Is it possible to self-coach? HOW do you self coach yourself? What IS self coaching, and what are the best self coaching exercises and self coaching questions to effectively learn how to coach yourself? This Self Coaching Guide and Techniques training is a self coaching masterclass to answer those questions and more!
As an internationally board-certified Life Coach who specializes in personal fulfillment coaching for clients and helps you learn how to do mindset work, I’m so delighted to share with you these powerful methods for how to change mindset and behaviour… Let’s get started...
NOTE: This is a recording from one of our monthly bonus training in the Productivity Powerhouse e-course from November 2022.
When you join Productivity Powerhouse with the Solopreneur Diary Entries PREMIUM Edition upgrade, you get access to new bonus trainings and masterclasses **every month** to help you out in all areas of life and business!
(We've been doing this since September 2022 — a full 2 years! — and they're such a wonderful way to get access to extra trainings each and every month, exclusive to you as a Productivity Powerhouse.)
This is your sneak peek example of what just ONE of those Productivity Powerhouse masterclasses looks like. Enjoy!
Watch the Self Coaching Guide and Techniques video now:
Self Coaching Guide and Techniques video show notes
- 0:00 Introduction and overview of what to expect in our Self Coaching Guide and Techniques training
- 0:50 What is self coaching? Is it possible to self-coach? What are the benefits to doing self coaching exercises?
- 2:30 Overview of how to do mindset work and the guided self coaching questions I like to ask myself (the method I use for how to coach yourself — what personal fulfillment coaching can look like).
- 6:55 A word of caution about **what happens** along the way when you are learning how to change mindset and behaviour — plus an important disclaimer to keeping mind when you are using/implementing this Self Coaching Guide and Techniques training.
- 9:10 “Sagan, how do you self coach yourself?” → An example of what I like to do when I am doing self coaching exercises and self coaching questions.
- 10:30 Examples of several issues I’ve worked through (and the way in which I have done self coaching exercises to process them and move out of them) → Includes mindset reframes as examples for how to change your mindset to be successful.
- 24:15 Sample self coaching questions you can use for how to coach yourself and how to change mindset and behaviour (these are GREAT questions to explore as part of your Self Coaching Guide and Techniques) — plus the value of reframing as a tool for self coaching exercises.
- 27:40 Three VERY important, essential things to keep in mind for how to do mindset work and to keep in mind when you are learning how to coach yourself.
- 33:45 “Sagan, do you ever reach a point where you get stuck during self coaching exercises? How do you self coach yourself when you get stuck?” → Answering these questions about navigating stickiness in self coaching.
Self Coaching Guide and Techniques video transcript
Today I want to talk about what is self coaching, why it matters so much, and why I wanted to do this topic for this month’s Productivity Powerhouse bonus masterclass training… and then I want to get into my particular method of self coaching, because what self coaching looks like really depends on the person and the situation. I want to get into this from a practical standpoint, specifically what it looks like when I'm doing self coaching in my own business.
And then I have four examples of things that I myself have worked through, so I want to share some of that with you! We also have some sample self coaching questions and three really important pieces to keep in mind when you are learning how to coach yourself and doing self coaching in your own life or business — if you decide to do this on your own, those will be some really important things to consider.
What is self coaching? Is it possible to self-coach? How do you self coach yourself?
Self coaching is about working through issues independently so that you can address them and deal with them. When I'm working with my clients in personal fulfillment coaching sessions or solopreneur coaching sessions, it's me talking with them and working through any types of obstacles they might be experiencing — perfectionism, procrastination, overwhelm, impostor syndrome, all of these types of things.
When you're doing self coaching, you're essentially doing that to yourself: You're doing it on an internal basis, where you are basically both the coach and the client. It's a cool skill to have!
The real benefit to doing this is that you get to address issues in real time, on your own, so that they stop being these obstacles for you; so they stop getting in your way, and so it stops being a bottleneck.
This is also NOT just about addressing or dealing with the surface level issues. It's about diving deeper so that you can overcome those actual issues that you might be struggling with.
This is something that I help you learn how to do when you book coaching sessions with me. I thought that it'd be useful for you to get some insights into what coaching looks like and how it helps you!
