Self-Coaching—Having a meeting with oneself.
I’m currently listening to a wonderful CD book, “100 Ways to Motivate Others” by Steve Chandler. Steve shares about a sales professional that he is currently coaching who asks herself a few questions each morning, “If I were coaching me, what would I advice myself to do right now? What creative service oriented beneficial action could I take that my client would be grateful in the end? What action would bring me the highest return to me? If I were my customer or prospect, what would I want me to do?
It would be nice to have a coach in your front pocket that you could pull out anytime to bounce ideas off of. Since that’s unrealistic, a habit worth implementing is taking time daily and self-coach yourself in areas of your business and life that you would like to improve on. I keep a success journal with me at all times. It allows me to write throughout the day; the victories, challenges, and ideas that I would like to implement. When I have my daily self-coach time, it allows me to set new goals and open up new possibilities. It helps me identify challenges that I am currently facing and actions to overcome them. It allows me to discover important things that might otherwise remain hidden to me or get in the way. And, it uncovers my limiting beliefs that may sabotage my success. I do my self-coaching session every morning before I start my day. Here are four questions that I have found helpful in my daily self-coaching sessions.
1. What do I want to accomplish today? Write out a clear vision for what you are hoping to accomplish for that day; the actions, tasks, and the top three “must do’s” that will impact your day, week and possibly your month. An average person who develops the habit of setting clear priorities and getting important tasks completed quickly will run circles around a genius who talks a lot and makes wonderful plans, but gets very little done.
2. What frog do I need to eat first? In his simple yet powerful book, “Eat That Frog!”, Brian Tracy shares the wisdom of unstoppable success with us. His formula is one you are familiar with:
Be a hundred percent clear about your goals—the things you care most deeply about accomplishing.
Write them down—only about three percent of adults have written goals and they accomplish five to ten times as much as their equally educated and talented peers who don’t bother to write their goals.
1. Set timelines—if you don’t they are still just ideas.
2. Make a plan with prioritized actions—this prevents indecision and wasting time later.
3. Take action—do something right now, today. Actions can be adjusted as you go along, but, if you don’t start, your plan is just a wish list.
We all know that the two biggest culprits contributing to procrastination are lack of clarity and lack of focus . Take ten minutes daily to clarify and focus on what needs to be done.
Now that you have your plan, the way to ensure that it happens is to identify the biggest, ugliest frog you have to eat today (calling your most important prospect, writing an article for your local business chronicle, analyzing your marketing efforts in terms of ROI), and doing it. If it can’t be done in one chunk of time, chunk it down and do the first “doable” chunk.
3. What actions, talents, and areas of my life am I falling short in? Doing a daily self analysis will create honest awareness of habits that need to be broken or created.
4. What areas of my life plan needs improvement? My life plan is the filter I use in all decisions. In order, for me to stay focused on the “Big Rocks” in my life, I need to review my plan at least weekly or I will lose direction in the most important areas of my life.
Are you prepared to ask yourself these tough questions and not shrink from answering them? Set a time frame daily for your self-coaching session. In fact, take out your day timer or whatever tool you use and put it on the calendar now! The objective of self-coaching is to positively unpack a problem in private with the aim of doing something about it. At the end of the timeframe commit to your action plan and don’t waver till you accomplish your goal.
I wish you great success this week!!
Tom Ninness is the Vice President/Regional Production Manager for Cherry Creek Mortgage in Denver, CO. He is also the President of Summit Champions, Inc. and creator of the “The 90 Day Journey to Your Sales Success”, a powerful 90 day action plan for the sales professional. To learn more about The Journey and Summit Champions, go to: www.summitchampions.com or contact Tom at
[email protected] Office: 303-840-0753.
