You Need a Coach B*tch
In this weekly podcast, Certifed Coach Instructor Chris Hale keeps it real and sassy to help you claim your own authority and put the biggest, brightest, most unapologetic version of yourself out into the world.
You Need a Coach B*tch
The Power of Self-Coaching and Personal Inquiry
Have you ever considered that the right question might just be the key to unlocking your potential? Journey with me as we harness the art of inquiry to change the quality of our thoughts and emotions. For anyone struggling with overthinking, I share strategies that are both gentle and effective in reshaping your mindset. Get ready to be your own coach. From personal anecdotes to actionable self-coaching techniques, this episode is an invitation to deepen your self-awareness and strengthen the most profound relationship you'll ever have: the one with yourself.
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Hey, besties, how are you doing? What is going on? I'm good, I'm recording this on a Tuesday actually, which is different for me, but I had the time and I felt inspired. So this is the day after the eclipse. Did you see the eclipse?
Speaker 1:I did see the eclipse, but I also hear that people like planned to see the eclipse for like years, like a year in advance. People were like booking hotel rooms and flights and, you know, figuring out where it was going to like reach its like full total coverage or whatever. We got like 90 something coverage here in Jersey. So we didn't get, you know, the full blackout or whatever, but we definitely got a reduction of light. We had the glasses, thanks to my mom. She's like the MVP. We were talking about it with her and my we. She was talking about the eclipse to me and she was talking to my sister and me about the eclipse and, um, neither one of us really even like knew it was happening or whatever. Um, and then like all of a, I get this package from Amazon that's addressed to her and I was like Mom, did you mean to send these here? And she's like, yeah, you have to watch the eclipse, it's gonna be amazing. So we had the glasses, we got to see it like do its thing and it was super interesting to watch. I don't really know a lot about it, but a friend of mine did post something that explained like why it's so special. Um, but I thought it was cool. Uh, yeah, so that's, you know what's what went on in the world this week? Um, I wanted to also share a little. I sent out an email to my list If you're not on my list, you can get on it Um, I sent out a little intuitive scheduling pro tip and that pro tip was you know, you know how much I love a personality test or like anything that really tells me about me.
Speaker 1:I think we've been through this before. Like I've done the Myers-Briggs. I'm an INFJ, I'm an Enneagram one, I'm a six two reflector in human design. We know this because we had Melanie on talking about it. My sun sign is Aries. I'm a Libra, rising with the Capricorn moon.
Speaker 1:Like, I love all this stuff and I love it in pieces. Like I love like bits of it, so I never go full out on any of them, but I do kind of hold on to bits and pieces of all of them really and help them and they kind of influence certain aspects of my life. But you can use these tools right, like these personality tests or whatever you want to call them, with your intuitive scheduling workbook. So if you take like your, like your favorite self assessment tool or like other criteria that you want to use right to understand, like the story that you've been telling yourself about, you Figure out those criteria, like figure out which list you're going to go with, and then ask yourself these questions so like, say, I was going to use being a reflector, like how does being a reflector impact my energy?
Speaker 1:How does being a reflector impact what I need from my environment? What about being a reflector do I need to keep in mind when making a schedule that won't burn me out? Like, for me, it's definitely that making sure I have restorative time, because being with people can be really taxing as a reflector, also as an introvert. And then the last one fill in the blank is being a reflector helps me connect more deeply to myself and works for me by. And then you fill in the blank so how does it work for you? So I think times we can focus on our, a lot of times we can focus in on the aspects of whatever it is that we want to improve on, right? So, like Aries are really stubborn and yes, yes, I am really stubborn, but I don't want to focus in on that, right, I want to focus in on, like, being independent or being fiery or, you know, like something else. Like how do those things work for me in terms of when I make my schedule? So this is all about your schedule.