If you've been thinking about getting coaching, this gives you a little more reassurance around what it looks like. If you're a bit nervous about it, or if you're intimidated by it and you're not really sure what happens in a coaching session, hopefully this will put you at ease for it!
How do you self coach yourself? Here’s how I use self coaching…
My method of self coaching, the way that I tend to do it for myself — it looks very different depending on the person, so I do it differently with different clients — but the way that I tend to do it in my own life and my own business is to ask myself a lot of powerful questions.
And then it's about being willing to answer those questions HONESTLY — to be very honest with myself — and to be willing to sit with my answers, even when it might be a little bit uncomfortable. From there, it's about checking in with what I am willing and what I am not willing to do about it. That's a really important piece to take into consideration.
I also like to layer in some somatic techniques like EFT tapping. But all of this, for my style of personal fulfillment coaching, starts with guided questions. We layer in somatic techniques if that's a good fit and if it connects back to that particular obstacle or issue; if it makes sense for that particular coaching situation.
(In addition to being an internationally board-certified Success and Life Coach, I'm also an internationally board-certified Practitioner of Emotional Freedom Techniques. We can do EFT as part of our coaching sessions, if that's of interest to you!)
Self coaching skills as a PRACTICE
These are skills that you develop over time. Self coaching is a practice — it is something that's really similar to productivity! I'm always talking about how productivity is one of those skills that we can continue to develop over time... We never get to a point where we can say, “I can never be more productive” — because you can ALWAYS improve your productivity.
Self coaching is the same way: It's a skill that you keep developing and building over time.
This also connects back to doing weekly audits and performance reviews in Step 9 of the Productivity Powerhouse framework. If you have done that lesson in the program, you went through the weekly audit and the performance reviews, then you'll know it's a lot about analyzing your business, assessing how things are going, deciding how you're going to move forward. But some of the questions are also around your approach to things, how you're feeling and thinking about things. That's a very “base” version of self coaching.
The Productivity Powerhouse Workbook in general gives you that space to do a little bit of “self coaching light” on your own, too! If you have gone through the workbook and you feel like you uncovered some interesting things about yourself that you maybe didn't realize before, that indicates that you've already done a little bit of self coaching, which is really cool! It can be really useful for doing that.
If you have gone through Step 9 of Productivity Powerhouse, or if you've gone through any of the lessons but you HAVEN’T done the Workbook yet, then I would really really encourage you to do that — because it's not just about watching the videos or reading through the Companion Guide; it's about actually taking action on all these things. And that includes answering those questions in the Workbook because things are gonna come up for you that will not come to mind if you're just watching through the lessons.
When you book coaching sessions with me, we also go through much of this process on our coaching calls together. I'm coaching my clients on our calls, and then we build these skills over time. And we have these sort of “fast track” methods of doing it: I will give my clients customized self coaching exercises or thought experiments so that they can process things on their own in between sessions.
What happens is we'll do a coaching session and I will coach them through things — and then, based on what their specific struggle might be and the particular obstacle that they’re facing, I will design a customized thought experiment which guides them through doing their own self coaching.
They can do that in between sessions, test it out, see what happens, and then come back at our next session and we assess it and adjust it and pivot it as needed, based on what they got from it, what worked for them, and what didn't work for them.
An important note on doing this work in self coaching (important to keep in mind when you are learning how to change mindset and behaviour)...
A lot of new stuff often comes up when you're doing this work. When you are doing self coaching, oftentimes, you start working through one issue and then you realize that there may be a whole other issue to deal with. You peel back one of the layers and then there's something underneath to deal with.
The reason why I want to make note of this is because it's good to be aware of — I want to caution you that if you're doing self coaching, it can be a little bit of a shock sometimes if you aren't expecting new things to come up! If you think that you're dealing with one particular issue and then that actually uncovers another issue, it can be a little bit of a shock.
You want to make sure that you're in a very safe space to be able to work through those different issues. I would recommend that you almost *assume* that something else is going to be underneath that surface.
