Self-Coaching

Be your own coach whenever you practice.
Observe yourself; analyze your own movements; be honest with your self-appraisal.
Could that vault have been more controlled, with a softer landing?
Could it have been more efficient?
What can you improve on?
There will always be something, believe me.
(Dan Edwardes)

Turn your inner voice into your inner coach. (Brett Ledbetter, TED)

Fragments from Imaginary Dialogues

“How?”

“Think what a parkour coach does (or a sports coach more generally): they teach by giving cues, short instructions meant to elicit a specific response and achieve a specific outcome. Cueing is a skill – and an art. This is what you want to emulate when becoming your inner coach.

Thinking of self-coaching as a practice, it has two components: perspective taking and self-cueing.

Perspective taking is an imagination practice. Or more specifically, an imaginal practice – as opposed to imaginary. ‘Imaginal’ means using imagination for achieving practical ends. In this case, it means imagining yourself as your coach, seeing yourself with the eyes of a coach.

If you were your coach (in this situation), what would you do? What cues would you give? What questions would you ask?

You can take the practice further by imagining yourself in dialogue with yourself as the coach.

There’s a quote I like by John Vervaeke:

Philosophy is the practice of internalizing Socrates.

Similarly, we might think of self-coaching as the practice of internalizing the Coach.

In practical terms, self-coaching is essentially self-cueing: applying the skill of cueing to yourself as if you were your coach. This requires applying and (deliberately) practicing cueing – or as Dan Edwardes, one of the founders of Parkour Generations calls it, ‘cue-jutsu’.”

“So self-cueing is a special kind of self-talk.”

“Yes.”

“What makes a good cue?”

“There are two aspects to it: content and delivery.

As concerns content, good cueing is brief, unambiguous, and specific. It directs attention to what’s most relevant and tells you exactly what to do. By ‘brief’, I mean two things: using simple language and as few words as possible, and giving as few cues as possible at a time to prevent overwhelm. Positive cues (‘do x’) are better than negative cues (‘don’t do x’).

As concerns delivery, how you say matters as much as what you say. Good cueing is respectful. It is firm, yet kind and compassionate.”

“A bit like parenting?”

“That’s a good way to think of it.

The habit you want to cultivate is that of thinking in cues. Engaging in all your practices as if you’re actually teaching them.”

“So you’re practicing teaching at the same time.”

“Indeed. I consider teaching one of the most important skills one can develop.

Ideally, you engage in cueing as deliberate practice. Collecting and creating cues for all your practices, (creating your own ‘cue library’), continuously refining cues (in terms of both content and delivery), discovering synergies and playing with combining them for optimal results.”