Coaching Yourself & Others Series - Take Five

Roll your sleeves up and go to work on moving down the path of getting what you want.  Now that you have reviewed critical information about goal setting, you can dial back to your wants and select your top five.  Spend time asking yourself a few hard questions about the top five wants you are prepared to shape into goals. 

Do you truly desire this goal?  Are you on fire about this goal?

Can you visualize yourself accomplishing this goal?  Once you can see it, can you feel it? 

How will your life be better when you make this goal a reality?

What obstacles do you foresee?

What will you need to learn, need to do in order to reach this goal?

Who will you look to for support?

“Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.”

Viktor Frankl

Next, determine where the goal fits.  What section of your notebook should the goal come to life? You might see it impacting more than one section or even all of them but still place your goal in the one section you think is the best fit.  Remember, these are just the first of many more to come so expect some sections might be empty on your first five. 

Write out one goal to a page, leaving 10 blank pages behind the goal page for you to work out your strategies for accomplishing the goal.  Include your answers to the above questions for each goal in your notebook.

Coaching yourself is the pathway to happiness and personal satisfaction.  Coaching revolves around a combination of self-evaluation, personal responsibility, accountability and self-correction.  It is a vital tool in that it will help your success ratio on the job and in your cherished or necessary relationships.  As you learn to coach yourself you will have the opportunity to coach others.  As the teacher you will be the student.

“…obviously you can’t transmit something you haven’t got.”

                                                                              Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, page 164

 

Still learning,

Honey

Coaching Yourself & Others Series – Goal Setting

Goals are dreams in writing with a deadline!

If you don’t know what you want, what direction to take, when you plan to get started and when you plan to get there you could end up with regrets and disappointment about not getting anywhere.

Get busy in your spiral notebook looking over your wants and making your list of goals.  Don’t leave any wants out, don’t discount one thing you want to make better or go for or wish you could achieve.  You can weed out and prioritize later.

The intention of goal setting is to place the focus on results. 

A key success tip in goal setting is the powerful SMART tool.  There are many variations of this dynamic mnemonic:

S             Specific (Spelled out or Significant)

M            Measurable (Meaningful)

A             Attainable (Action-Oriented or Achievable)

R             Relevant (Realistic or Rewarding)

T             Time-bound (Trackable)

You get more than one shot at writing out a goal, so plan on several drafts as you work toward learning how to coach yourself and others.    Keep this tip sheet handy as you craft your goals.

Pick up your pen – Writing out your goals will help to crystallize your thinking and move you from wishing and hoping to truly shaping up a formidable goal.

Go for precision – Spell out precise, short, to the point goals.  Putting dates, times, and amounts so you can measure results. 

Set realistic goals – Remember, these are your goals.  Others in your life will hand you goals (your employer, society, etc.).  Your own goals need to be achievable.  Be cautious to not set goals that are too difficult.  As you investigate what obstacles might need to be considered and what skill sets are required you may need to tweak your goals.

Set goals that are dependent on you and your performance – Examine your goals to be certain you have as much control as possible on reaching the goal. 

Express the goal in a positive framework – State the goal positively.  “Write in my journal 15 minutes five days a week” is precise, action-oriented, meets the criteria that you are in charge and is worded in a positive manner.  “Stop procrastinating about writing in my journal” is the polar opposite and ineffective.

Sift out the goal – This is challenging.  Ask yourself is this goal a true reflection of my values?  Who besides myself will benefit from me accomplishing this?  These are hard questions for goals to get past.  You will find the greatest satisfaction from working on and accomplishing goals that sync well with what matters most to you.  You will find a groundswell of support when what you focus your time, energy and resources on is beneficial to others.

More to come on Coaching Yourself & Others so stay in the loop!  Sign up for the blog so you don’t miss any segment of the series!  Sign up for our newsletter, too.  It’s free and full of tidbits that will help your personal and professional development.

Still learning,

Honey

Coaching Yourself & Others - It's a Process

You’ve dedicated a spiral notebook with five sections to this endeavor called, Coaching Choices. 

Step 1 Wanting

Coaching yourself begins with identifying what you want to have in your life, keep in your life, work for in your life, and discovering what you have that needs attention and what you might need to give up.  You will be adding to your wants and adjusting your wants so the first section is for your ongoing work about what you want.

Utilize the other four sections of your notebook to create four separate categories.  Write on the section dividers the subject headings.  Here are categories you can consider:  

Relationship Matters

            Family

            Friends

            Work

            Others

Health and Welfare

Spiritual

Work

Financial

Fun, Fears and Feats

            Pleasure

            Learning

            Avoiding

            Achievements

Planning

            Prioritizing

Overcoming obstacles and objections

            Boundaries

Next, select your first set of ten “wants” you are ready to go to work on and stop there.  Each of the ten will need to be shaped into a goal. 