One more point that I want to reiterate before we move into what this looks like on a practical level for me to be self coaching for myself (and the 4 examples of how I've worked through issues in my own life in business)... The point I wanted to make here is this:
Self coaching is different for everyone.
I mentioned it earlier, but I just want to reiterate that the self coaching methods that I use and the self coaching questions that I use for myself are not necessarily the exact same methods or the exact same coaching questions I use when I'm working with various clients. It's also not the same types of ones that they might use when they are doing self coaching.
All of this is going to be — as with everything, as you already know here inside Productivity Powerhouse — everything's gonna be fully customized!
Each person is unique, and each situation you deal with is different, so therefore all coaching must be tailored to YOU and that given situation.
You can get a general idea of how self coaching works from today's Self Coaching Guide & Techniques masterclass, but it needs to be customized in order for it to be truly effective for you. You'll want to do the particular method(s) that really works well for you, and to ask yourself the self coaching questions that are a good fit for you.
(This is also 100% something I can help you with when I teach you customized self coaching in our 1:1 coaching sessions together)
2 methods of self coaching examples and how to coach yourself
From a practical standpoint, when I'm doing self coaching, it usually happens in one of two ways:
1) While I’m out for a long walk.
I'll usually go out for 60 - 75 minutes, which is about the length of my coaching sessions as well with clients. I'll go for that length of a walk and I will go through coaching in my head: I will be coaching myself while I go for a walk by myself.
(I can't do self coaching if I'm out for a walk with someone else. It doesn't work the same!)
In that case, I will often email myself from my phone about any breakthroughs that I have. I might get back to my office and have 7 emails waiting for me after a walk if I have really gone through some good things.
That's one of the ways that I do it: Going out for a walk.
2) The other way that I like to self coach is to literally write down questions and then journal it out to see what comes up for me.
It either happens in my head while I'm working through things and I write down notes for myself just so I can hold on to those little nuggets, or else I will just be writing and it'll be a stream of consciousness as I am answering these very specific types of questions. I'll be following my thought processes in a very strategic manner to get to the actual answer that I need to get at.
A few examples of issues that I have worked through when I'm doing self coaching for myself…
Self Coaching Example #1: Ego fears.
I have held myself back in a variety of ways over the years because of an ongoing underlying fear that “if I am too successful, I'll get a big ego.”
This has just been an underlying, ongoing sort of fear where I really never want that to happen. That just feels terrifying! This is something that working through has been really interesting — because it's one of those things, as I mentioned, where you'll start to peel back the layers when you're doing this self coaching. You think that this is one issue and then you uncover it and it becomes something else, and something else.
In my case, when it comes to ego fears and I first realized what was going on, it started out as procrastination. Early on in my business, I would not do certain tasks that would have led to my business success.
By unravelling a bit more and digging into that procrastination, I found that underneath the surface, there was some imposter syndrome going on. And then digging into that more, I realized there was also that ego fear; that fear of getting a really big ego.
With all of these pieces pulled away, you could see how the procrastination was more of a symptom of these other things going on beneath the surface.
Because I've done this self coaching around it, now I know what the symptoms are. I know that if I'm holding myself back from doing things that can move my business forward and that can lead to some really great business success, I know that there might be an ego fear in it. And then I can work through it. I can coach myself through it.
What self coaching exercises have worked well for me to overcome this issue of ego fears?
A couple of the things that have worked really well for me to overcome that specific issue is holding on to particular thoughts and particular pieces in my mind.
For example, one of them is this: “There are many extremely successful people out there who do not have big egos. Just because there are some people who DO have big egos when they become successful, there are plenty of people who do not. So therefore, I can view them and see: ‘Being successful is not equated with having a big ego.’”
That's one of the things that's been very helpful for getting past that.
Another piece that has been helpful is recognizing that there's no evidence of me in the past having a gigantic ego — so why would I assume that would happen in the future?
Being able to hold on to these thoughts has been very helpful for working through that. That’s like a “fast track version” of how I worked through that particular issue of ego fears via self coaching.
Self Coaching Example #2: Seeking safety in breaks (expansive vs constrained safety).
