How to Self-Coach
In my last article, I talked about why I stay in a life coach program year after year. I mentioned that I am pretty good at self-coaching, but I still find it valuable to listen to other people get coached because it reminds me of various coaching principles and new thought ideas. You may be wondering what is self-coaching and how does one do it, so I wanted to take a moment to explain that.
I want to clarify, though, that it is easier to self-coach after you’ve worked with a life coach for a while. Doing it on your own is like teaching yourself to snowboard. It’s possible, but you progress faster with an instructor.
The three main steps of self-coaching mirror the three basic concepts of coaching in general: allow your feelings, become aware of your thoughts, question your stories.
When I want to address my frustration, anger, or other strong negative emotion, I first take a moment to allow the feeling. It’s not useful to address the beliefs or talk myself out of a feeling when I’m in the moment of high emotion. I say to myself, “This is just frustration. This is part of being human. It’s okay to feel all the human emotions, the whole range.”
I find a quiet place and go through the six-step process of allowing emotions. I find them in my body and experience them fully. Doing this often relieves the intensity of the feeling. Sometimes I have to do it repeatedly throughout the day, and sometimes I simply hang out with the emotion for the day, reminding myself that this is part of life. We can’t always feel good.
This is a crucial first step. Trying to address the thoughts while experiencing a strong emotion can lead to resisting the feeling. You don’t want to push emotion down and try to think a positive thought so that you don’t have to feel it. You want to consciously remind yourself that difficult feelings are not a problem to be solved. They are part of the human condition.
…consciously remind yourself that difficult feelings are not a problem to be solved.
When I have negative emotions, I often cry. I used to dislike this part of myself and struggled to push it down and stop crying. That only made the crying worse. I eventually found that the only thing that lessened the crying and the desire or urge to cry was allowing it.
My coach told a story about taking her daughter to the doctor to get some vaccines. Her daughter was nervous, and when the doctor came in, she started crying and fussing. My coach said things to her daughter like, “Don’t cry. It’s okay. It will just be a quick pinch.” But the doctor said to the child, “If you want to cry, you should cry.” He wasn’t bothered by the tears, and he wanted the child to feel free to express her emotion.
I adopted that mantra for myself. “If you want to cry, you should cry.” I added in some other self-talk my coach had suggested: “Hey me, I love you! This is hard. It isn’t easy being a human. But you’re doing a great job, and I love you.” This style of relating to myself lets me feel the emotion and not force it down. It gives the message that this emotion is normal and fine, not that big of a deal. It is very relieving. I also add, “I’m not supposed to be perfect” and “I deserve love and forgiveness and grace.”
When the strong emotions die down and I want to address a persistent challenge, I sit down with a notebook to explore my thoughts. I go through the following steps to coach myself through the situation.
First, I write out all my thoughts on the incident. This is sometimes called a “brain dump.” I write and write, letting out every terrible and ugly thought. It’s important to not judge myself for having these ideas or try to avoid writing down my “worst” ones. I let them all to come up, shining a light in the dark places I don’t want to go.
This is how I gain awareness of what my mind is offering me. The importance of this process cannot be overestimated. Often, we want to change our thoughts right away to feel better faster. But it is hard to replace beliefs that we’re not conscious of. Many times, the cognizance of the thoughts alone helps them dissipate. Once they are brought into the light, our higher brain sees how illogical they are and how they don’t serve us. If we try to “think positively” before bringing up those ideas, however, we’re doomed to keeping them around.
Letting all the thoughts come to the surface doesn’t mean we reinforce the “truth” of our notions. While writing them, we also know that they are just stories. We keep in mind that the brain comes up with a lot of zany ideas so…let’s see what it has cooked up today. We’re a little bit removed from the thoughts, like an objective observer.
When I’ve finished writing out all my thoughts, I identify the circumstance of the situation. This can be tricky because when we have strong emotion, our brain wants to hold on to its story. Our mind will tell us that the belief is true and that we’d be deceiving ourselves if we let it go. This is the time to remind ourselves that our brain’s motives don’t always serve us. It wants to be right more than it wants us to feel good. So we work to loosen our grip on the beliefs a little and isolate one or two neutral circumstances.
Now I’m ready to write out a Model. I’ve already separated the circumstance from my thoughts. I fill in the C line and then pick one thought for the T line. I reflect on what feeling that particular idea generates for me, and then fill in the A line with the actions that I do or don’t do when fueled by that emotion. I ascertain what result those actions give me and observe how it relates to my thought. This is the trickiest part of self-coaching. Successfully filling out a Model is easier with a coach’s help or at least a lot of experience being coached and observing coaching. However, a future article will give more helps for filling out and working with a Model.
It isn’t true that something went wrong; it’s simply a made-up tale in my mind.
After seeing how my thought plays out in a Model, including what result it creates, my mind might be ready to loosen its firm grasp on that idea. This is the time to question my story. My story is made up of the notions my brain has put into a narrative about what went wrong. It isn’t true that something went wrong; it’s simply a made-up tale in my mind. So I ask myself some questions to poke holes in the story. Questions like these:
Can I see that the circumstance is neutral?
Can I see that my thought about it is something I made up?
What if I’m wrong? What if this isn’t even a thing?
Who do I become when I believe this story?
What else is true? If I expand my perspective, what else do I see?
What do I want to feel? What beliefs would generate that feeling?
What do people who don’t have this problem think?
How would I feel if I let go of this thought? (I’m not asking myself to let go of it, just exploring what that would look like.)
In what ways is the opposite true?
What do I mean by (fill in the adjective in your thought line)? How will I know when I have that/when that is gone?
I ask these questions in a light, inquisitive manner. I’m not trying to convince my brain of something different or force it to change. I’m just curious — what if? What’s that about? I write out these questions and my answers, and then I move on with my day. I’ve opened my mind to some new ideas, and that’s enough for today. I will let those notions percolate. I allow my brain to go to work loosening its story.
Sometimes this is all it takes. I notice that I’m not bothered by that thing anymore. Sometimes I come back to the notebook and do some or all of these steps again. It’s a process, and it’s important that we give it the time it needs. There’s no need to be in a rush. Remember, negative emotions are not a problem to be solved. We do the self-coaching to gain greater awareness of ourselves and to get a different result in our lives, but the difficult feelings in themselves are not a crisis.
There’s no need to be in a rush. Remember, negative emotions are not a problem to be solved.
In this way, we let our thoughts come to the surface and get air. Some of them dissipate easily when we do this; some we have to nudge a little bit. But it’s a gentle evolution, no forcing. And no judging myself for my ideas or feelings or the time it takes to change.
If I feel ready, I might find a new thought to redirect my brain toward when this troubling experience comes up. As I’ve gone through my self-coaching questions, I might have realized something else that was equally true, equally believable, but that feels better.
For example, instead of “She’s too bossy,” I might redirect to, “She’s a human doing her best.” “This situation is scary” could be replaced with, “I know how to keep myself safe.” One more example: Instead of “They’re so mean” I could think “It’s not their job to be nice to me. that’s my job.”
It takes some creativity to find a new belief that feels right. I usually have to try on a few different ideas to land on one that is helpful.
Just like anything, the more you self-coach, the better you’ll get at it, especially if you are listening to other people get coached regularly. Hopefully these suggestions and illustrations are helpful as you try it out. My next article will give an example from my self-coaching experience.
Try this on: “You’re not supposed to be perfect.”
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