Coaching Choices continues with what you need to know about goal setting.  This is a process that can change your life, improve your personal and professional effectiveness and ramp up the quality of your relationships.  Are you willing to engage in the process?

Goal setting is coming up next…

Still learning,


Honey

Coaching Yourself & Others - The Beginning

Having a personal development coach was one of the best investments I ever made of my time and money. For over three years, several times a month, my coach taught me key factors to put to use in all kinds of situations.  I had someone encouraging me, gently confronting me and teaching me the importance of planning, evaluating and progress.

I think coaching done well is life enhancing, if not life altering.  Today I coach myself and others.  I work passionately at teaching others how to coach themselves.  I've learned first hand you can coach yourself. It's not magic. It's not quick. It works. It helps create an awakening, accountability, compassion and the importance of self-evaluation.

Coaching Choices is a method I've developed and utilize myself. The method incorporates the teachings of William Glasser, MD who authored a theory on motivation called "Choice Theory."

Here is the beginning of the first of 5 steps to take to get Coaching Choices working for you:

Step 1. Wanting

This step is about learning what you want, what you want to have happen. Purchase a spiral notebook with five sections. The first section is about Wanting. List everything you want to have happen. Look at what you wish was different, look at what you have you want to keep, look at how you want to be perceived. Write all that down. Focus on your Wanting. Dig for what you've wished was different, examine what you frustrate over and about.  Ask yourself, "what have I wanted for a long time? What have I put off wanting?" Write everything down on your mind that comes up.  No rush, but do it.  Maybe do this for ten days.

Review what you've written. Maybe you have a relationship in jeopardy, maybe you want to quit smoking, maybe you want to go back to school or obtain a promotion. Maybe you want to quit worrying, maybe you want to lose weight or change jobs.

When you think you've listed your hopes, dreams, wants, frustrations, fears and ambitions, it's time prioritize what you want. Now create your Want list and begin to number them by priority, immediacy, need and your desire to achieve them. Your list could also include important facets of your life that you think are going well and that you want to keep doing well.

Coaching yourself begins with identifying what you want to have in your life, keep in your life, work for in your life, and discovering what you have that needs attention and what you might need to give up.

Coaching Choices continues...tune in to tomorrow's blog as we work on helping you get what you want through coaching yourself.

Still learning,


Honey

Gadgets Really Get Me

Are you like me, do you have a Kindle on your Smart Phone, a Sony Reader, the iPod Shuffle, the iPod Nano?  Did I mention two laptops?  So when you get ready to leave town you can't decide how many devices are coming with you?  Do you have a drawer you call the graveyard where old cell phones and outdated software are buried?  Do you have a couple of old PCs and a few printers tucked away in the garage?  How about all those phone charger cords?  Maybe I can string them around the Christmas tree and hang CDs spray painted with glitter on them.  

Next up, where am I supposed to be?  I have a calendar on my computer, on my website, on my phone and I still won't give up my Franklin Planner.  I am not sure what is synced to what, but am pretty sure I am out of sync with all that needs to be synced. On my cell phone I have apps that are constantly begging to be updated and most of my applications on my PC send me pop-up messages regarding updates routinely.  I see a homeless person and I question if I can afford to spare a dollar and yet I frequently make donations to iTunes.

I don't tell everyone but I don't want to give up my original PDA; my all-time favorite, the Palm Pilot. It was my first, we are very bonded.  Gadgets here, gadgets there, gadgets, gadgets everywhere.

I have wireless headsets to keep up with and have learned they don't survive the washer and dryer.  I feel the call of the newest iPad and the Kindle Fire.  QuickBooks, Quicken and others like them threaten me "update now, we no longer support your version."  I feel rejected and foolish.  I clip coupons to save 50 cents on laundry detergent and consider paying over $500 for the latest gadget.  What's wrong with this picture?

Amazon knows more about me personally and what I am interested in than most of my friends.  Pulling on my need to fit in by telling me all the time that people that bought what you bought also bought this and that.  Keeping up is expensive.

While I set here worrying about aging all my equipment and the programs that run on them are consider old after a year!  Software and hardware wear me out.  I thought all this technology was going to make my life easier.  Hello?  I am stressed out over having too much, not enough and staying updated!  I am going to have to end this blog and go online and download a stress management app, I hope it's not outdated when I remember to use it.

Still learning,

Honey