Chapter One-Where I am
Imagine this scenario: Jane often runs late to everything, including her
hard-won job as a junior attorney at a law firm. Her supervisor admonishes her and Jane vows to be on time (maybe even early) on Monday. She sets her alarm Sunday night, telling herself before she goes to sleep that this time, she won’t hit the Snooze button, because that’s what ends up making her late. The alarm goes off at six, Jane hits Snooze without thinking about it, and ends up being late. Again. When she gets to work, she is frustrated with herself for once again clocking in late and putting her job in jeopardy. Why does she undermine herself every day, especially when she knows how important being on time is for a job she worked so hard to get? The answer escapes her. Sound familiar? Most of us do things that we know are detrimental to our health, careers, goals, and relationships. What we don’t know is why or, even more importantly, how to change those things. The
key to living a life that supports and enriches your health, careers, goals,
and relationships is self-awareness. A human being can spend a lifetime inside his or her skin without truly knowing the person who is “wearing it”. PerfectCoaches can help you clearly see the person you are, perhaps for the first time. This self-awareness, defined simply as knowing who you are, is valuable. In addition, PerfectCoaches builds upon self-awareness to help you be more mindful of your behavior. These are two important words. The key to living a life that supports and enriches your health, careers, goals, and relationships is self-awareness. Winning Habits for Work, Learning, Leadership, and Life 12 The first word, mindful, has various meanings in psychology as well as Buddhism, Hinduism, and other philosophical systems. PerfectCoaches uses a simple definition that is consistent with its use in most contexts: Mindfulness is a clear, purposefulness awareness of the events taking place right now, in the present moment. The second word, behavior, is defined in psychology as the actions by which an organism adjusts to its environment. PerfectCoaches uses behavior as an all-encompassing term for everything you do including skills, habits, activities, and inner experiences. Skills, which are behaviors learned and practiced in professional life, are especially important in PerfectCoaches. Behavior is defined in psychology as the actions by which an organism adjusts to its environment. That second half, uses to adjust to its environment, is key. We adapt and change our behaviors based on where we are, who we are with, and what is expected of us. We often do this without thinking about it, which is where the lack of self-awareness comes into play. PerfectCoaches uses the Socratic method. Socrates, one of history’s great philosophers, had a method of continuously asking question after question without providing answers himself. The other person would discover contradictions in what he said and see what nonsensical conclusions were reached as Socrates pressed false assumptions to their logical conclusion. Socrates knew the questions he asked would eventually uncover the truth of the matter. PerfectCoaches personifies fundamental inquiries about life as Coaches asking the questions. The questions themselves are based on “the question words” found in Rudyard Kipling’s The Elephant’s Child: I Keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. What, When, Why, How, Where, and Who are the fundamental fact-finding questions journalists, detectives, scientists, and others use Where I am 13 to quickly understand the facts in a situation. PerfectCoaches adds a seventh question to the list: What if? This question encourages you to go beyond the facts to start exploring possibilities. Here’s how the PerfectCoaches thought experiment works—you ask yourself questions on a regular basis and, through those answers,
gain self-awareness. With that self-awareness, you will be more mindful of your behavior and make choices that improve your life every single day. Why Should I Ask Myself Questions? A good coach doesn’t tell his or her players what to do—he encourages them to think for themselves so that in the crush of a game, they have developed the instincts to pass or run. In short, to do whatever they need to do to win the game. PerfectCoaches doesn’t come with a coach on the sidelines who is going to go over a playbook and watch postgame reels with you. That’s because the only person you need on your team is already there—you. Develop the habit of asking the questions, the 7 PerfectCoaches questions (see the box), and from those answers you gain insight, knowledge, and direction. You become, in a sense, your own coach. You’re always there with yourself, so that built-in coaching is available all the time. See how that works? The questions are the PerfectCoaches. The Coaches are the questions and the questions are The Coaches. In the PerfectCoaches method, the term The Coaches is capitalized and treated as a proper noun because it’s a one-of-a-kind thing, unique to you. The Coaches you imagine as you are going through this book possess all the characteristics you would seek in a person helping you develop as a professional and, just as importantly, as a person. Life’s 7 PerfectCoaches Questions Keep these handy so you can refer to them often. These questions form the basis of the PerfectCoaches approach.