The second example here, of how I do self coaching in my own life and business, is something that came up just last month when I was doing the first part of my business planning retreat — it's an ongoing journey right now! — but one of the things that came up for me was that I was taking breaks in the middle of the day from my business planning retreat, and they were not helping me the way that I wanted them to be helping me.
So I dove into it: “What's going on here?”
What was happening was that I was taking these breaks because part of the business planning retreat is that I was doing a lot of deep self coaching work — this is gonna get a little meta — so I was doing a lot of self coaching work, and I needed to take a break from it because it was starting to feel like, “Oof, this is a lot of deep stuff that I'm uncovering.”
So I took a break from it by watching TV in the middle of the day — probably Selling Sunset or Love Is Blind or Once Upon A Time; one of those shows. Doing this was helpful from a midday break standpoint, but it was depleting my energy. I didn't want to go back to work afterwards!
By doing more self coaching around it, I was able to realize that I was taking a break of watching TV because I was seeking safety. I was really putting myself out there and being very vulnerable with myself by doing all this business retreat stuff and self coaching, and as a result, I wanted safety. I wanted a safe space for my break.
However, the type of safety that I was using, that I was falling back on, was a very constrained type of safety (TV shows). What I really needed was a much more expansive, spacious safety. For me, that expansive, spacious safety would be things like going out for a long walk, letting myself be out in nature, enjoying walking, that kind of thing. Maybe eating nourishing foods while reading a great book, those types of things. Those are more spacious, more expansive types of safety for me — whereas taking a break by watching a TV show in the middle of the day is a little bit more contracted. It’s not really allowing me to have the opportunity to grow and to do proper self coaching, to do the proper work that I wanted to be doing, because it was too constrained.
It’s interesting to be able to identify those different types of safety that we tend to seek. I'm guessing that you, watching this, have probably also stumbled into that as well — where you've needed some kind of safety (because things can be really scary when you're starting your own business or when you're growing your business), and you might have sought safety in a way that felt good in the moment, but it was still constraining you. And so it's really important to find those safety options in a more expansive way that supports you.
This was something that I was able to work through while I was doing my business planning retreat because I realized that this was a stumbling block for me! So I literally self coached myself through it by asking myself these guided self coaching questions and writing down the answers and so I came to this. Again, that one's a bit of a meta example!
Self Coaching Example #3: A deeper understanding of my anxiety.
Now our third example here that I wanted to share with you is related to anxiety. In this instance, I've been able to use self coaching exercises to manage and mitigate my anxiety. I want to make a note here that anxiety is completely different for everyone. This will not necessarily work for every person. This is all simply to give you examples of things. Just a little disclaimer there!
What I have found is that my version of anxiety often comes up where I'll be worried about one thing… and if I fix the issue that I'm fixated on and worried about, if I resolve that issue, then my mind will jump to something else and will fixate on that. And that is how I know that I am experiencing anxiety in that moment. (That's one of the key ways that I know it’s my anxiety cropping up; there are other ways too, but that's one of the key ones.)
This is something that I figured out when I was living in a very small town for the first year of the pandemic, and I can remember, it was the middle of night and I was basically self coaching in my head. I was worried that the door was unlocked. I was wondering, “Did I lock the door? What if I didn’t lock the door?”
I lived in this tiny little town and the type of apartment that we had was on the ground level. Someone else's back door was right next to our bedroom window and I felt some discomfort around it. I got up to check that the door was locked. It was locked; all was well… And INSTANTLY I started to worry about something else!
So, I was laying there in bed and I was trying to try to figure out, “What's going on here?” I self coached myself through it. And I realized that when my brain is popping to something else that “needs to be fixed,” then that means it’s anxiety rearing its head. It's not a real issue.
Now, anxiety itself is very real! It's a very real issue. However, whether the door was locked or not, THAT was not a real issue. That was not what I was actually concerned about. I wasn't actually worried about whether the door was locked. It was simply my anxiety fixated on something.
And so by knowing that about myself, I find that it's a lot easier when I know, “Oh, it's anxiety! This thing that I'm worried about — ‘Did I leave the stove on after leaving the house,’ or whatever it happens to be; whatever random thing it might be — that's not actually the issue.” And that really relieves a lot of anxiety when I know that *that thing* is not actually the issue.