Speaker 1:Use these questions to help you kind of think about what that ideal schedule looks like, right, if you go through the workbook, I have you kind of write out what your ideal day would look like, and you can do that for like your ideal week, your ideal month. But what would you need to take in account, right, while making those based on your Enneagram or your human design or your sun sign? So have fun with that. I think it'll be like illuminating to help you. I think it'll be really illuminating to kind of give it that focus, right, that lens, to see it through. And if you're ready to start like doing the scheduling thing, let's connect Schedule a consult to book in for the six week sprint of Intuitive Scheduling, to book your six week Intuitive Scheduling sprint, right. We're going to just like get it done, and we can use one of these things to help guide us along the way. If you want to focus in on that, it would be amazing.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, the topic for today. You're getting a lot today, A lot of value from. You're getting a lot today, a lot from me. I want to talk about self-coaching. What is self-coaching? What is it even? Well, it's examining your own mind yourself, without the assistance of somebody else, and there's lots of different ways that you can do this, and two of the ways that and a few of the ways that I like to do this and I like to do this a few different ways.
Speaker 1:The one way that I use most is probably just writing out questions and then look like answering them and then finding the thing that I'm most curious about in my answer and asking a question about that. So I'm basically just following an initial thought all the way to its like end result, and that really works for me. It gets my mind working and help. It helps me stay in curiosity. It's exactly what I do with clients Also. I I just ask them questions. Honestly, I ask them questions. Certain things stick out to me. I start to see certain patterns and I ask questions about those things.
Speaker 1:And, honestly, the benefit of coaching I think we've talked about this before is having somebody objectively look at your own mind. So, doing self-coaching, while it can be beneficial, you might not always get exactly what you're looking for out of it, because it's really hard to be objective with ourselves. But I do think this like asking questions and getting curious about what comes out of you in terms of answers, in terms of responses, is a really great way to do some self-coaching. I think it also helps us get a little bit more specific about the language that we use and the thoughts that we choose to think that we want to practice. So, for instance, like if I was like in a mood and I was like I'm over everything and that's how I started my self coaching Like, think about what question you would want to ask if I were to say, like I'm over everything.
Speaker 1:You might want to know, like, well, what is everything Right? Like, well, what is everything Right? Like like all things, all of life, all people, all what. Like what is the everything that you're thinking about when you're saying you're over everything? So that would kind of be the most interesting thing to me and then if it was like well, I guess I'm not over everything, I'm just really tired right now and I think that that's causing me to be a little bit short-tempered and less tolerant of things that are going on in my space. Oh, interesting, okay, what things going on in your space are you finding yourself being less tolerant with? Right? So these are the kinds of questions, right? I just get curious about that thing and go down the list and just keep asking questions until I arrive at somewhere, that until I arrive somewhere. Until I arrive, until I arrive somewhere where there is some sort of clarity or I felt an emotional shift or a shift in the quality of my thinking. So that's really what we're looking for.
Speaker 1:We're not looking to try to convince ourselves of anything in our self-coaching. So one thing that I noticed with especially a lot of coaches but even like clients who are not coaches, so I teach to self-coach wanting to force ourselves to believe things. Why, why do we want to force ourselves to believe things? Well, if you know that your beliefs are what are shaping your experience of the world, then it would make sense why you would want to intentionally be believing things that are going to improve your situation, help you at your job, help you make more money, help you be a better parent, help you in your scheduling life right. Like you, it makes sense that you would want to be able to, like, cherry pick the kinds of thoughts that are sort of habitually unconsciously coming.
Speaker 1:But it takes a long time to actually reprogram our brain, to default to something right and to create that habit of new thinking. And some of our brains are a little bit more resistant than others, especially if you're prone to rumination. Like rumination is really a really big thing for, like my particular profile of neurodivergence. So, yeah, I can get stuck in thought loops that it's really hard to get out of. And when I'm stuck in those thought loops, I'm just making them more, I'm just making them stronger, I'm just making the hold that they have a bit stronger. They're more bonded to me so that I know that if I want to shift a thought, if I want to shift into a new thought, that's going to be something that I sustain. It's going to take a lot of time and I can't just try to thought swap into something new. I have to be very, very intentional about how I get there. So I might do that by doing incremental shifts in my thinking.