- Who am I?
- What do I do?
- Why do I do it?
- When do I do it best?
- Where do I want to go?
- How do I change?
- What if I could change the world?
These questions are the Perfect Coaches. The Coaches are the
questions and the questions are The Coaches. In the PerfectCoaches
method, the term The Coaches is capitalized and treated as a proper
noun, a “one-of-a-kind thing”. They are not just any coaches. They are perfect coaches. In the dictionary sense, they are entirely without flaws, defects, or shortcomings. The Coaches you imagine possess all the characteristics you would seek in a person helping you develop as a professional and, just as important, as a person. The Coaches are:
• Perfectly patient.
• Perfectly focused on the future.
• Perfectly committed to simplicity.
• Perfectly disciplined.
• Perfectly at ease with the human condition.
Because PerfectCoaches is a thought experiment limited only
by your imagination, you can take advantage of each of these
characteristics.
Perfectly Patient
Patience is perhaps the most important quality for a sport or life coach. It is particularly important in the PerfectCoaches thought experiment which can endure for a lifetime. Patience is the willingness to live with delay, a willingness to wait. Effective coaches are in it for the long haul. With PerfectCoaches, you can thrive because of the effort that you and others expend on you. Perfectly Focused on the Future The Coaches begin the journey with you looking forward, not backward. One of the most consistent and enduring themes in literature dealing with personal development or, for that matter, organizational development is that each day can be a new start. Each day can be a time for improvement or even reinvention. The Coaches agree with the old saying, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” This focus on the future means The Coaches will never judge you based on what you did last year or yesterday. There are rules and laws to obey in life and failing to do so can have negative consequences. The Coaches can’t change that, but they can help you keep setbacks or even disasters in perspective.
If you are a person who wants to be judged or believes that you
should be judged, you can give one or even all of your Coaches that
responsibility. Sometimes being judged can bring a constructive sense
of closure, as if to say, “All right, I did that. I admit it and now I can
move on.” Otherwise, in this method you will never be judged.
Perfectly Committed to Simplicity
The third source of their perfection is that The Coaches are committed
to keeping things simple. Less is more. They embrace a principle known as Occam’s razor, which favors describing or explaining a phenomenon by using the fewest possible concepts. Here, important concepts like mindfulness are used in their simplest form. Their meaning is mostly self-evident and can be explored through concrete examples. This emphasis on simplicity is at the heart of PerfectCoaches. For example, the PerfectCoaches app is built to be simple and straightforward. Whether you access it via a personal computer or mobile device, you build self-awareness quickly with a few short questions. Your journal entries should be short and simple. The questions you receive as feedback are short and thought-provoking—a trimmed-down version of a Socratic dialog.
Perfectly Disciplined
The Coaches are also perfectly disciplined. In this method, discipline
refers to staying on track to achieve a well-defined goal. Discipline
involves knowing what needs to be done and doing it. It doesn’t
mean that The Coaches are “disciplinarians” in a negative sense—
stern, unyielding or just plain mean, which the term discipline might
imply to some people. Rather, it means that they are focused on goals
Winning Habits for Work, Learning, Leadership, and Life and progress, serving as models for the self-discipline that you can
achieve. True discipline in life is self-discipline. Perfectly at Ease with the Human Condition. Finally, The Coaches are perfectly at ease with the human condition and, for that matter, the world as it is. They completely accept the idea that life is a struggle and that every human being lives imperfectly in an imperfect world. Just as The Coaches do not judge or condemn you, they do not judge or condemn the world.
Ironically, understanding that the world is imperfect and accepting
the world as it is makes it easier to envision what would happen if you
could change it. In other words, instead of pretending the world is
without its many problems, or simply wishing it was, face the world
as it presents itself in this moment and do what you to make yourself
better and, if possible, make the world around you a better place.
