How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Page 379

 You need to consider if your plans are attainable and what would happen if you failed to achieve your goals. Try to map out several paths to your goal, then if one becomes blocked another is available: build flexibility into your planning. People tend to strongly underestimate how long a project will take, especially if working in a group because they tend to visualise everything going to plan with no problems. Think about the type of problems you might encounter at each step. What are the barriers in the way of achieving your goal? What you would do to overcome these problems? Concentrate 10% on the problem and 90% on the solution. Try to turn every problem into a challenge and every challenge into an opportunity.  Review your progress. Keep a diary or blog of your daily activities and record your progress as things happen: this keeps your plan as concrete as possible. A good time to start your review is about two weeks after you have begun. Review how far you have got towards your objective, identify any mistakes you made and what you can learn from them, look at any new ideas or opportunities that may have presented themselves and then revise your plan to incorporate these.  Mix with positive people who will encourage you to keep going! Tell your friends or relatives about your goals. They will provide support when going gets tough and will also give you an incentive to keep going as you'll feel embarrassed if you have to tell them you've given up! 1248