Speaker 1:So if I'm looking at something like I'm looking at something like I'm terrible, this is something that is pretty common, right? If I'm looking at so something that's pretty common with scheduling, for instance, is this idea that I don't have enough time right, we all have thought this at one time or another in our lives like there's just not enough time and so I'm not going to be able to shift into something like drastically different, like I have all the time in the world, because that's not going to vibrationally feel real to me and therefore it's not going to sink in, it's not going to set right, and we're looking for thoughts that we can eventually like set and forget and put on autopilot. So if I eventually want to get to I have all the time in the world, I need to sort of like inch my way there. So I might start with it's possible, I have enough time, and that is possible because I can go. I can ask myself the question like enough time for what? And then I can write out a list of all the things that I'm looking to accomplish and then give those things times on my calendar and I might find that I don't have enough time to complete some of them in the week that I'm in, but maybe I also don't need to complete them in the week that I'm in. Maybe some things are allowed to be longer projects that are just going to be open, and I know we like to close loops, I like to not have anything kind of hanging around, but sometimes we just don't have the choice Because time is real right, like we don't have all the time in the world.
Speaker 1:There are only so many waking hours and some of those waking hours are already accounted for. So I really do have to work within the confines of the time that I have, or I have to free up some time. Right Now, when I go to a thought like it's possible I have enough time, that makes me really curious about my calendar. And then I go into my calendar and I look at places where maybe I'm wasting time. Like maybe I've spent a little bit more time on social media at a time during the day when I could have been doing something else. Maybe I spent a little bit extra time on my puzzle, or what actually really happens for me is like puzzle time is not scheduled anywhere.
Speaker 1:I just do it whenever I feel like it and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I'm doing puzzles to help stimulate my brain in a different area so that while I'm working on the puzzle, that's useful. And sometimes I'm just doing it because I want to relax, right, and it's a hobby and that's fine. But I might find myself doing it when I'm anxious, when I'm bored and I don't have anything else to do, when I'm bored and I'm telling myself I don't have anything else to do. Well, what about all those things that I say I want to accomplish? That's a perfect place to be doing some of those things.
Speaker 1:So we don't always want to believe our brain, and that's the point of self-coaching is to not believe every single thought that comes out of your head onto the page. And I do recommend self-coaching with like paper. But I mean, if you're a typer, you can also do it in your phone, if you know, if you're on the go and you're out and you need to do that. But I don't know. There's something about writing that. I think seeing it in writing on a piece of paper just makes it more real.
Speaker 1:Speaking of writing it, the next way that I like to self-coach is by using pens of different color. So you're going to ask your questions in, say, like a blue ink and you're going to answer them in pink ink, and that can just help you to kind of differentiate the roles that you're playing. You've got your coach hat and you've got your client hat, and so when we create those distinct roles it helps the coaching because you really can drop a little bit more into that curiosity, that almost skeptic right. There's like a skepticism when you're the coach, not that you don't believe your client, right, like where we are working to, um, affirm our client's experience, right, but just like a little bit skeptical of like the, the entire truth or what they're thinking the truth is. And that's what we're kind of trying to suss out when we're in the coaching session is like what's real and what's not real, what's just a thought and what is actual material stuff. That's going on in the coaching session is like what's real and what's not real, what's just a thought and what is actual material stuff that's going on in the world, because oftentimes we think our thoughts are facts and we think that they're actually like material things and they're actually just not. So we want to be really cognizant of that and this sort of taking on two different roles, with asking in one color and answering in another color, drops you into that space.
Speaker 1:And then the last way all of these are written and again I do think it's important to do it in writing is asking the question like writing out the question with your dominant hand and answering it with your less dominant hand. Now, if you're completely ambidextrous, this is not going to work for you. Maybe you need to use your foot, I don't know. But what I find is with that, when you try to do that, you'll notice that your answers are a bit more concise, because when we're the client, we'll just ramble on right. If you've ever been coached, you know like you're just rambling on and on and on and you're like how is this person in front of you actually going to be able to like extricate? Rambling on and on and on and like how is this person in front of you actually going to be able to like extricate? How is the person in front of you going to be able to extract anything to like work on from this? Because I feel like I'm just saying nonsense. But it's not true. You're not just saying nonsense, but we are oftentimes saying a lot.