PerfectCoaches enables a process for making small sustainable
changes to the world just as you can make small, sustainable changes
to yourself. In fact, most modern enterprises where the skills of
leaders, salespeople, and customer service staff are valued, suggestions for change are encouraged. The PerfectCoaches journal enables not just individual excellence but enterprise performance and quality, simply by asking the question: “What if…?” PerfectCoaches is a virtuous cycle, a series of events which reinforce themselves through what is sometimes called a selfamplifying feedback loop. In a virtuous cycle, things keep getting better because each step not only brings improvement but sets the stage for further improvement. The cycle can bring benefits in individuals, teams, and organizations where they practice their profession. Everyone will interact with this book and the app according to their own preferences. Yet the process is always the same. It begins with asking questions that create self-awareness. Self-awareness, in turn, makes it easier for you to focus on specific behaviors you want to change. Finally, feedback and reinforcement create the path for continuous growth. No matter if you are writing in the Pen and Paper Workbook or using the app as you read this book, blurt out the first things that come to mind. Psychologists call this free association. By answering off the top of your head, you are less likely to consider how other people might react to your answers and more likely to say what you really think or feel. This first pass through the questions is a snapshot. You are not sitting for a portrait. Rather, you are snapping a selfie that is meant to be candid and revealing. The answers can be as short as a tweet. If you refine your answers later, they will become more precise and meaningful, but they can remain short. As you get started, particularly if you are using the PerfectCoaches app, don’t be self-conscious or allow the process to feel like hard work. You aren’t sitting down in a classroom somewhere to take a test that has right and wrong answers. You are not completing some sort of personality profile for a new job. Rather, you are taking time to learn about yourself.
Picture yourself in a pleasant place—say, a quiet park on a sunny
afternoon—talking to The Coaches. Each, in their turn, will ask you
to think about an important question. You’ll quickly jot down the first
few answers that come to mind. Getting started at all is what counts.
You’ll be able to come back as often as you like to add more.
PerfectCoaches is based on self-awareness, behavioral focus, and
feedback. You can perfect the process every day by focusing on at least
one thing you want to start, stop, or improve. Self-awareness sets the
stage for mindfulness and behavioral focus, and feedback sustains
the focus. The process works because you make it work. Perfect, i.e.,
perfecting the process, is possible.
PerfectCoach #1: Who Am I?
“Know Thyself.” – Socrates
This is perhaps life’s single most important question. Knowing the
answer helps make sense out of what otherwise would be a jumble of
disjointed experiences and feelings. Many people pose the question
to themselves but can’t quite figure out how to find the answer.
PerfectCoaches can help.
Who are you, right now, right this minute?
Don’t overthink your answer, just write down the first thoughts
that come to mind, either in the workbook or in the app, or on a pad
of paper. Your answer to this first question is your understanding of
who you are, written spontaneously in the first words that come to you. People find the self-awareness snapshot challenging if they
overthink their answers. In the initial pass through the questions, it’s
more productive and enjoyable to give quick, off-the-cuff answers.
This first question is designed to put you in touch with your core self.
Your core self is the animating force in your day-to-day life, revealed in who you are and what you do. To understand the source of your energy is a valuable insight in its own right. No matter how you answer this question, you are describing the face you glimpse in a mirror, sometimes vaguely, sometimes with great clarity. When you look into the mirror, you will see a person who can be defined in three ways: the roles you play, specific behaviors that you and others see, and private inner experiences. People often answer the question “Who Am I?” in the following order. Roles
In regular life, people introduce themselves to others by naming
socially defined categories that could be a checkbox on a questionnaire. “I am a manager,” “I am an American,” and “I am a student” are examples. Playing a “role” like manager or student ultimately involves specific behaviors, and roles are labels that group behaviors together. Simply naming the roles you play is a quick, convenient way to see the big picture of your place in life.
Behaviors
You are what you repeatedly do. To say that your self consists
of behaviors is to say that, in one sense, you are the specific skills,
activities, and habits that people who know you well, or observe
you in action, could list. “I talk fast,” “I go back to my hometown for
holidays,” “I always refer to Wikipedia,” and “I eat lunch at my desk”
are examples.
