I coach people and receive coaching from others. I also have an imaginary coach called Veronica. She looks like this.
Just kidding. Well kind of.
She’s actually the self-talk in my head.
I was inspired by the book Be your own mentor by Shelia Wellington to be my own coach. It reminded me that you don’t need to wait to be helped by someone else, you can help yourself. You can use the power of positive self-talk to help you to sort out how you think and feel about a situation or goal, and to identify what’s holding you back from moving forward.
Self talk: Does it help or hurt us?
Now, there’s a problem with Veronica. She can be invaluable or destructive depending on her mood. I pay attention to what she’s saying to me and pull her up when she has an unhelpful tone to remind her that I need positive support and encouragement.
In this blog I want to chat about how I can train her to help me, and by doing this, to help you. As Jessica Abel says in her book, Growing Gills: How to find creative focus when you’re drowning in your daily life, you should
speak kindly to yourself in the third person because when you do this you distance yourself from yourself.
Before I describe Veronica’s value, it’s useful to revisit what a coach does.
What does a coach do?
There are different types of coaches. At one end of the spectrum, a coach can say nothing, listening while you speak, perhaps nodding while you describe all the ideas or concerns bouncing around in your head. It’s like she’s on mute in a zoom call – and there’s no way she’ll interrupt your train of thought. You as the one being coached, get the value from the unloading process.
At the opposite end the coach is more an advisor, issuing specific instructions on next steps you can take once you have described the problem.
In the middle of the range, a coach will ask you questions to help you to :
- Clarify your objectives for a positive outcome
- Describe your current situation,
- Review options for moving forward and
- Develop a plan of action.
Veronica can help with quite a few of these activities and will in all likelihood, encourage you to write the responses in a journal. This is a part of her sneaky trick to encourage deeper reflection.
Here are questions Veronica asked me about 2020 and 2021. These questions have been drawn from the questions on Ponderfy cards developed by Lena Ross.
It’s curious that one of the first questions I stumbled across was,
Who is my dream mentor and what would they say to me?
Got me thinking about all the attributes and values I want to imbue on Veronica.
Here are some of the other questions on the cards that gave me context when I was reflecting on my 2020 achievements.
Other questions promoting reflection
- How do I define success and how do I celebrate it?
- What was the moment or moments that I was most proud of?
- Is there something I regret not saying or doing?
- What’s getting in the way of doing something I want to do?
I’d encourage you to write your responses down and revisit them on say a monthly basis.
So Veronica can be helpful – but there’s many things she can’t do.
What can’t an imaginary coach do ?
For example …
Veronica can’t place a comforting arm around your shoulder.
They can’t provide different advice to that which you are capable of identifying yourself.
What other things would you add to the list?
So the wrap…
Helping you to work with your Veronica
- Become more self-aware. If you are engaging in negative self-talk, consciously quiet down the mean voice in your head.
- Swap roles and recognised the value in talking to yourself in the third person
- Spend more time identifying what success looks like for you and what are the conditions for you to be happy.
- Pay more attention to how you feel and think
References
Be your own mentor by Sheila Wellington
Growing Gills: How to find creative focus when you’re drowning in the daily life