Over the years, I have received many offers for coaching and training. Some I accepted, and others I did not. Most were inspiring and helpful, and occasionally, they weren’t a perfect fit.
But only recently, I realized that I coach myself every day. There are dreams I aspire to, goals I want to reach, things and practices I want to achieve and maintain that I think are good for me, situations and moods out of which I want to pull myself out and, instead of feeling lost help myself find my base, my core, and my true self. After a quick research, I found books on self-coaching. Then I remembered that I read somewhere about self-leadership and self-parenting, too. And I once wrote an article on self-partnership.
We all lead, coach, parent, and partner ourselves—moment after moment, day after day, year after year—but we usually don’t do it kindly.
We don’t do it as we parent our children, as our favorite coaches and leaders coach and lead us, or as we want and try to support our partners. When we think of leading, coaching, parenting, and partnering with others, or when we think of others leading, coaching, parenting, and being partners with us, we agree that these practices must be kind, joyful, and compassionate.
But we rarely do so for ourselves, often berating ourselves for our shortcomings. We would never want to allow others to treat us that way. So, how can we lead, coach, parent, and partner ourselves kindly and joyfully without judging for not doing it already and berating ourselves for being poor leaders, coaches, parents, and partners for ourselves?
While contemplating this, I realized what self-gamification — my gameful and playful approach to life and self-help, which I have been practicing for over a decade now — is.
Self-gamification is, in its core, gameful (or playful, or gamified) self-leadership, self-coaching, self-parenting, and self-partnership.
You might wonder why I explicitly mention “self-leadership,” “self-coaching,” “self-parenting,” and “self-partnership” instead of just “self-help.”
Paradoxically, “self-help” is both a too-narrow and too-broad term to define the above four.
It is too narrow because self-help is often attached to doing something specific or overcoming a concrete challenge. You will find tips, tricks, books, articles, and videos on repairing something yourself, learning cooking, dancing, or developing a habit. These specific focuses of self-help are too narrow to describe what leading, coaching, parenting, and partnering ourselves are.
It is also too broad because self-help refers to many other things, as well, like self-love, self-care, self-compassion, self-empathy, and many others. Self-leadership, self-coaching, self-parenting, and self-partnership relate to them, too, and self-gamification can certainly be used for self-help and life as a whole.
We turn to leaders to remind us to focus on our goals, cheerleaders to encourage us to keep going, coaches to help us fine-tune our process toward those goals without overwhelming ourselves, and our parents to remind us that we belong, remind us what is good for us, celebrate our successes, and comfort us when we feel low. We turn to our partners for advice, support, and company in our endeavors. The roles of leaders, coaches, parents, and partners often overlap. Parents are leaders in their families; leaders and coaches often need to parent the people they lead and coach; partners often show the skills of leaders, coaches, and parents when offering their friendship, empathy, compassion, advice, and support.
When we are in situations or times in our lives when we can’t be in direct contact with those inspiring persons in our lives, we should be there for ourselves to lead, coach, parent, and partner ourselves in the best ways possible. That leads to the following conclusion:
Self-leadership, self-coaching, self-parenting, and self-partnership are the four cornerstones of self-help.
They form a solid framework and can address specific and global self-help aspects mentioned above.
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