If you were your own coach, what advice would you give yourself right now? That is the ultimate self-coaching question, but it comes with a little proviso.
A famous person once accused us of being able to “see the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log in our own eye”. He was right. We simply cannot see ourselves objectively.
Think about it: can an eye see itself? Can a sound hear itself? (the answer is ‘no’, btw. I have a blog post on this subject, if you’re interested) You see where this is going, right? We simply cannot perceive ourselves objectively, therefore any advice we give ourselves, as our own coach, will be biased, at best.
So what do we do? Give up our dreams of becoming self-coach of the millennium? No! Do not despair, there’s a way around it. You simply imagine someone else in the same situation as you. Give them your age, your circumstances, your worldview, but give them a totally different face. Now coach this person.
I can almost guarantee that the advice you give them would be one you’ll be reluctant to take yourself. We always have the answers to our woes but because we don’t like these answers we subconsciously block them out.
So be careful, the ultimate coaching question is actually a serious self-enquiry that has a potential to open a can of worms you may not want to deal with. Unless of course you understand that you’d be worse off keeping it inside, in which case here’s a can opener for you: the Get To Know Your Authentic Self online workshop.