So I’ve been able to use self coaching to work through that, which is really, really cool. I'll often also combine it or layer it on with somatic techniques like EFT tapping, so that also helps a lot.
I wanted to give this example because it illustrates just how powerful your self coaching guide and techniques can be!
And again, anxiety is always completely different for every person. How we work through it is always going to be different for every person. I am not a mental health professional; this is simply what worked for me.
Self Coaching Example #4: Dealing with impatience around tech issues.
I have one more example, and then I'm going to share with you some sample self coaching questions that I might ask myself when I'm going through this, in doing self coaching (and which you can ask yourself, too).
The fourth example that I wanted to share with you is impatience with website issues and tech issues. This is something that many of us have had frustrations with!
Website issues and tech frustrations, this type of thing can definitely be a struggle for a lot of people. For myself, in the past, this has been something that would frustrate me to no end. It was the bane of my existence! I would get so irritated by it and so impatient. It was the worst thing ever.
And what ended up happening is — this was quite a few years back — I was able to talk myself through it and self coach. The way that I coached myself through this particular issue was bringing it back to: “What can I actually control? If my website is down — and it was just down a few days ago — If my website is down, what can I actually control in that case?”
I do not have the ability to magically bring it back up in that moment. I can't control that. What I CAN control is connecting with tech support at my website hosting platform, and telling them about the issue. What I CAN control is doing regular routine backups of all different aspects of my business. I don't have to worry about, “Oh no, is it gonna be completely gone forever?” What I CAN control is planning ahead and almost envisioning how I can handle it in different outcomes.
In that case, we’re looking at, “If my website is down, and if I cannot control this, here are the things that I can actually do. And here are the ways that I can work around it.”
When my website went down a few days ago, I think I posted on Instagram about it and was just like, “Let me know if you're looking for checkout links, you can just message me directly and I'll send you a checkout link to Productivity Powerhouse or Solopreneur CEO. And if not, the website will just be down for a day.” It's not the end of the world. It’s fine, it will be back up.
By looking at that, by creating basically a strategy around it after doing that self coaching, that has been really helpful.
It was about identifying that I was getting ridiculously impatient and ridiculously frustrated with it, and knowing that this is the reality of doing business, that there will be tech stuff — and that I couldn't keep on living like that! I couldn't keep on having that as my “routine reaction” every time something went wrong. So it's a matter of self coaching through it, and then creating these strategies so that when my website went down a few days ago, it was fine. I did not react. I did not have a sort of negative reaction or a visceral reaction; I was just very much like, “Okay, I know that I can contact tech support. It's fine.”
It's been really good to work through that with self coaching.
What you can see here, with these four different examples, you can really see how the way that I coached myself was a bit different in each of these scenarios. Some of it was all through mental processes or thought exercises, some of it was journaling things down, some of it was bringing in the somatic techniques, some of it was the strategy side, and so there's a lot of different ways that you can approach it, depending on the situation. How do you self coach yourself might change from one scenario to the next.
Pssst... Are you enjoying this Self Coaching Guide & Techniques training?
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...and if you're interested in fast-tracking your self coaching experience, you should 100% book a coaching session to get coached by a professional AND learn how to customize self coaching skills to your unique brain:
Sample Self Coaching Questions
Let’s go over a few of the self coaching questions that I might ask myself. These are sample questions that I typically would ask myself during a self coaching session…
- “What's going on?”
- “If something feels sticky, how am I handling it?”
- “How do I know that something's a problem?”
- “How do I know when something is sticky for me, in my life or my business?”
- “What started this?”
- “Where are there links between this particular thing and anything else that may be happening in my life in business?”
(In each of those questions, I might follow a train of thought and then bring it back to the next question on that list. Some of these might get more detailed than others; they all provide new facets and new information that I can cobble together to deepen my understanding.)
Another piece that I will then add in is asking, “Is this true?”
For example, if I'm thinking, “I can't do that!” or, “Before I do this thing, I need to do XYZ” — I like to check in. I’ll ask:
- “Is that actually true?”
- “Do I actually need to do XYZ before I do that other thing?”
