Be Your Own Life Coach!– Kieran Fitzpatrick –ADHP FIAEBP
So the summer is coming to an end and the evenings are drawing in. And with the darker days and evenings people often and naturally feel less energetic and optimistic and sometimes begin to find it difficult to keep up activities that they were involved in during the summer.
But a good way of keeping at something and actually achieving whatever goals you have set, is to do it with somebody else. I like to send this reminder this time of year.
With the evenings still relatively bright you will see lots of pairs of people out walking, (or the more energetic ones jogging). The obvious reason for this is that it is more social, less boring and passes the time quicker to have somebody with you. To have a chat on the way and to maybe share a common interest.
But what is often a more important factor, especially from the point of view of achieving something, is that the other person encourages, expects, urges or shames you into doing it! Especially at times when you don’t really feel like it and you definitely wouldn’t have done it if they weren’t expecting you to.
This works very well for people doing sports together, walking, jogging, or going to the gym for example. If you have an arrangement to meet, it is harder to cry off. This usually benefits both partners, as everybody has a day when they are not in the humour.
This same idea applies also to almost everything. You could do the same thing with classes, courses, weight watchers, lessons or even business ideas.
For example, if you were to look into something new and set goals or targets for yourself, it would be useful to find someone else with the same interest and similar goals and targets. You need not work together, but you could “buddy up” to meet regularly, share ideas and report on your progress. This way, you can pool ideas and also have a regular set of targets to have each step done by the next meeting.
Plus, you have the encouragement of the pleasure of being able to report success to your “buddy”. Plus the reward and satisfaction of ongoing progress. Or, if this works for you, the motivation of wanting to avoid the embarrassment of not having completed what you said you’d have done by the next meeting!!
It is also very satisfying and fulfilling to see your “buddy” also progress and succeed with your support and help.
Some people pay a personal trainer or life coach to do this. To simply turn up every week and join them in their exercise, to ask them if they have done what they said they would do by that date, or to ask them what they are going to do between now and the next meeting!
What we are about here is being your own coach. And now we are looking outside of ourselves and seeing ways of using other people’s energy and enthusiasm to add to our own. Especially at times when we need that little bit extra, perhaps the times when we would give up if we were just doing it on our own.
So go find a buddy and get going again now!
Kieran Fitzpatrick ADHP FIAEBP (Member of The International Association of Evidence Based Psychotherapy) is a fully qualified Clinical Hypnotherapist, NLP Practitioner and Personal Coach. His practices is in Dublin , e-mail: kieran@kieranfitzpatrick.com or see www.kieranfitzpatrick.com
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