Ep #143: Self-Coaching: Everything You Need to Know

Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills, episode 143. To really compete in the coaching industry, you have to be great at coaching. That’s why every week, I will be answering your questions, sharing my stories, and offering tips and advice so you can be the best at what you do. Let’s get to work.

Hello, coach. I am so happy you’re here today. I want to record a short episode today about something that I haven’t really talked much about on this podcast. I’m excited to do it. I was talking to a friend about this the other day and I was just sharing something that I thought was obvious, and she said, what? You have to tell people about this.

So it has inspired a whole episode. So here we are. Today we’re going to talk about self-coaching. I’m going to tell you what I use, like why I think we should use self-coaching, how I think you should not use self-coaching, and then I’m going to give you some really specific examples of how I coach myself and kind of what the difference is between coaching myself and then taking something to someone else, to another coach to get coaching on. All right?

So for some of you that are listening, depending on where you learned how to coach or if you have certain certifications or don’t, you may know a lot about self-coaching or you may not. For those of you that are trained in schools or in certifications where they teach this, you might be really surprised to learn that some coaching schools, some coaching certifications actually don’t teach self-coaching.

It is not something that is an industry standard. It is taught very specifically in certain places. Not just one place, in many places, but just not in all of the industry. So, no matter which side of that you’re on, hopefully you’re going to learn something today because apparently I have an approach to self-coaching that is different than a lot of coaches. So I’m going to share it with you today.

So the first thing is I want to talk about why I would choose to coach myself and what the reasons would be. And this is also going to lead into some future episodes that I’m going to do about just coaching in general. But today specifically talking about self-coaching, the reasons I coach myself are to, just in general, create awareness, right? Create awareness around something, whether it’s how I’m feeling, my thoughts, results I’m creating, any of that, right? Like any self-awareness.

The second thing is to understand the results that I’ve already created. So I might look at, and I’ll go into a lot more details, but I might look at why did I create these results? How do I think I created these results? Whether I think the results are negative or positive, it doesn’t really matter, it’s very useful to look at them and say, how did I create these?

The next thing is to create a deeper trust in myself, right? To really get to know myself better, to create a deeper trust in myself, to create a deeper knowing of myself. The next one is to maybe create more confidence. Confidence in something that maybe I wasn’t quite sure that I could do or that I’m still not sure I can do, to just really explore like what’s going on underneath there. Like I said before, looking at how I created certain results. Maybe it’s a positive thing. The more I show myself that, the more I show myself how I did this. Oh yes, I know how to do this, the more confidence I’m going to have moving forward.

And then the last thing would be, and I’m sure there are many other reasons, this is just the short list I created, just to find more self-love, right? To fall in love with myself throughout whatever process it is, whatever goals it is I’m working on. How can I just love myself through all of it? That’s another reason to self-coach.

And then a couple of reasons that I wouldn’t use self-coaching, which are probably more important than the reasons that I would because there are lots and lots of reasons that you can coach yourself. But the couple of reasons that I would say that it’s not a good idea, and I see so many of you doing this and this is why I think it’s so important to talk about because this is not creating more self-love, more confidence, more any of the things, a deeper trust with yourself. It’s not creating any of those things.

One of them is as a punishment. I see coaches doing this where it’s like, okay, I didn’t maybe create the result that I wanted to create. So I’m going to coach myself. I’m going to sit down with a journal and coach myself for the next hour. I see coaches do it like that. Or they maybe make it part of their morning routine, which in general isn’t a problem. But it is a problem when you do it, it’s kind of like working out, right? Like moving your body, working out can be part of your morning routine.

But if you’re doing it as a punishment because of what you ate yesterday or because you have a vacation coming up and your body isn’t ready for a swimsuit, whatever that means, that’s totally ridiculous by the way. But if you’re doing it because of that, now it’s a punishment, right? Now it’s creating a negative association instead of just like, let’s get to know ourselves better.

Another reason not to do it, in my opinion, is to do it in a way that’s very performative, that is just like this is just part of what I do. So for those of you that learned how to coach at a school like The Life Coach School or somewhere where they teach you a very specific self-coaching model, a performative way to use that would be like every day I do five models and that’s just it, right?

