How to self-coach when you’re stuck

Sometimes in life, I know that there’s something not quite right but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I know I feel a dissatisfaction but I’m not quite sure where. Or that there’s an imbalance and I am struggling to figure out what needs adjusting? Or I’m not quite sure what I should focus on.

What can help is a bit of self-coaching to get ‘unstuck’ and find clarity. Sometimes self-coaching is not enough, and that’s when I talk to my coach or mentor.

If you’ve never tried coaching before, try this self-coaching technique and see how you get on.

How do I self-coach?

First you need to figure out what area of your life to focus on. This will help get started.

• Find yourself some quiet time and space (just 10 minutes or so).
• Get yourself a clean sheet of paper and something to write with.
• List out 8 to 10 areas of your life that are important to you. For example you might include career, family, children, husband, social life, travel, security, finance, adventure, relaxation, church, community, time management etc.  It doesn’t matter what you include as long as each of those areas are important to you. The list will be different for everybody.
• When you have your list, rate each area out of 10 on how happy are you with that area of your life (where 1 is very unhappy and 10 is extremely happy).
• When you have finished, take a few moments to reflect on how you have marked each area. How does that feel? Which are the areas which are most important to you and how did you rate those ones?
• Now decide which area is the most important one for you to focus on right now.
• Knowing which area is the most important one to focus on, take time to ask yourself some coaching questions.

Coaching questions to ask yourself

You have decided on the area on which to focus, now you can ask yourself these questions. For the example below, I am going to take ‘career’ as the area to focus on.

• What do I like about what is happening with my career right now?    
  [change ‘career’ to family or travel or security etc, depending on what area of your life you want to focus on]
• What don’t I like about my career right now?
• What if my career was 10/10, what does that look like?
• What can I do to get my career to 10/10?
• What steps can I take?
• What else?
• What is the first step I can take?

Next steps

Your next step is to decide what action you will take and when. Write down both the actions you will take and when you will take the action. You’ll find you’ll stick to your actions much more easily if you get support and accountability. Share your planned actions with a friend. Or in a Facebook group. Or email me.

If you would like to explore how coaching can help you, why not give me a call and let’s have an chat. You can find a date/time in my diary here.