Speaker 1:So writing it with your less dominant hand makes you get really clear and concise and choose the words that you put on the page really intentionally, and I think that that is so important. It's like a really big, important part that we're like thinking about a little bit, about like what the truth is and that we're making ourselves say it as plainly as possible, because I know a lot of us can get caught up in the linguistics of it all, like the language, the stories, and it's very deep and descriptive and we want to get out of. That's really what we're trying to do is get out of that deep, descriptive story that we've been holding on to and get to the things that are factual. And so once you've done one of these methods right any of them works to kind of get your thoughts out then you really want to go to like the feeling that you're having. So, picking one of the thoughts that comes out and asking yourself, like how do I feel when I think this thought? Do I like the way I feel when I think this thought? Is it a positive feeling thought or is it a negative feeling thought? And just get really curious about the feeling that comes up out of that way of thinking or that specific sentence in your brain, and then you're going to look at, like, when you're feeling that way, what kinds of things do you tend to do? Do you tend to do positive things, or do you tend to do like things that you might see as negative, or like that you don't want to be doing? And that's going to give you a lot of awareness for, like what the thinking that you're doing on a regular basis, like what that's creating for you in your life. So when I see what I'm doing, it's very clear what results I get, like what I create for my actions. Like, for instance, if I want to create more connection in my life but I'm thinking that I don't have any friends, then I'm not likely to reach out to anybody to create connection. You see what I mean. So I actually end up creating a disconnect between me and the people in my lives. I actually end up creating a disconnect between me and the people in my life because I'm believing that they're not there right. Like, if I don't believe that they're there, then how can I connect with them? So that's just like one example of how we might be creating a result in our life. That is unintentional, right.
Speaker 1:And when you say you don't have any friends, like if I were to say that, like what would I mean by that? And that's why we get curious about it? Like I don't have any friends, like where? Like in the entire world For me, if I, if I, I know, if I was saying like I don't have any friends, what I would probably mean is that I don't really have local friends. I have a lot of local acquaintances and people whose company I do enjoy, but I haven't found anybody that you know is sort of akin to my besties that are all over the world now, or one of my really good friends who does live in the city. But like we just have such conflicting schedules, it's really hard to like meet up and it's really only special occasions at this point. So you know, that's probably what I would be meaning by that and I would probably be feeling lonely.
Speaker 1:And when I'm feeling lonely I isolate, right. Lonely doesn't make us reach out, or at least it doesn't make me reach out. Maybe lonely makes you reach out, but definitely it doesn't work for me. I have to be feeling energized and connected and even courageous sometimes to reach out to people for that bid for connection, and so I would need a like, a completely different way of thinking. I can't be thinking I don't have friends, regardless if it's like around the world or in my backyard or next door, right, that kind of thinking isn't going to produce connection because, again, even if I because, again, thinking I don't have any friends doesn't necessarily have me reaching out to the friends that I have all over the world either. Right, like it's just, it creates that isolation in a while. Who lives across the country or in Europe or wherever? But that would create connection rather than isolation. So that's it.
Speaker 1:That's self-coaching. You can get as involved as you want to with it. The main point is that you're remaining neutral with yourself about what comes out of you, right, like what you see on the page. We don't want to have big feels about. We're just being open with ourselves to uncover what might be going on subconsciously, that we're that's running the show that we weren't aware of. Be curious, make it fun and try it out. Let me know how it goes.
Speaker 1:I would love to know how your self-coaching turns out, what you bring up, what's interesting for you, what you're surprised by. I know for me whether I'm being coached by someone else or doing my own self-coaching. I'm always really surprised about what comes out of me. I'm like, oh, I didn't know, I was thinking that and it's really fun to kind of like get to know myself a little bit better. And that is one thing you can really do with your self-coaching is increase, is strengthen the relationship that you have with yourself, because that is one of the most important relationships, if not the most important relationship, that we're ever going to have in our entire lives. All right, my friends, I hope that you enjoyed this, and if you already do self-coaching, I would love to hear what your method is. So reach out to me. You can email me at chris, at theonlychrishalecom, or slide into my DMs on Instagram or even TikTok. I'm on TikTok or Facebook I'm on the Facebook too. I'm on them all. And, as always, if you're enjoying the content here, please rate and review. No-transcript.