It’s just very, like I sit down, it’s kind of like journaling, except instead of with the bigger vision of learning more about yourself or having more self-acceptance, it’s just like once I get through these five models, then I can just move on to whatever my next thing is for the day. That is performative, right? You’re not learning a lot from it, you’re just going through the actions, that’s how I would define that.

And then another way would be, the last way of how not to use self-coaching would be to – I’m trying to think of how to say this. But it’s another form, kind of, of punishment. It’s like punishing yourself for results you haven’t created yet. To dig up all the terrible thoughts that you have, all of the terrible feelings that you have for something that hasn’t even happened or that you’re going to be doing in the future in a way that feels really bad, right?

So in general, I would say if you are coaching yourself or you have a self-coaching practice where for the most part it just feels bad the whole time, I would just reconsider. I would look at the reasons, like why are you doing it this way? Is this what it’s supposed to feel like? Any of those reasons or any time that you’re noticing this just feels terrible the whole time.

This is how I think, in general, about working out, right? I have done many different types of workouts in my life, I usually find things that I love and stick to them for a while. So I used to run for a while. For years I ran. I ran marathons, half marathons. And then at one point I was in a boxing gym and I did Taekwondo. And now I have a Peloton. And I’ve done yoga, I love yoga.

But I’ve also tried workouts and I’m like, ooh, I don’t like that. But some of you are coaching yourself like the workout that you hate. But you’re like, I have to just do it because it’s part of what I do. And it just feels terrible the whole time. Instead of thinking about it like a workout that’s like, it doesn’t matter, as long as I’m moving my body. That’s the whole goal here, so how would I love to do that? What way feels really fun to me?

I would recommend approaching coaching like that. By the way, stay tuned till the very end of this because I have a gift for you. I’m going to tell you about something that’s for everyone that’s listening, just a free gift, just for listening to the episode.

So now I just want to give you very specific ways that I coach myself, and it is probably not what you think I’m going to say. And it’s lots of different ways. I’m going to tell you how I do it and then when I might use that specific thing.

So the first one, which a lot of you are probably familiar with if you have been taught how to coach yourself, is just some form of thought work, right? Like mining thoughts out of my brain, putting them on paper or thinking through them.

Really figuring out like, what does that create for me? How do I feel when I’m thinking this? How do I respond when I’m thinking this, when I’m feeling this way? What’s the experience I’m having in my life when I’m believing these particular beliefs? And what results are those creating?

But more specifically, I do this when I feel confused about how to move forward or confused about how I created a result. So I might sit down, this is one of the rare times I would say that I sit down, actually sit down with a pen and paper and look at it a little bit like a math equation. Like, okay, when I’m believing this thing about myself, let’s say I’m thinking about maybe a launch that I had that didn’t go well.

And I think about the launch and I’m like what were some of the main thoughts that I had about the thing I was selling? So let’s say I have a Coach Lab launch and it’s over and I didn’t get the results that I wanted. I might look at it and think, okay. This is just one piece of the coaching I would do. I would probably get a lot of coaching from someone else on it.

But I might ask myself, what were the thoughts I was having about The Coach Lab while I was selling it? Let me find them all, let me get them all out. And when I’m believing, when I’m thinking, oh, no one – For example, I’ll just tell you some that I’ve come up with before. When I’m thinking no one wants to buy this right now, how am I showing up to the launch? What I’m really curious about is the action I’m taking.

Yes, coaching has a lot to do with our thoughts, a lot to do with our feelings. But when I’m doing this specific type of thought work, we call it thought work, but for me the most interesting piece is my thoughts and my beliefs, how are they affecting my actions, right? How are they affecting the way I feel throughout the launch? And how are they affecting the actions that I’m taking or how I show up to take the actions?

So that’s one way that I would use thought work. That’s a very specific way. I don’t do that every day. I’m doing it when I’m confused, when I’m trying to figure out how I created a certain result, when I’m looking forward, when I can already tell, oh, I have some not useful thoughts in this moment about XYZ. Let me examine those. When I’m believing this, when I’m thinking this over and over, how is it affecting the way I show up right now?