- “Is it actually true that I cannot do this, that there's absolutely no way to do this thing that I want to do?”
By checking and asking “Is that true?”, it helps to really look at it and realize that the vast majority of the time, there’s actually something else going on.
This connects back to reframing how you're approaching things, which we talk about in Step 7 of the Productivity Powerhouse framework. Revisit that lesson on reframing in the curriculum; I would definitely recommend you do that.
Another set of questions that I'm always going to ask myself is:
- “What am I willing to do about this?”
- “What am I not willing to do about this?”
It is okay if you identify specific things in your life or your business that are an issue or frustration, whatever they happen to be, and you are not willing to do a particular thing to deal with it.
It's really important to be honest with yourself about that, because if you are not willing to do this thing over here, then there are probably multiple things over there that you ARE willing to do, and that can fix the problem.
Asking this question is also really useful, because it opens the doors that much more for you to be able to see, “Oh! It's not that *this* is the only way to do a particular thing. There are actually other options… So if I'm not willing to do it this way, then let's explore what I AM willing to do. What are all the other things? What are all the other options?”
I also like to ask myself:
- “What do I want to be doing?”
- “What do I envision for my ideal routine and ideal lifestyle?”
- “Why do I desire a particular thing?”
This is very specific, getting lots of clarity, especially around what problem is coming up:
- “How am I holding myself back?”
- “What is going on here, in this particular moment and with this particular issue?”
This connects back to the Self Leadership Spotlight Training in Productivity Powerhouse, in the section where we talked about that question, “For what purpose?”
And then:
- “Now that I know what I want, after doing all those types of things, how does all this fit together?”
- “What are the parts of me that are seemingly conflicted?
- “What's ACTUALLY going on there, among the parts that are seemingly conflicted?”
You’re starting to unpack that piece of it. And then you can look at:
- “Where am I holding myself back?”
- “Where am I the bottleneck?”
- “Where am I the one that's really getting in my own way?”
- “Based on that information, what can I do differently?”
Those are some of the different questions that I might ask myself while I'm doing my own self coaching session — depending on the type of issue that I'm working through and the type of things that are coming up for me, I might follow different pieces.
Important Notes about Doing Self Coaching | Best Practices for How to Coach Yourself
Now I want to make three really important points — if you are doing self coaching, these are essential to keep in mind:
1) Self honesty and self trust are essential to doing this work.
That is why you need to develop those skills at the same time in order to effectively self coach. You will not get the right answers, you're not gonna actually get the answers that are really going to help you and support you, UNLESS you are being very honest with yourself and trusting yourself with all of this.
These are practices and skills we can always, all of us, continue developing on an ongoing basis. Again, just like with productivity, it’s something we always can do better at… Self coaching is something we can always do better, too. I do self coaching in my business and in my life every single week, multiple times a week, and I'm still developing it! I'm still building that skill.
Self trust and self honesty are the exact same. We can constantly build them and fine tune them, which is really cool. It's great.
By the way, in Step 1 of the Productivity Powerhouse framework, there are a couple of thought exercises for developing self trust and self honesty. If that's what you want to work on, go back to those lessons.
This is also something that we build on when you get personal fulfillment coaching or solopreneur coaching with me — I mentioned earlier that my clients are learning how to do self coaching as we're going through the program, but we're not just throwing them into the deep end! It's not like we do one session and then say, “Okay, now go off and do a bunch of self coaching on your own.” That's not how it works!
During our coaching sessions, I work with my clients to help them build the self trust and self honesty along the way, developing those self coaching skills so that you can go off and start doing self coaching. We build in thought exercises too. It's like guided self coaching! All of this builds on one another and it's really, really important because you need to have all of these pieces in place in order for your self coaching to be really effective.
So that's the first thing that's important to keep in mind and to work on, is your self honesty and self trust.
The second important thing to keep in mind while you're doing self coaching…
2) You need to make sure you are asking the right questions for this particular “session” of self coaching, and that you are following the root issue paths.
The reason why this is so important is because you don't want to get mistakenly stuck and follow a line of questions that don't actually contribute to your breakthroughs. You don't want to get veered off onto a totally different track. You want to make sure that when you are doing self coaching, when you are following particular issues that might be arising, that you're able to really focus in and follow the things that are actually issues.
