Life Coaching Yourself

Over the last decade in particular, many people who are looking to change and improve their lives in some way have employed the services of a ‘life coach’ to help them identify areas in both their personal and professional life where they’d like to make changes in order to feel happier about themselves and the world around them and, whilst there’s no denying that having someone in this capacity in your life can (at a cost) help you identify patterns of behaviour and/or attitude that you might wish to improve upon to increase your quality of life.

There is certainly no reason why you cannot life coach yourself. It will require you to ask questions of yourself and you’ll need a fair modicum of self-discipline in order to achieve the same results as you might be able to do with a life coach where you’d have someone to answer to but if you are determined to make changes in your life then self-discipline shouldn’t really be an issue and, after all, you know yourself far better than any life coach could ever do.

Goal Setting

We all have certain goals in our lives. Some of us are very focused and clear about what we want to achieve and work towards achieving that whilst others might have goals but never really plan them in great detail which means that, ultimately, the goals are abandoned or take far longer than expected.

There are a few important ‘rules’ associated with goal-setting if you want them to be successful. Firstly, be realistic. If you give yourself a mammoth goal to achieve and/or you don’t allow sufficient time to achieve it, you’re virtually setting yourself up to fail. This will become apparent very early on which will mean you abandon your goals altogether. So, make sure that your goals are something which you can actually visualise yourself achieving. Even if they are bigger goals, to help you to reach them, break each goal down into smaller pieces.

For example, if you’re at point A and you need to get to your ultimate goal which is point D, don’t worry about how you’re going to get from point A to point D. Instead, think of it as a journey and plan on how you’re going to get from point A to point B, then from point B to point C and finally from point C to point D. This way you’ll find it will seem much easier to achieve. Actually writing your goals and their component pieces down ensuring that each small section has a realistic deadline date by which you should have achieved it is a good way of planning and measuring your goal setting achievements. Therefore, you need to have a clear idea of how you can measure your achievements and also you should always aim for positive goals as opposed to things that have negative connotations, e.g. “I will do X” is far better than setting goals which state “I will stop doing Y”. As such, a positive and affirmative attitude is vital. It really is a fact that if you believe you CAN do something, YOU WILL whilst if you keep saying to yourself, “I can’t do this”, then the chances are you won’t hence the reason why attitude is key.

Listen To Your Inner Voice

Call it your ‘heart’ or ‘soul’ or whatever. Make sure that any goals you set are made because it’s something YOU really want to achieve for yourself. You’re setting yourself up for failure if your own heart isn’t really in something and you’re goal setting because the goals are something you feel you ‘ought’ to do or, far worse, that you feel OTHERS would like to see you do. In other words, goal setting has to be all about YOU and YOUR hopes and aspirations.

Taking Care Of Yourself

Life coaching is not simply about setting goals or looking to make specific changes in your life. In fact, you might be perfectly content in both your personal and professional life yet life coaching still can play a significant role in helping you look after yourself. Therefore, here are some things you might do in order to achieve that which should bring happiness and fulfilment into your life on a daily basis:

• Allocate a period each day for some relaxation time alone, i.e. - this might include listening to relaxation CDs, taking a nice bath with some aromatherapy oils in it, meditating or just simply going for a stroll in the woods listening to the sounds of nature
• Make time for both friends and for activities you like to pursue and don’t let work or other personal commitments alter that set time you’ve put aside for that purpose
• Reward yourself at each stage when you’ve reached a particular goal
• Take regular exercise and eat healthily
• Value yourself and make yourself the priority sometimes - so many of us have other obligations and commitments that we feel we always have to put first that we never allow ourselves any ‘ME’ time. This is not about being selfish. It simply means that you allow time to value yourself just as you’ll often put other people and commitments first at other times. It is perfectly acceptable to say ‘no’ sometimes