I think that’s really interesting, right? And by the way, I am thinking of this, and I didn’t really say this earlier, I said it’s to create more awareness. But really self-coaching, I’m just like a scientist gathering information. That is really how I’m thinking about it, even when we get some more of the feeling and somatic work, which are kind of the main things I’m going to talk about here in a second.

It still is me showing up with curiosity for myself, right? Like, what is this creating in my life? Am I creating the results I want or not creating the results I want? Okay, so the next way I will show up to coach myself is when there’s actions that I want to be taking, but I’m not taking them. It’s always very interesting to me to look at, and this might look like thought work. This might be written down on paper, or it might just be me thinking through this.

Okay, I said I was going to – I’ll just give you a made up example. I said I was going to get up every morning this week at six and go for a walk before I had to get the kids ready for school. But I’m not doing it. Why not?

So there are a couple of things I could do. I can examine my thoughts about it, right? Like, it’s just too cold outside, or it’s not going to matter anyway, or whatever. Whatever my thoughts would be. It’s always hard to access the thoughts. I know that that’s been a thing before, but it’s hard to access the thoughts when you’re not in it, right? So I’m like, I don’t know, what are my thoughts when I’m not doing it?

So there’s that, but even more importantly, especially when it comes to my business, if I’m feeling scared about something, right, if I’m like, okay, I have this big thing planned but I’m not taking action. The one thing I will always ask myself, what will I need to feel in order to take this action? What will I need to feel in order to move forward, right?

So let’s say, again, because most of you are coaches listening to this you probably have your own business. So let’s say maybe I am headed into a launch or I’m about to do a masterclass and I’m not doing the work that I’m supposed to be doing to lead up to it that’s on my calendar. I might look at that, right? Why am I not? Maybe there’s a fear that I’m going to fail, right? Maybe there’s a fear that no one’s going to sign up. Maybe there’s some fear there that’s in the way.

Okay, what do I need to feel in order to do it anyway? And the obvious answer is fear. But when the answer is fear, I like to get a lot more specific. You can use this, by the way, with your clients, of course, too, right? What do you need to feel? I need to feel fear and do it anyway. Okay, specifically let’s name it because fear is kind of very abstract.

You can ask yourself, what am I afraid I’m going to feel if I fail? Maybe I’m going to feel disappointed. Okay, that’s way more specific than fear, right? Can I feel disappointed? Of course I can. I’m already going to be disappointed, I’m already going to feel the disappointment if I don’t take the action at all, right?

Or maybe it’s embarrassment. Maybe I’m going to do the masterclass, only let’s say five people have signed up, what do I need to feel to just show up and deliver it anyway? Maybe I’m going to feel embarrassed. Maybe I’ll have to tell people there were only five people on.

Maybe I need to feel vulnerable, right? Maybe it feels very vulnerable to put myself out there and to do this thing. Let’s say I’m doing it for the first time, I’m doing something for the first time. Maybe I need to feel silly or self-conscious, or whatever it is, right? How do I find that feeling? What’s the thing I need to work through?

Maybe I’m writing this out or maybe I’m just thinking about it as I shower or as I do another activity, right? It’s just my body is busy, but my mind is thinking about this. What do I need to feel in order to be on the other side of this? That simple, simple act is a very powerful way to coach yourself. It will bring up lots of things, right?

What do I need to feel in order to have this conversation with my partner that I’ve been putting off? What am I afraid of? What’s the feeling? Because it’s always a feeling, right? We’re afraid, of course, this might happen or this might happen. But it’s the feeling that’s connected to it, that’s the part that we’re always trying to avoid as humans. This is just normal human behavior.

And when you’re in it, it feels like certain death just for you, that’s only specific to you. But I think that’s why this piece of self-coaching is very powerful, is just seeing, okay, it’s only disappointment. That’s all I have to feel.

