A coach gives you insight, guidance, tips and support to creating and navigating a successful career and life. But what if you can’t afford a coach? Here are some tips to coaching yourself to success.
- Know what you want. Even a coach can’t help you if you’re not clear on your goals. Do you want to advance your career or change careers? Do you want to move out of a job and into self-employment? Knowing what you want is the first step toward success.
- Plot a path to get there. Every journey begins with a starting point and goal destination, but the path between the two isn’t set until you plot it. In this step, you determine the actions you need to take and the results that need to happen to move toward you goal.
- Play devil’s advocate. One of the greatest gifts a coach can give you is the ability to challenge your ideas and beliefs. Without a coach, you need to be the one to question the decisions you’re making. As you plot your path, ask yourself if each action is the best action. Determine if there are alternative tasks you can do and weigh which are the best to follow through on.
- Track actions and results. Coaches are also helpful at helping you evaluate your results for use in making future decisions. In order to make assessments, you need to keep track of your actions and the results they produce.
- Challenge yourself. The limits to what you can achieve are usually set by you, not by an external source. Coaches are helpful in pushing you to set higher goals and achieve more than you might think possible. Without a coach, you need to be the one pushing to strive for more. It also means you need to recognize when you’re limiting yourself. The easiest way to do this is to pay attention to excuses you make for not trying to do more.
