Can You Coach Yourself?

I am often asked ‘can you coach yourself?’ and there is certainly much debate around this subject. 

Solo Build It!

Firstly it depends on your definition of coaching and how you would expect a coach to help you. If coaching is all about helping you move forward in your life, whether it is in your career or personal life then there are certainly things you can do yourself, with the help of a wide variety of personal development resources available.

For instance I am constantly setting myself goals, reading books, listen to CD’s, going to talks and taking part in discussion groups which will help me to open my mind, gain fresh perspectives and take away new ideas to help me work on issues and help me grow and no doubt you find yourself doing many of these yourself.

You can also ask yourself questions (see self coaching questions) which will help you to ask questions you may not have asked yourself, or answered before.

But there is so much more that a good coach should be able to help you with that may not be possible on your own:

  • A good coach should be able to help you to gain clarity of thought, defining and separating out the real issues.
  • A coach should be expert at listening and in doing so will be able to know what questions to ask you to really help you and also listen for and challenge inconsistencies
  • Another important role may be to hold you accountable for your actions – how often do you have good intentions but fail to carry them out?
  • They can play a hugely supportive role, being there to listen with total impartiality, and without judgement or opinions, something that even the best intentioned friends and relations find difficult to do
  • And since they are not you, will ask you those questions that you hadn’t thought about or hadn’t dared ask yourself before.

So to answer the question ‘can you coach yourself?’ the short answer is ‘yes, up to a point but an external coach can really accelerate your development and help you achieve so much more.’

See Also:-

Personal Development Articles
 Personal Development Exercises
 Lifetime Goals Exercise
 Implicit Explicit Formal Informal Coaching

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