All right, I know how to feel disappointed. I have felt disappointed before. It feels terrible and I know I’ll live because I live every time. It kind of takes a lot of the power out of it, right? And then I’m like, okay, now let’s get to work. I’m ready to feel disappointed. Like the worst case, right? That’s the worst case scenario.

The next one, this is something I use quite often and I do it when I notice that my brain is just trending towards the negative for whatever reason. So I’ll go on morning walks or jogs or whatever, I’m not jogging right now. Right now it would be a walk. But it could be a jog, it could be whatever and just practice focusing my brain on something specific.

So I’ll have a goal, like I’m going to find five beautiful or interesting things on my walk. It gives my brain something to focus on instead of, oh, it’s so humid out. There are lots of mosquitoes. Oh, it’s trash day, all the trash can smell like whatever. Our brain is like, oh, look at this bad thing. Look at this bad thing. Look at this bad thing. That is a learned, I mean, first of all, it’s just normal for our brains to do that.

But you can also train your brain to do the opposite of that, to find better things, right? To notice things that are good instead of noticing things that are bad. To notice how to shift your attention to like, look how beautiful this cicada is on this tree, versus I still have 20 minutes to go or whatever. Whatever the thought would be, right?

So just literally noticing, okay, I can’t go home until I have found five things, and not like made up things, but really five things that I can appreciate. I used to live in this really old neighborhood, or an older neighborhood, and it had huge, beautiful trees and just lots of nature. That was a lot easier to do these walks, there were always so many amazing things.

Now I live in a newer neighborhood, it’s a new construction. We’ve lived here a couple of years, but it’s still, you know, if you’ve ever been in a new construction neighborhood, you know what they look like. I have to work harder, not that there aren’t great things, to find them if I’m doing it every day. Because there’s a rule, it’s like it can’t be the same thing every day.

So I can’t just go for a quick walk and be like, oh yeah, look at the sunrise, it’s so beautiful. Oh, look at the whatever, that’s so interesting, like a robot. I really force myself to notice new things, to look at details in things, to just train my brain to see something other than negative. So again, I do that in times when I just notice my brain is trending that way. That happens sometimes. That happens to I think all of us. I don’t know, at least that happens to me.

And it’s really useful because then when you’re not on the walk, when you’re not out doing that, your brain will start to do that. You will start to just naturally do it more often when you’re not on those walks or when you’re not doing it on purpose. Your brain is just like, oh yeah, look at that beautiful thing on my desk or whatever, right?

So the next one would be brainstorming or coming up with new ideas. And I love to do this when I’m moving my body. So maybe I’m in the shower or I’m driving. I know that’s not really moving, but it’s like my body is occupied. And it just lets me access a different space in my brain, right?

So I’m showering, I’m driving, maybe I’m, again, on that morning walk or I’m riding a Peloton. I’m doing something that doesn’t take a lot of brainpower for me to pay attention to what I’m doing, but where the little creative space in my brain can go wild. So maybe I’m coming up with, okay, what’s the next master class I want to do? What would be really fun? And I just let myself come up with ideas.

And I just leave it very casual. There’s no very strict rules about it. It’s just like, let’s see where it goes. It’s kind of like taking a walk around in my brain. The next one, which is similar but a little different, is I call it the 100 ways exercise. I’ve just officially named it yesterday. But to me, I call this the 100 ways exercise. I’ve taught this so many times in my programs, in The Coach Lab and everywhere. My clients know this because they’ve heard me say this. I’ll say, let’s just get creative. Let’s brainstorm together. Let’s come up with 100 ways you could do this.

Now, this is when, again, maybe I’m looking for something very specific, but it feels stickier, right? So the example I just gave was ideas for a masterclass. Maybe it’s that, but when I’m feeling like, I don’t know, I don’t have any good ideas. Okay, let’s come up with some, but my brain feels stickier around it. I’ll actually sit down with a piece of paper and a pen or pencil and just start listing them.

And the way I do this, and yes, I still consider this self-coaching because it’s creating a lot of awareness around what are all the ideas just in my brain? And it’s really helping me get out of the stickiness of it. And the reason I call it 100 ways and I say come up with 100 ways or 100 ideas, we might not actually get to 100. But the point is to just write down literally anything that comes to mind.

