Put Me In, Coach!

You may have heard of Life Coaching.  Basically, life coaches are people who help you solve problems. It is different from therapy – no need to gently lead you to your moment of epiphany. Life coaches tend to tell it like it is, much like those athletic coaches we see on television.  And most life coaches are very proud of their craft. It can be very expensive – like  500 per hour expensive!

So, what if you want the benefit of life coaching without all the cost? Well, then you’re going have to take matters into your own hands and be your own life coach. Here is how:

1. Identify the areas you want to work on. The first step is to honestly assess your strengths and weaknesses. Ask yourself these questions:
   • What are you good at?
   • What do you need to be better at?
   • What do others feel your strengths and weaknesses are?
   • How do you do at forming and maintaining relationships?
   • What are your biggest fears?
     
     Your ability to honestly appreciate your good qualities while being determined to work on areas that need improvement makes you a good candidate for coaching. If you minimize your strengths, i.e., can’t accept compliments or compliment yourself, that needs to be the first thing you start working on. If you can’t think of any areas to work on and improve upon, you’ve already stopped reading this article (ha!). Being able to assess yourself accurately and honestly is the first, very important part, of this process.
2. Identify your goals. Now that you have identified what you are already good at and what you need to get better at, your goals will be focused on making positive progress in both areas. That is, keep getting better at the positive things while at the same time addressing areas in which you need to grow. Ask yourself these questions:
   • What do you love to do?
   • What are your interests/passions?
   • What are things you despise doing but need to do?
     
     Your answers to these questions will help you identify the areas to focus on. Your goal will reflect small steps in each of the areas above. If you love to garden, then one goal might be to spend an hour three times per week in your garden. Yes, you might need to spend time every day in the garden, but that goal might not be realistic for you at this time. If you are passionate about animals, another goal might be to volunteer at an animal shelter once a month. If something you need to do, but hate doing, is eating healthy, then your goal needs to be to eat healthy one day per week. If you do more, great, but start small so you can set yourself up for success. You can build from there. 

3. Document your progress. Start a journal and record the actions you take each day that move you towards your goal. If you called the animal shelter to find out about volunteering, that goes in the journal. If you chose a side salad instead of fries at lunch, that goes in the journal. Every step, no matter how small, gets recorded. It can take up to six months for a new habit to be formed. Just keep taking those steps!
4. Don’t give up. Of course, you are going to have setbacks. Of course, you will get off track at times. You didn’t get this way overnight and you’re not going to fix it overnight.  The real question is, how are you going to manage the setback? Are you going to beat yourself up, or will you accept that you cannot change what has already happened and get re-focused on moving forward?
   
   If you fail miserably, you need to ask yourself if your goal is something you truly want. If the answer is “no,” then it wasn’t a good goal for you from the start.  If the answer is “yes,” then re-commit. If it is truly important to you, you will be willing to keep failing until you make progress.   

If you want to know more about Life Coaching, I suggest you read any of Martha Beck’s books on the subject. And, get ready to get yourself in the game!