How to Be Your Own Life Coach: 4 Simple Steps
Step 1: Spend time honestly assessing your strengths and weaknesses.
What are you good at? What would you like to be better at? To change something about yourself, you need to identify your problem areas so you can come up with a strategy to fix them. So answer these powerful questions honestly and openly: What would your friends and family say are your top 3 strengths? What about your top 3 weaknesses? How are your relationships with others? What are your biggest fears? You’ll use this information later.
Step 2: Identify your goals.
Okay, now you know what you’re good at and what you’re not so good at. So what do you do with that information? That answer is that you set goals to improve upon both your strengths and weaknesses. You want to keep getting better at the stuff you’re already good at, while simultaneously addressing areas of growth. Here’s how you do it. Answer these questions (make sure you write them down):
What do you love to do? What are the things you’re most passionate about? What are the things you despise doing?
These questions will help you explore and develop your talents. Once you have the answers, use them to help you set goals. Research shows that goals are easier to reach if they’re specific and not too numerous. So start small. Let’s say your goal is to lose weight. How much do you want to lose overall? If it’s 20 pounds, what is a realistic monthly goal? Don’t expect to lose 10 pounds every month. 1-2 pounds is more achievable. Write it down:
This year: I will lose 20 pounds Each month: I will lose about 2 pounds This week: I will lose half a pound
Notice how these goals are framed. Don’t say, “I want to…”. Say “I will…”. It’s an important psychological distinction.
Step 3: Record your progress.
So now you have your goals figured out. The next step is to start a journal. Write down your goals, and record the actions you take each day to get you closer to your goals. Commit to making one small change every week and keep building from there. For example, one week you can cut out soda. The next week you can cut out all sugary beverages. It takes between 1 and 6 months to make a new behavior stick, so keep at it and it will become a habit before you know it.
Step 4: Assess your results and tweak your approach.
The final step is to assess and test how you’re doing every month. Ask yourself: what’s working? What’s not? What are some different approaches I can try? For example, if you have trouble progressing and achieving your monthly goals, try using online behavior change tools like Stickk, a cool website that allows you to make health commitments and be held accountable for achieving them. Finally, if there’s one thing you need to understand about how to be your own life coach, it’s this: your mindset will determine your success or failure. Silence negative thoughts and frame everything in the positive (i.e., “I am”, “I will,” or “I can”). Be completely committed and you will succeed. Tell everyone you know about the behaviors you want to change. Not letting people down is a huge motivator to stick with your goals. And don’t be afraid to ask for help, especially from people in your group of friends who have been there and done that. Remember, at the end of the day, the only person standing in the way of you achieving your dreams is you.