So I’m not just writing down the good ideas. I’m not just writing down here are the best ideas, or here is the one idea. But literally every idea I could possibly think of, right? So let’s say I was having a really hard time coming up with an idea for a masterclass. And I was having stress over it and it was like, what’s the right thing? We’ve all been there, I’m sure. Like will you just tell me the right thing? I’ll just do it.

Instead of that, what I’m suggesting is that you’re like, okay, let’s just come up with 100 ideas. Some of them, probably most of them, are going to be terrible. And that’s okay.

So for example, I’ve been doing this recently where the five minutes to better coaching, right? The Coach Lab summer challenge, you’ve probably heard about it or you’ve seen me talk about it, or maybe you’ve come to it. And maybe I don’t have that and I’m just coming up with ideas.

So that might be one, that might be on the list. But there might be a list of 50 other ideas, some of them might not even be good, right? Something that I would never do, but it just gets my brain flowing. It just gets the ideas pouring out of me. And I was teaching this to someone and they were like, how do I know when to stop? And, first, there’s no right answer to that. You could stop whenever.

You could actually list 100 ways, although most people don’t usually get to 100. But I think when you know when to stop is when you’re like, I have a few really good ideas here that I feel excited to do.

So when I came up with The Coach Lab summer challenge, in my notebook I was writing out all these ideas and my brain just kept coming back to that one. I felt so excited to do it. Like teaching coaches to be better coaches in five minutes or less per day. Yes, how fun is that? Who wouldn’t want that, right? My brain kept coming back to it.

Now, the great news is I still have a list of other amazing things, which is one of the really good things about this exercise. So then when you find the thing, when you’re like, okay, this is it. The Coach Lab summer challenge, five minutes a day to better coaching, what does that look like? Then you can start brainstorming ideas. Like let’s do a rough draft, right?

To me that does border on self-coaching. And then maybe it moves into the real work of doing your business and running your business and running coaching and coming up with the ideas and all of that. But I just think sometimes if you lead into it with the idea of like, I’m just here to mine my brain, right? I’m just here to get all the ideas out, that can feel a lot better.

It can feel like you can just relax into it. You can have fun with it. You can laugh at some of the things you come up with. That is going to create much better results than if you just sit down and like, okay, I have 20 minutes, 30 minutes, one hour, however long it is to create a masterclass. What’s the one idea I’m going to build off of?

You can see the difference, right? One creates lots of pressure, lots of hustle and hurry. One creates the opposite of that, right? Lots of creativity and more positive emotion than maybe feeling terrible thinking I have to find the one perfect thing.

And then the last one, and this is probably one of my very favorite ways to self-coach. I’m going to call this self-coaching or create more self-awareness or whatever you would call it, which to me is the entire purpose, again, of self-coaching. And this is the one I was talking to a friend about and she was like, everyone needs to know this.

I do this all the time. It’s probably the one that I do the most often, especially for things not business related. So I do a lot of brainstorming, coming up with creative business ideas, coaching myself in my business on how I created those results, all of that. I do a lot of that, but one of my very favorite things to do is find music that I love that gets me into my body.

And no I don’t dance, although sometimes I do. That doesn’t feel as much like self-coaching. That feels like just getting into my body and moving my body. But what I do is I will sit, and I have a very specific playlist, which is your gift by the way, I’m going to share it with you. But I have a very specific playlist, that is, it’s not necessarily sad songs, but it’s also not necessarily happy songs. It’s just songs that really get me very connected to my body, very connected to what’s going on in here.

It’s kind of the opposite, I would say, of thought work. A lot of times with thought work it’s very logical, let me assess how I’m thinking about this. This is the opposite of that. It’s like, let me start in my body and see what comes up. Let me start in my body and really sit deeply in how I’m feeling right now.

I specifically use this, I use it a lot, but I really use it often when I can tell when maybe there’s just some stuff going on that is creating negative emotion and I haven’t taken any time to process the emotion or to really sit with the emotion. For me, music is one way that I can instantly connect to how my body feels. It allows me to drop my shoulders, relax into my body, maybe I close my eyes.

