Did you know self-guided coaching benefits can exceed all other forms of coaching and instruction? It’s true. The most effective way to nurture personal growth and development is the self-guided approach. After all, you have the best knowledge of yourself. You just need to learn how to coach yourself.
Our mind is a marvelous instrument that can be enhanced and improved throughout our lives. In spiritual circles, this is known as the transformative spiritual journey. In practical terms, it’s about identifying our weaknesses and strengths and then working to improve. Unfortunately, there are many obstacles in the modern world that can undermine this goal of self-improvement.
Empower Yourself Through Coaching
First, let’s talk about what it means to empower yourself through self-guided coaching. To empower ourselves, we must understand our strengths and weaknesses. Understanding ourselves requires self-awareness, self-reflection, and coaching.
Once we identify these areas, we need the courage and confidence to make the changes. Sometimes, this means taking a step back to learn, repair, or remove things that are holding us back. So, this requires the ability to make the right decisions about ourselves.
We can obtain the data from research and self-reflection, but it will do us no good unless we take action. Taking action again requires courage. Plus, we’ll need resilience and persistence along with the right resources and support system. Self-guided coaching benefits come from leveraging resources.
The strategy is to use whatever resources you have available in your own plan. Don’t rely on external platforms. Programs provided by third parties, employers, counselors, or consultants are temporary. You can use these to augment your own plan. Your personal plan is the umbrella under which all other tools are used. This philosophy puts you in control to empower yourself through coaching.
Self-directed coaching differs from corporate coaching. Corporations coach employees to produce more return on their investment. Making you a more useful employee often runs counter to nurturing personal growth and development.
The coaching programs in many corporations involve the use of the use of emotional intelligence tactics. These mind control tools are the rebranding of psychological manipulation tactics. This kind of training promotes people who are disingenuous and manipulative. To counteract this antisocial behavior, companies then must also educate and train people on ethics. But, this training is a band-aid for the use of emotional intelligence tactics. These tactics drive unethical business practices.
Nurturing Personal Growth and Development
The essence of who we are is awareness and consciousness. In religious circles, this essence is called spirit or soul. Our health and wellness affect our self-improvement, so let’s examine what this entails.
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” — World Health Organization (WHO) (1)
You’ll notice that this definition includes three distinct elements: physical, mental, and social.
We’ll discuss the steps you can take to improve your health and well-being in all three areas. These steps are practical but not always easy. Often, the things we should do to be healthy go against the programming we have gained from the cultural narrative.
This kind of coaching is straightforward, and the effects are often immediate. What are the benefits?
Self-Guided Coaching Benefits
1. Flexibility, Portability, and Continuity. This approach can flex with the changing needs of your life. It is also yours. You take it with you wherever you go; it isn’t tied to any location, company, or person. Because this plan is portable, it enables you to maintain continuity. So, you can use this program for 50 years, not until you change jobs.
2. Increased Self-Awareness. Self-directed coaching helps you gain a deeper understanding of your thoughts and emotions. Increased self-awareness gives us clarity of thought and reduces stress.
You can and should use other data tools and resources, but you are the one in the driver’s seat of this journey. The more you take control, the more your self-awareness will grow. Tools like the Enneagram and the Repetitive Question Exercise give us hard data. We can augment this with advice from other people on the same journey.
3. Establishes Personal Responsibility. Taking charge of your development fosters a sense of personal responsibility. You are solely accountable for your actions, which can lead to greater satisfaction and fulfillment.
4. Increased Decision-Making. Self-coaching encourages you to think critically and evaluate your options carefully, leading to better self-accountability, decision-making, and problem-solving skills.
5. Enhanced Resilience Self-Confidence. By reflecting on your progress, you build resilience and confidence. Resilience gives the ability to bounce back from setbacks and adapt to change is crucial for long-term success. People say this is one of the most important self-guided coaching benefits. Being able to weather the storms of adversity is the key to success.
6. Better Work-Life Balance. Self-coaching helps you identify and prioritize what truly matters. This clarity can lead to a healthier work-life balance. You learn to make choices that support your health and well-being.
7. Promotes Continuous Growth. Self-coaching is an ongoing process that encourages lifelong learning and development. Continuous learning promotes adaptability, which is the platform for new ideas. This mindset ensures continuous personal, spiritual, and professional growth.
Summarizing The benefits of self-guided coaching
It’s a powerful holistic strategy for anyone looking to achieve their full potential. It doesn’t require more work, just a shift of focus. It employs the same process as other coaching methodologies. Yet, it yields constantly better results because you go at your own pace.
