You have one thing in common with every other person on the planet: you are encoded with everything you need to achieve a rich and rewarding life. That is your potential if you know how to tap into it. But like most people, you may be stuck wondering, “How in the heck do I do that?” I have two words for you—life coach!
A good life coach helps you to imagine your potential and harness it. More specifically, she helps you to do the following:
- Define goals worthy of your potential.
- Outline the steps to achieve them
- Capitalize on your strengths
- Develop empowering habits
- Eliminate limiting beliefs
A good life coach can quite literally make the journey for achieving your goals feel almost as great as the destination itself. Which of us couldn’t achieve a more rewarding life if we had a life coach around to guide our efforts?
Free Life Coach
The problem is that life coaches don’t come cheap. The vast majority of folks can’t afford one. I know I couldn’t. When I finally decided to break free of the chains of mediocrity, I looked into hiring a life coach. The ones that seemed worth their salt charged far too much money for my humble budget. A year or so went by before I began to see that the life coach I needed was actually me.
Yes, I was the perfect life coach for my situation because my services were free. That was the most apparent reason. But besides being the best choice financially, I also had two other things going for me: I had a vested interest in seeing myself succeed and more time to coach myself than anyone I could hire. The question then remained, was I qualified to do it?
Qualifications to Be a DIY Life Coach
While I don’t have any formal training as a life coach, I do possess a powerful insight for improving my life—the only thing that stands between me and reaching my potential is me. It’s my attitude that has to change. It’s my negative and self-defeating thoughts that are getting in the way. And while I may be a long way from recognizing everything I can do to improve my attitude, I most certainly recognize some things that I can do to improve it today.
I’m going to guess that you do too. You recognize at least a few things about your attitude that you could improve if you just made them a priority. And that’s all you need to know to be your own life coach—just a few things. Because when you begin taking action on the things that you do know, you gain more and more insight into the things you don’t yet know. To quote Martin Luther King Jr., “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
So with qualifications out of the way, let’s look at the four important duties you must fulfill if you are to be a good life coach for yourself. F
How to Coach Yourself in Four Easy Steps
1.Clearly Define Short and Long-Term Goals
It’s not enough to know you want to be happy and financially independent; you need a plan for making it happen. The more comprehensive the plan, the greater the chance of its success. By comprehensive, I mean that you not only define your long-terms goals but you define your short-term goals as well. Short-term goals are what make your long-term goals possible because they pave a path for the them to unfold. As they say, the devil is in the details.
It is also important to take a holistic approach when you sit down to define your goals. Your goals are your attempt at taking your life up a notch (maybe several notches). But you will find it hard to make such a leap if you are not addressing all aspects of your life—mind, body, and soul—because your life is an integrated system.
Of course, you will want to write down your goals. You may find it useful to write down your long-term goals in one place and your short-term goals in another and cross them off as you accomplish them. Go one step further and write down daily goals as well to help you be more productive and establish a goal-driven mindset.
2. Schedule Daily Life Coaching Sessions to Discuss Challenges and Strategies
If you hired a life coach online, chances are you would meet with him once a week to discuss challenges and strategies in regards to achieving your goals. Just imagine how much more progress you could make if you could consult with him every day. Well, that’s the beauty of being your own life coach—you can! And I would highly recommend it too.
The key is to try to set aside a time every day for your life coaching sessions when you are not likely to be distracted. Early morning is usually the best time because it is the quietest. An early morning session also sets the tone for the rest of the day, making it easier for you to stay focused on your goals and overcome challenges as they arise.
Now before you say that you’re not a morning person, let me assure you that neither am I. It’s never been my favorite time of day nor do I function at my best at this time. But I have discovered that I see clearest early in the morning, before the sun comes up, while everything is peaceful and quiet. Mornings make it easy for me to focus on the strong, confident voice of my life coach. Now that I have discovered that wonderful voice inside myself, getting up early in the morning to confer with it is has become the high point of my day.
3. Give Direction and Motivation
The main role of a life coach is to motivate you and keep you on track with your goals. This is something you are capable of doing for yourself because there is a part of you that is strong, self-aware, and grounded in reality. When you give this part of yourself a chance to weigh in on the roadblocks that stand between you and your goals, it will help you to dismantle them and achieve whatever it is you want out of life.
The “little me,” in contrast, is that part of yourself that is fraught with self-doubt and excuses. More times than not, it is your biggest roadblock. When you sit down to a life coaching session, both the little me and your life coach will be present at it.
Because both of these aspects of yourself are being represented in your sessions, it is useful to frame the sessions in the form of a dialogue: there is the you who needs direction an encouragement and then there is the you who gives it.
For instance, you may spend the first half of the session discussing where you are hitting a wall, where you are succumbing to self-doubt, where you are failing to follow through, etc. And then the last half of the session you will spend countering this talk with the wisdom and direction you reserve for a close friend. This is how you summon your life coach to help you—you respond to the concerns of the “little me.” You will be amazed at the wise and encouraging words that flow from your mouth when you give your life coach a chance to weigh in on your life’s challenges.
4. Hold Yourself Accountable
The reason so many people have such great success with life coaches is that they are held accountable for the goals they set. This is the hardest part of being your own life coach—you have to hold yourself accountable. Some would argue that it is impossible to be your own life coach because it is too easy to give yourself a pass. For my own part, I have found there are ways around that.
First of all, consider that, just by writing down your goals, you set yourself up to be more accountable. Moreover, when you sit down for your life coaching sessions each day, you are doing the work of accountability by examining where you are dropping the ball in achieving your goals. These two things alone will make you more accountable to your goals than you have ever been in your whole life. But you can increase your level of accountability even more by finding an accountability partner.
An accountability partner is just what the name implies—someone who holds you accountable to your goals and for whom you do the same. Your partner should be someone that you trust because you need to be able to be completely honest with them about your failures. Honesty is crucial if you are to reap the benefit of having an accountability partner.
One final note on the subject of accountability: one of the first things any life coach is going to do to help you achieve your goals is to take stock of how you pass your time. They will tell you that to achieve anything really worthwhile in life, you have to get out from under social media, internet browsing, watching television, and the like. It’s not that you can’t ever do these things, but it’s important to understand that they come at a cost to your higher goals. You can do them, but only in moderation. When assuming the role of life coach in your life, you have to hold yourself accountable for how you spend your time.
So there you have it, the four duties you must fulfill to be your own life coach. All four are completely within your power to do. And I’m willing to bet that, just like me, you’ll discover you are a natural at doing them. You, and not some guy you pay a hundred bucks an hour to, will coach you to achieve everything you’ve dreamed of doing. Because what you’ve dreamed of doing is none other than your true potential. It just takes becoming your own life coach to turn it into a reality.
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