A lot of times I put one hand on my heart or my chest and one hand on my stomach. Maybe I close my eyes, I listen to the music and I really connect with how am I feeling right now. What is my body telling me? What is there to learn? What is the wisdom that I’m going to access from myself in this moment?

And I think what happens with the music is, first, not only will I maybe sway a little bit when I’m listening to the music. Or a lot of times I have my eyes closed so I’m probably moving and not even really noticing what the exact movement is. But it just allows me, it takes me straight to the feelings, right? Or the emotions. It really connects me, like my body can’t lie.

My brain can lie to me, right? My logical brain can say, okay, I think I was thinking this or I was thinking this and it created these results and it’s a little bit like a math equation. And again, as I’ve already said, sometimes that is very, very useful. But your body, just like many books that you have probably read like Your Body Keeps the Score, or Healing Back Pain, or any books where it just talks about the connection, like that mind/body connection and how important it is to us as humans, your body just can’t lie to you.

And for me, the easiest way to access that, to access what is going on in there is through music. I have always been extremely connected to music. I can think way before I was a coach, even when I was a little girl, I would just sit in my room, especially when there was stuff going on outside of my room that I didn’t love. I would just sit in my room, turn on music and literally be lost in the music.

And if that’s you, I think that’s true for most humans. I’m not going to say all, but I do think, maybe not that specific thing, but I think it’s true for most humans that music does connect us. Like if you think of songs that you know from your past that immediately take you back to how you were feeling.

I think a lot about breakups when I was younger, like in high school. I mean I don’t think a lot about them, but when I’m thinking about this specific thing I can hear songs, like there are still songs. I am 40 – How old am I? 42, I’ll be 43 this year at the end of the year. And there are songs that will take me back to like a high school breakup. Like one song and I am there. I can feel it, I can be in the feeling of like what it was, right?

And that’s true for so many things. It’s kind of like smell, right? Like how all the things are connected. You can smell one thing and you’re instantly in your grandma’s house, right? Or instantly in whatever, a locker room or whatever, right? Like a very specific smell. I was a swimmer in high school, a swimmer for a few years, and so the smell of chlorine is always like instantly I’m there. I’m like on the swim team all over again.

For me, music is the same. And so I would recommend this to you especially if you aren’t someone – So I know that some of you really love to sit down and write out your self-coaching and do it and it’s kind of like a workout, you do it every morning or it’s kind of like journaling.

But if you’re a person that has a hard time connecting to that, so for me I have a hard time. Just something about that connection, I know some people say writing something on paper, you learn it deeper or you have a deeper connection to it. For me, that’s just 100% not true. Even when I was in college, I couldn’t listen and take notes at the same time.

Or when I’m coaching I don’t take notes usually while I’m coaching my clients, because the minute I’m thinking about my hand writing on the piece of paper, I am instantly disconnected from what is actually happening. I don’t know, there’s something, maybe that’s a weird thing and I’m sure I’m not the only one, but maybe it’s not that normal. I’m not sure.

But I think self-coaching is such a personal practice that you have to find the ways, if you’re going to do it and it’s going to feel good and it’s not going to be a punishment and it’s not just going to be performative. And for the love, you’re not turning it in because some program that you’re in or whatever is asking you to turn into your self-coaching.

This is like my pet peeve. I have been in spaces where it’s required and I think this is where I came up with the rule that it can’t be performative, because that’s exactly how it feels to me. I don’t like to write down my self-coaching and have to turn it in. It feels like handing over a journal to someone, honestly. And that feels terrible. So it’s okay, if you’ve ever had that thought. I just want you to know that’s okay, I’m here with you. I feel you on that. Find the ways that work for you.

So my gift to you is in the show notes, if you go to the show notes there will be a link to my Spotify playlist where I share with you the music that I use. Now, I’m actually in the middle of creating several playlists for The Coach Lab. I’m not going to share them all with you, because that’s a perk for being in The Coach Lab. But I’m going to share just this one, which is helping you really connect to yourself, to how you’re feeling, helping you connect to your body and get in your body.

