Be Your Own Life Coach!

Clinical Hypnotherapist Kieran Fitzpatrick gives advice on how to achieve your goals in the first of his new series of regular columns.

To those of you who have been following my series in the past, welcome back!

Welcome also if this is the first time you have read any of my columns.

These articles are about how we can coach ourselves to improve our mental health and perform better in all areas of our normal daily lives.

Although these articles now cover many mental health issues and ways you can help yourself to overcome or even avoid them, they started out as a series of articles helping you to coach yourself to set and achieve a goal, or dream, in life that you may be struggling to achieve.

So, here’s another chance, over the next eight fortnightly articles, to begin that process and step through it with me again.

My father once told me that the best way to learn something is to set yourself a little project.

You will learn many other useful, general, life skills while seeing this one project through.

When doing something new, it helps to get advice on our “performance”, like from a coach.

But mostly we depend on ourselves to be our own coaches.

Yet, we have no training! So, how about doing a free coaching course here and now?

In these first nine articles, we look at the basics to achieving better outcomes. At setting targets for yourself and taking action to make things happen.

This can be a personal, social, career or even a romantic goal. We’ll do things in a slightly different way. (Because, if you keep doing the same things in the same way,  you keep getting the same results!)

So, think of something you’d really like to achieve, or really want, by year end. It can be trivial or very important; (this works in exactly the same way for both).

When did you last set a real goal for yourself? Maybe this will be the first new skill you learn.

Before the next article, pick a goal.

Imagine having it, in great detail.

All the things that will show that you have achieved it.

All the things that tell others that you have achieved it.

How you look, sound, act and, especially, feel after achieving it!

The better you can describe something, the easier it is to find.

Spend some time on this. Usually what we get out of something in life is in direct proportion to what we put into it.

Write down your description and keep it for the next step, in the next article.

Start keeping notes!

We all find it easier to describe something that has already happened than to make something up about the future.

So, imagine you have already achieved your goal.

Then, ask “your future self” how you did it.

Explain it as though it has already happened and describe how your success all came about!

Make notes of the main steps you took.

This explanation of “the past” will become your plan of action for the future.

Lots of people know what things succeed. Successful people do those things.

In the next article, you will become one of the people who actually do things.

Using your clear new goal, we’ll start removing emotional elements that were stopping you succeeding and start taking steps towards ensuring that you now achieve your goals!

I’ll see you and your goal here in two weeks time!

Kieran Fitzpatrick ADHP FIAEBP is an experienced Clinical Hypnotherapist, NLP Practitioner and Personal Coach.

His practice is in D.12.

For more details call 087-1227361

e-mail: kieran@kieranfitzpatrick.com or see www.kieranfitzpatrick.com