And again, this is going to look totally different for every person and this is also why there's not going to ever be any standardized question: There’s not a specific rigid path with “These are the questions you should always ask yourself every time you’re doing self coaching.”
There are sample self coaching questions, there are broad ones, but it's always gonna look a little bit different because everything that we might coach ourselves through is going to look a little bit different.
By the way: Asking the right questions and holding space for yourself — to sit with those answers, to be willing to listen to yourself, to hear yourself, to acknowledge yourself — this is also about kindness. This is about being kind to yourself.
That can be really hard for a lot of people. This used to be really hard for me, too. It's so much easier for us to be mean to ourselves. It's so much easier for us to put ourselves down, for us to beat ourselves up, than it is to be kind.
But the more that we are kind to ourselves, the more that it creates that space to develop self trust and to develop the self honesty to be able to coach ourselves effectively.
That's the second key piece I want you to keep in mind: Ask the RIGHT questions and follow the RIGHT root issue paths.... and being kind to yourself is going to make this whole thing a lot easier. Kindness is another one of those skills, it's another practice that we can do on an ongoing basis for ourselves.
The third key piece to keep in mind while you're doing self coaching in your life in business…
3) This is empowering! This is about experiencing real change as a result of the breakthrough.
It's not “just” about having an epiphany. It's also about experiencing a new reality as a result. And that is so cool. Because you're self coaching, you're coaching yourself, you're going through these really great mindset shifts; you're having these breakthroughs and these wonderful realizations about yourself… and as a result of that, you're then able to take action.
Especially when you look at it as, *that thing* where you think that you have all these issues, when you ask the right questions, it comes down to this issue over here. It's not these 10 other issues. It's actually this issue down here — You deal with that, and suddenly those other 10 issues aren't really problems anymore. They're not getting in your way the way that they used to. So you're kind of leapfrogging over those issues and you're able to get those real results from doing that.
It's really really cool because it's getting you these amazing mindset shifts while also being able to take action and be able to tangibly see the progress that you're making. It's fantastic. It's amazing.
That is everything that I wanted to share about how I do self coaching in my own life and business, and some tips for how to coach yourself, too… Let's do a quick Q&A before we wrap up!
Q&A: Do you ever reach a point of self coaching where you get stuck and can't figure out what's going on or how to get through it? How do you self coach yourself when you’re stuck?
I'm so glad that you asked this. Yes, that can definitely happen. It happens a lot LESS, the more that you're doing self coaching. It's one of those things that, when it comes up, it might indicate a few different things — one of the things that it might indicate is that you're going down a path that is not necessarily the root issue path. So you're sort of going off course a little bit.
It could also mean that the types of self coaching questions or the approach that you're taking isn't necessarily the best fit in that particular scenario. Those might be a couple of the big things that might be going on.
It might also be that you're a little bit too in it and you need to take a step away from it, if you're struggling. You need to take that break, kind of like the entire concept of anti hustle: Embodying that and saying, “I'm not going to force myself through it if it's not working.” If it's not coming together, then step away from this and then revisit it later.
If you're trying to do it internally — coaching in your mind — and nothing's coming out, then switching to the journaling of it can sometimes be really helpful, or talking to yourself out loud. The idea here is that you’re working through it in a different way. That's what I find very helpful.
If I'm stuck on something, I’ll explore: “What's going on here? This is really weird that I'm not getting at what the actual issue is. Let's try to figure this out. Let's just talk it out, whatever happens to come to mind. Is that a thing, does that feel like it might be a thing? No. Hmm. What about this thing over here? Oh, that might be something!” and then following up.
Self Coaching Guide & Techniques training wrap-up…
Coaching is amazing! It's so good and powerful and transformative.
If you want help with any or all of this — getting coaching and learning how to do self coaching so you can work through all this really effectively on your own — then you can book your coaching sessions with me and I can help you with that!
I’m an internationally board-certified Success & Life Coach who specializes in personal fulfillment coaching and deep inner mindset work, especially for solopreneurs.