Un-coachable?
I just got certified as a Tiny Habits Certified Coach. It is a coaching certification by Tiny Habits Academy founded by BJ Fogg, PhD, Behavior Scientist at Stanford University. BJ is also the author of the book “Tiny Habits”. If you are interested in hacking habits, you should check it out. I’ll explain why I became a certifid coach shortly. Howevr, first let’s talk about coaching in general.
If you asked me about coaching a few years ago, I would say “meh”. Don’t get me wrong. I love learning and improving myself. However, my attitude towards coaching was with a bit of prejudice.
In order to decipher this prejudice, we should probably go down the memory lane. Way down. I come from a single parent family in Uzbekistan which struggled to put food on the table for most of the days.
So I had to do things on my own. I didn’t have money to hire someone to get myself out of poverty. Besides, I assumed most of what they talk is “fluff”.
So what changed?
30 years, I wasn’t not fighting for my survival any longer. I was earning more than enough to support my family, thanks to God. Yet some prejudice will stick with you for a long time.
What changed is this. I was inspired by my friend Tarek Fahim who was walking 10k steps every day. I said to myself: “If Tarek can do, so can I”. So I started walking every day with my son while we were playing Pokemon Go. After a while, my son was not interested in the game, so I had to come up with another reason to keep walking.
It was then I discovered Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.
The key is to start the habit so tiny that it is almost effortless to start doing this. For example, flossing only one tooth or doing one pushup after you wake up.
In a nutshell, a Behaviour (habit) happens when Motivation, Ability and Trigger (prompt) are connected above Action Line.
Let me explain. There are things for me that I am highly motivated for. For example, my kids. On Motivation, they score high.
I will do my best for them as a father. Let’s say if my daughter ask me to play with her for 5 mins, so it is high likely going to happen since it is easy to do.
However, if she asks me to read the whole book at one sitting which might take 4 hours, I may not be able to do it. Since it is hard to do. You get the point.
If we go back to my walking habit, I had to rediscover my motivation for walking. It was my health. Most of us know what is healthy and what is not. Yet it doesn’t lead us to create healthy habits. So what is going on here?
The secret is going deep on motivation and ideally linking it to other habits you already enjoy doing. For me, it was listening to audio books and podcasts while I walk. Once I had that link, the rest was easy.
Today I walk 10k steps every day. It is effortless. It is me time where I get to think and medidate. It is also time for me to learn on the go and grow.
Walking 10k steps a day is my core habit. Once I had this, I started building smaller habits around it. It worked for me and it keeps working. So, I was sold on the idea.
While Tiny Habits started as a free 5 day course, after I saw the changes in myself, I knew I had to learn more and master this. So I bought BJ’s book and read cover to cover in no time. I learnt more about habit hacking from the book.
I found out he was offering coaching as well. At first, I was very skeptical due to my prejudice to coaching in general as you may remember. But after getting to know him better and his personality, I decided to give it a shot.
Even though, I decided to go for Tiny Habits Academy Coaching Certification to master my habit hacking skills, during my certification process, I got to know the other coaches and BJ as well as his team even closer.
I saw how they were helping people from all walks of life with creating good habits and getting rid of bad ones. It slowly changed my perception about coaching day by day.
I realized if I truly want to master habits, I need to share and teach it. So, I decided to become a coach and help people create habits.
Thank you for reading my story. Let me know what you think in comments.
By the way, do you have a habit you really wanted to establish in your daily routine? If so, I am offering one free discovery session.
Click here to book a free discovery session on my calendar:
