New Year’s coaching course: Understand yourself better

Gaining some insight into what you do and why you do it provides the opportunity to interrupt these patterns this time, and put strategies in place to help you get a different and better result.

• Assess the wording of your goals to make sure they are positive. Setting a goal around ‘not being overweight’, ‘finding a job where your talents aren’t wasted’, or creating a relationship where someone doesn’t ‘take you for granted’ puts the emphasis and energy on what you don’t want. Instead, focus on the things you do want so that you put your time and energy into the true underlying goal.

• Ensure your goals are not ‘away from’ goals which are those that you want to achieve in order to get away from something, i.e. being on a diet so that you are no longer over weight. You are only motivated for as long as you have the problem. The minute you start the lose weight the motivation disappears and you end up back to square one. Instead, choose goals that move you towards what you want and that you can build on. so that each success spurs you onto greater things.

• Scrutinise the goals you’ve set for yourself. Sometimes our goals beat us before we even begin. When we set what seems to be an unachievable or unrealistic goal it quickly leads to self-sabotage or lack of motivation so scale down any that seem too intimidating and repackage them so they no longer scare you.

• Uncover your Self-limiting Beliefs. If you have goals that you are consistently not achieving then check that your beliefs in that area of your life are not holding you back. So if you are not managing to get fit, then ask yourself why and write down the answer. Keep asking until you come up with a statement about yourself you believe to be true. For example, ‘I am lazy.’ Now it’s time to discard your limiting beliefs so write down a counter statement to the negative belief. For example: ‘I get things done.’ What would change in your life if you truly started to believe that about yourself? Entertain the thought and conjure up all those times in the past when you have proved it to be true.

• Write a relationship values list and put down all the positive traits and characteristics that are important to you in a relationship. In the next column write down all the positive characteristics you see yourself as possessing. Rate how you match up against your own list, and set about making some changes if you discover you are asking for things that you don’t possess.