Six Steps to The Transformative Spiritual Journey
If you set out on a journey without a destination or goal, you end up wandering and getting lost. So, where is your spiritual journey taking you? What are your goals?
Transformative Spiritual Practices
The steps to achieving your goal of positive transformation are easy to understand. However, they can be difficult to implement. So, a partner or counselor can help, especially in the first step.
1. Reduce Cultural Noise
Coaching yourself involves several key steps. The first and most crucial step is to identify and remove the harmful programming that creates bias and prejudice. To achieve the self-guided coaching benefits listed above, you must not skip this step.
The first of the transformative spiritual practices you must address is your social well-being. Our culture has an enormous impact on our thinking. Emphasize those things with positive outcomes and eliminate the negative and harmful. Don’t forget that the Earth is a living thing that we must protect. When people and practices have a positive impact, everyone benefits, not just a select group.
Nurturing personal growth and development requires a healthy mindset. A healthy mindset is free from harmful bias and prejudice.
We’ve compiled a list of sources of propaganda and misinformation. They are the source for the majority of harmful and inaccurate programming in our culture:
— All Christian sectarian religious broadcasts
— Propaganda disguised as news
— Racially biased social media
— False political and social media
This kind of programming uses brainwashing techniques to skew your thinking and values. So, you must avoid these sources. You can identify them by their harmful content. The following outlets promote everything from conspiracy theories to racism (2):
| conservativesforum.com | News Front |
| Before it’s News | Newsmax |
| Bill O’Reilly | OAN News (OANN) |
| Brit Hume | Postal Reporter |
| Catholic Vote | Postal Times |
| Citizens United | Rita Cosby |
| Conservatives Forum | RT.com |
| Constitution Society | Shepard Smith |
| constitution.org | Southfront |
| Counterpunch | Sputniknews.com |
| Epoch Times | The Conservative |
| Fox News | Voice conservativevoice.com |
| Global Research | WhatDoesItMean.com |
| Greta Van Susteren | World Net Daily |
| The Zero Hedge |
The above is a shortlist. These propaganda outlets profit from your readership by selling advertising space. Propaganda is hazardous to your mental health and emotional well-being.
The COVID pandemic gave some advertisers the opportunity to generate more revenue. To raise their ratings, they spread controversies, false information, and bad advice. This misinformation was often wrapped in harmful religious, racist, and political rhetoric. People suffer when they ignore the advice of medical professionals and adopt unproven treatments. So, it’s important to eliminate your exposure to negative social programming.
There is tension between legitimate sciences and the promoters of pseudoscience and religion. This tension causes a mental condition known as cognitive dissonance. It arises when one’s beliefs don’t align with the facts. This mental state creates stress and anxiety while triggering fear and anger. When we are in this state, we become susceptible to groupthink manipulation.
Strange as it seems, fear can be addictive, even though it is harmful to our health. The bottom line is to unplug from harmful programming. Start questioning the cultural narrative, especially if the information comes from the sources above. The first step in becoming your coach is to eliminate your exposure to harmful programming.
Understand that the focus of these tools is to trigger emotional responses. Most times, they fill these assertions with misleading information. By eliminating these sources, you immediately improve your mental health and emotional well-being.
2. Use A Journal for Self-Reflection and Coaching
One simple way to spot negative programming is to use a spiritual journal. Journaling brings your inner thoughts to the surface, and your thoughts will reflect the programming you receive. It’s one of the old-school transformative spiritual practices we highly recommend.
If you are honest in documenting your thoughts, you’ll see the positive and the negative. It will show you the effects of exposure to adverse social programming in black and white. It will also reveal the thought scripts of personality and instinct.
Using a journal is second on the list after clearing the mind clutter. Once you can think more clearly, you can start your true feelings and thoughts. Putting them on paper is therapeutic. Yes, use a paper-based journal instead of an electronic one. Your handwriting contains a lot of information. There are clues in your doodling and drawing as well.
Graphology is the study of handwriting. You can learn a lot from how you put your thoughts on paper.
This simple tool will help you see and purge negative bias and prejudice from your beliefs. You’ll likely see thought patterns. It will help you see the harmful programming you need to remove. This old-school technology is an asset in nurturing personal growth and development.
3. Identify and Repair Bad Programming
Along with your journal, use the Enneagram and Repetitive Question Exercise. These tools help you identify and remove harmful thought scripts. Your journal which show you trends in your thoughts. The Enneagram will show you common thought patterns for your personality type that disintegrate into unhealthy thinking.
