popped into a time machine and there it was?

3. Why do you want that?

4. Follow up: Why do you want that?

5. Follow up: Why do you want that?

6. In six months, if things were going exactly the way you want, what would you see?

7. What would be your next goal after you achieve your current one?

8. Follow up: Why?

9. What would you do if you had unlimited resources?

10. What is so important to you that you would stand in front of a bus to defend it?

11. What would be the impact on you (and others) if things don’t change?

12. What can you accomplish that doesn’t depend on others?

13. What is your current biggest problem or challenge?

14. Follow up: If this weren’t a problem, what would be your biggest problem?

15. What is working well?

16. What has contributed to your success so far?

17. Follow up: How might it get in your way?

18. What might keep you from getting where you want to go?

19. What obstacles have you faced, what did you do, and what did you learn?

20. What obstacles do you expect to face? How do you plan to approach them?

21. What resources do you have access to?

22. What are your biggest mistakes and what did you learn from them?

23. If a friend were in your shoes, what advice would you give them?

24. What is one step you could take right now that would indicate you were moving forward?

25. Are there any important questions that have not been asked?

Good luck. Take control of your new reality, be a self coach!