Can I do coaching without a coach? Yes, you can! This process is called “self coaching”.
How is self-coaching different from coaching?
Coaching is a partnership between a coach and a client in which the coach facilitates the client’s learning and development to achieve personal and career goals.
In self-coaching, the individual is left alone with his or her desires and goals. Using coaching tools, he or she works independently. Self-coaching helps one not to forget about one’s strengths, teaches one to use them on the way to achieving goals, to discover one’s potential, to start living in harmony with oneself.
Self-coaching helps a person to realize his or her strengths, talents and opportunities, and learn to manage and use them. Applying self coaching regularly, you can achieve significant results:
- Identify a favorite activity.
- Accept yourself and believe in your strengths.
- Get on the path of achieving goals.
- Unlock your own potential and begin to live in harmony with yourself.
When beginning to engage in self coaching, it is important to stick to the attitudes:
- Everything is fine with me;
- I create my own reality;
- My present is the result of my decisions and actions in the past.
- The future is the result of today’s decisions and actions;
- I have the strength to achieve my goal;
- My mistakes are experiences and conclusions made.
Fundamentals of Self-Coaching:
- Responsibility and honesty to yourself
- Everything in life should be treated consciously
- Discipline, rethinking of your mistakes and failures, determination, ability and desire to learn are important.
- Constant work on the development of yourself, the development of your skills
- A properly formulated goal is one of the foundations for achieving it.
- Asking the right questions helps to expand the client’s awareness and view of his situation
It is important to use coaching techniques and models for independent work.
An expert look at self-coaching by Yuri Muradyan
Touching on the topic of self-coaching, I would like to tell you separately about the techniques offered by the world’s youngest MCC ICF level coach, Yuri Muradyan, one of my coaching teachers, in his article “17 Questions about Life: Self-coaching Techniques to Help Establish Relationships with Yourself” in VOGUE RUSSIA.
I’ll tell you a little about each of them.
– Technique “Turn on the body”
Yuri believes that working only with the head is ineffective. No matter how we work with the mind, if we do not support the body, it will slow down.
– Positive Attitudes for the Future” technique
Many people are more accustomed to thinking with negative attitudes. But in order to achieve positive results, you must learn to focus on the positives.
– The Power of Open Questions technique
Our brain tries to avoid complex and ambiguous solutions. Therefore, in case of failure, it is easier for us to give up and say, “I knew it wouldn’t work out.” To come out of any situation a winner, learn to ask yourself open-ended questions that don’t have a clear answer in the beginning.
To keep your focus on your state of mind every day, Yuri suggests using a list of questions to apply in self coaching.
- What good things will happen for me today? – Every minute, the brain is constructing our future. Help it create the best scenario.
- How do you see yourself a year from now? – By asking this question, you are engaging in positive planning, identifying steps to reach your goal.
- What thoughts distract you from what’s important? – Once you’ve set a goal, it’s important to make sure that the actions you take each day lead you to the desired one.
- The best ways to regain energy quickly? – By answering this question, you will be able to choose the most environmentally friendly way to feel good about yourself.
- What tasks do you put off until the last minute? – Once you catch yourself procrastinating, ask yourself why are you doing it? And be ready to make a change.
- How do you make sure that the tasks you set are done with quality? – To get things done quickly and with quality, you need to be truly results-oriented.
- What will help you build a balance between work and rest? – To avoid abandoning what you’ve started halfway through, calculate how much you’d like to invest in work and rest.
- What is a “healthy relationship” for you? – Determine for yourself what kind of relationship is healthy and comfortable for you and try to match it yourself.
- What would happen if you opened up to the world? – How much do you care about the opinions of others? Forget about external evaluation. Successful people are often direct and free.
- What is your level of control? – Think about how much control you care about. And then trust the world and let go.
- What is love to you? – Are you willing to give? Your relationship with the world and with yourself will depend on this answer.
- What is the state that helps you achieve the greatest results? – Think about what helps you to achieve success in things? What sensations do you feel, what energy do you emit?
- What helps you to return to this state, no matter what? – Even in times of stress and under the influence of external factors, you can regain your state and change the situation around you.
- Think about your problem or difficult request and ask, “What would an adult do in this situation?” – Only a conscious and capable person can make informed decisions. Any situation is fixable if you behave like an adult.
- What would you do if you felt a fiasco 100 times? – How do you react to defeat? To avoid giving up after another failure, change your attitudes and keep working towards what you want. Each new failure brings you closer to your goal.
- Assuming nothing is impossible, what would your life be like? – If you stop limiting yourself in your dreams and decide that everything in your life is possible, how do you see yourself in the future?
What can you do today to get closer to that picture? – Answer honestly and take the very first step.
Diary
I would like to suggest another powerful, in my opinion, tool for self-coaching – a diary. There are many names for this tool, I know – success diary, self-coaching diary, diary – analyzing the past day, gratitude diary, etc. The names are different, but the underlying essence is the same.
When I was a teenager, I kept a diary. I wrote down there the events of the passing day, not because I knew about such an important written practice, but because it was fashionable. Every girl in school kept a diary and organized it in a very attractive notebook.
But school is over, hello university, what diary is there, what are you talking about? So this whole story faded into oblivion, the only proof of which remained, it is saved notebooks somewhere in the parents’ house, as a memory and memories.
Having grown up, having started studying psychology and coaching, I came across more and more mentions and recommendations about such a tool, already known to me, but not accepted by me as an adult. I did not understand why I should spend so much time (at least 15 minutes a day) every day to record the events of the passing day, or to answer specific questions. There was a violent protest.
Now, having gone all the way with resistance and realizing how important this diary habit is, I recommend it to almost every client of mine. I call it the reflective diary.
The task is to choose the most attractive notebook, notepad, or day planner for yourself and every evening write down there your mini report for the day. To begin with, you can start answering yourself a few questions, then supplement, replace with others and choose for yourself the best way to keep a diary.
I suggest the following questions to start with:
- What did I do today that was good for me?
- What did I do today that was good for others?
- What new things did I learn about myself? What did I feel?
- What or who am I grateful to?
- What went wrong today? What do I take away from this situation?
It may seem simple at first glance, but for beginners it is really a marathon. And remember, keeping a diary helps you achieve your goals, remember and implement your ideas and thoughts, helps you develop awareness, look at yourself and your situation from the outside, analyze your feelings and patterns of behavior, pay attention to your mistakes and learn to act differently.
So have patience and go for it!
In conclusion, I want to give you a gift.
For everyone who wants to apply self coaching in their personal development, I have prepared checklists and instructions with specific questions:
- “The Wheel of Life Balance,” the instruction of the
- SMART, setting goals according to SMART
- GROW, Thomas J. Leonard’s Formula for Success.
- Five questions to ask yourself every day
- Twelve questions to ask yourself about productivity for every Sunday
- The Joy List Checklist
All of these checklists and instructions can be downloaded for free by clicking on the link.