This is the exact playlist I use and I’m so excited to share it with you. And one thing I will say about this is that if you don’t love it, that’s totally fine because music is very personal, just like self-coaching, right? Music is very, very personal.

So a couple things you can do, if there are some songs you don’t love, fine, skip them. If you’re just like, there’s something about the vibe of this that is not for me, that is no problem. But if you love the idea, then just create your own. It’s very simple to create. I don’t actually know, I have a paid account on Spotify, so I probably have features that you might not have if you don’t have a paid account, I don’t know for sure. But there are plenty of places that you can make playlists and I highly recommend it.

You can even take mine, if you’re on Spotify, you can take my playlist, make your own out of songs that you like. You can just follow mine and use it as often as you want. Share it with everybody, I love it. But you can also just take mine and steal songs off of it and create your own playlist or use it as inspiration, right? If you’re like I love these few songs but I hate all the rest of them, totally fine. Make your own.

That is what I want to leave you with today. Self-coaching, how powerful it can be really knowing that the whole purpose of it is to create a deeper understanding of yourself, a deeper understanding of who you are, how you show up in the world, how you’re feeling, why you’re creating the results you’re creating, why you aren’t. It’s the same thing as coaching, right? It’s just, I think it’s even more personal when we think about self-coaching versus being coached by someone else.

So go to the link, find the playlist and let me know if you love it. Please, please, this feels so personal to me. It actually feels a little vulnerable to share this with you. So what I would love is if you find me on Instagram or wherever, wherever you’re going to find me and just tell me if you love it. How it’s working for you. How you love listening to the music, if it’s changing anything about your self-coaching.

One thing I want to add, I’m popping back in here to add an edit to this episode, which I’m going to talk about actually more in an episode I’ve already recorded that’s coming out later. But I found this song, which I don’t know if you call it a song. It’s more like spoken word to music, and you will hear it on the playlist. One of the things I loved to do before I had created this whole playlist, a specific playlist. I love India Arie and she’s one of the artists that I can just put her on and just instantly feel connected to my body.

So I used to do that and then I would just kind of play one song by her and then I would just let Spotify kind of take me wherever it would go. And this thing happened where this song started playing and it was a woman talking to music and I was instantly transfixed.

And she was saying words that I was like, what? This is what I have been thinking about so much lately that I couldn’t find words to. And her name, the album was called I See Mantras, her name is Toni Jones. And the song that I had found, I’m just going to call it a song. I assume that’s what she would call it. I assume, I’m not sure. It’s called Healing Is Not My Purpose.

I want you to listen to this song. I have an episode, another podcast episode coming out about this idea. But, first, I was blown away by this song. I couldn’t believe it. I listened to it over and over. And then just recently just last week someone, actually my good friend and client Kimberly Mathis, sent me this link and said, have you ever heard of this?

And I was like, what? Stop it. This is so weird because I just recorded another podcast episode and I mentioned this song. And then Kimberly proceeds to tell me that this woman who created this album is a life coach. I don’t know if she still is, but she was.

Her background is in life coaching and she actually created many of these, they’re like mantras, more like spoken word is what I would call it. And she created them, I believe, for her coaching clients. How amazing is that? It just felt like it came full circle. I’m like, oh, that’s so funny, because this song is on my playlist that I’m about to share with all of the coaches.

So, I hope you enjoy. Again, this feels really vulnerable. It feels like I’m sharing with you a little piece of my soul. So I would love for you to come tell me if you love it. Only positive feedback. Normally I take all the feedback, but on the playlist maybe only tell me if you love it.

If you hate it, you just make your own. Make yourself happy. Maybe share your playlist with me. That would be fun if you wanted to do that. But don’t tell me I hate your playlist, because that just feels like just ripping my heart out of my chest, all right? I’m just kidding, of course, kind of. I love all of you. Thank you so much for being here and I will talk to you again next week. Goodbye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Mastering Coaching Skills. If you want to learn more about my work, come visit me at lindsaydotzlafcoaching.com. That’s Lindsay with an A, D-O-T-Z-L-A-F.com. See you next week.