The Repetitive Question Exercise will help you find harmful beliefs and values. Use the probing question; tell me a value or belief that is important. Keep repeating this question and write your answers. Do this exercise until you can find no more. Then, review your list of beliefs based on sectarian ideology. Harmful ideologies have these elements:
A. Magical Thinking. Here, a person substitutes myth and superstition for facts, rational thinking, and evidence. The most common sign is the belief in imaginary friends and enemies, gods and devils.
B. Us versus them thinking. This is reflected in the chosen one or chosen people. It may also be reflected in some type of exclusivity based on race, ethnicity, or beliefs.
C. Social or political exclusion, which manifests as anger or hate targeting a group. If you have a group that you use as a scapegoat for any real or perceived problem, then you have harmful sectarian beliefs.
D. Loss of individual identity. This shows up in statements like I am a Christian or Muslim instead of I believe in elements of the Christian or Muslim religion. If you are compelled to attend religious meetings out of a sense of guilt, it is a sign your personal identity is compromised.
4. Read and Learn
Reading a variety of different things can expand your perspective. When you read things outside of your paradigm, it opens your mind to other possibilities. As you increase your mind’s ability to think and reason, you’ll be on the way to becoming a freethinker. Reading fiction is one of the transformative spiritual practices that is fun. Reading fictional stories cultivates our creativity.
If you are not used to reading new material, you may find it tiring. Why? Because you are not used to encountering new ideas. Once you learn to encounter new ideas, you’ll learn to love them. Reading new material helps you grow. It’s incredibly beneficial for your mental health and emotional well-being.
Learn a new language to increase your mind’s ability. When we learn, we create new relationships in the brain. Learning a new language expands our awareness as we create new ways of communicating and understanding.
When you learn to consider outside of your comfort zone, it becomes easier to change your mind. You no longer trigger fear and anger when you encounter new things, enabling you to become a freethinker.
5. Meditation
It’s essential to learn and incorporate proper meditation to reach the fourth state of consciousness. Meditation is the most powerful element for balancing health and well-being and building a healthy foundation for the mind. Meditation is another one of the transformative spiritual practices that opens the doorway for self-reflection and coaching.
The mind heals itself through rest, and proper meditation is like a reset switch, providing this deep, restful state. It allows you to access the transcendent state of silence. You reach this state through a process known as Japa Meditation. This technique’s more well-known commercial version is Transcendental Meditation (TM).
You have probably heard the state of consciousness described in several ways. For example, Samādhis the common Indian term from (Sanskrit) Samādhi, Sama, meaning “together,” and dhi, meaning “mind.” Other influential teachers refer to this state of pure awareness, bliss consciousness, and the state of transcendent awareness. This state has metabolic characteristics that differ from waking, dreaming, and sleeping.
Meditation is a practice that gives immediate results: peace of mind, a reduction in stress, and a refreshing outlook. Modern medicine recommends it as a tool for nurturing personal growth and development.
6. Regular Physical Exercise
Engage in a regular exercise program designed to cover all aspects of general fitness, from cardio and strength training to flexibility and stamina. The greater the number of these actions you can take, the greater the probability of moving past the inertia. These steps may not unshackle you from your life situations, but they will provide clarity and enable you to balance with less stress.
We know this one can be difficult to add to your routine, but it’s critical. But, when you take charge as your health and well-being coach, you will have the flexibility to change your daily routine. One way is to bundle something you like with the exercise. An example would be to play your favorite music before or during your exercise routine. You can also use periodic non-food rewards, like new exercise shoes, when reaching a specific benchmark.
Our recommendation is to focus on durability. Physical durability includes the full range of wellness, physical, mental, and spiritual. So, this comprises both seated and moving methods of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness differs from Japa or TM listed above. However, it is easy to learn. You can teach yourself if personal instruction isn’t available.
Conclusion — Empower Yourself Through Self-Guided Coaching
When you have depression, anxiety, and lack of inspiration, you are more susceptible to self-hypnosis and group hypnosis manipulation tactics. Organized religion is the primary source of this propaganda mechanism. Many people believe religion is the fast food of spirituality.
Create a plan that incorporates the six steps of the transformative spiritual journey, and you will be more durable. You will insulate yourself from the effects of groupthink manipulation. This is how you obtain the benefits of self-guided coaching and become your own coach.
References
(1) World Health Organization: https://www.who.int/
(2) Spot Fake News: https://www.spotfakenews.info/