Inner Experiences
And finally, your self consists of inner experiences that are private to
you. “I enjoy working in teams,” “I’m afraid of failing math,” “I don’t
like to drive,” and “I dread seeing the quarterly results,” are examples.
Inner experiences can be thought of as behaviors. They are things
you do. What makes them different is that they are things you do that
others can’t see. They are things you are feeling and thoughts you
are having inside, and they can sometimes manifest themselves in
behavior seen by others, like the expressions on your face.
Attempting to express those experiences in words sets the stage
for improving “mind sight”, the ability to understand the thoughts and
feelings that drive behavior in both your professional and personal life.
PerfectCoach #2: What Do I Do?
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore,
is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle
Your answer to the question, “Who am I?” describes the big picture
of your core self. In PerfectCoaches, it is basically an essay that you
write about how you see yourself at a given moment. Your core self is also revealed in the small details of what you actually do. PerfectCoaches is about understanding your behaviors, activities, habits, and skills. Your capacity to develop each day by changing one behavior at a time is enhanced when you see each behavior in the context of your total self. The actions you take and the roles you fulfill are the ingredients of your life. The answer to this question is factual. If you had a camera and microphone follow you around the clock, wherever you went, it would record what you do. PerfectCoaches wants you to become aware of what you are doing, as if you were commenting on the 24×7 video. After watching yourself 24×7 for, let’s say a month, could you develop a list of the top ten things you do, either because they are important or because you do them often?
Who you are and what you do are, in many respects, flip sides
of the same coin. You can describe what you do in terms of roles
you play, specific behaviors that you and others can see, and inner
experiences. Although the app only asks you to name the five most important things you do, if you tried to list everything you do, the list would seem endless. Here is a list of possible answers to the question:
Roles
• Parent
• Sibling
• Manager
• Salesperson
• Leader
• Co-worker
• Student
Behaviors
• Study
• Conduct meetings
• Remember names and faces
• Greet people with a smile
• Attend meetings
• Spend time with family
• Work out
• Read
Inner Experiences
• Be happy
• Be sad
• Be angry
• Be amused
• Be afraid
Whether you are using the app, online tool, or a piece of paper,
three or four answers like these are fine as an initial snapshot.
PerfectCoach #3: Why Do I Do It?
“Begin everything with the end in mind.” – Stephen Covey
This is where you begin to analyze, and take the first steps toward
change. Imagine someone interviewing you and asking simply, “Why
do you do what you do?” Or, imagine an inner accountant constantly
asking, “Why are you doing that? Have you really considered the costs
and rewards associated with each thing you do?” For each of the things you do, try to identify the predominate reason you have for doing it. You may do a thing for more than one reason, but it is important that you at least understand the predominant reason, such as:
• For money
• For fame
• For fun
• To prove that you can
• To help you grow professionally
• To please your friends
• To feel like a woman or a man
• To serve your company
• To feel responsible
• To prove mindfulness counts
• To meet basic needs
Asking why you do things can help you identify actions and
behaviors that are done for no reason or the wrong reason. As will be
discussed later, this same concept in Business Process Reengineering
(BPR) is used to eliminate what are called “non-value-added”
activities. Psychologists offer theories of motivation to explain why people do things. One of the most enduring ideas is Abraham Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs. According to Maslow, the first needs you are motivated to meet involve survival, i.e., physiological requirements for food, water, and comfort and the need for safety and security.
Next come social needs for intimacy, friendship, prestige, and a sense
of accomplishment. Once physiological and social needs are met, the
need to fulfill one’s highest potential, the need for self-actualization,
becomes your primary motivator. Your inner accountant might want to draw upon this idea and ask if basic needs, social needs, or the more complex need for selfactualization explain why you do each thing you do. PerfectCoach #4: When Do I Do It Best?
“Always do your best. What you plant now
you will harvest later.” – Og Mandino
Each of us can develop an inner craftsman, always asking if this is the
best work you can do. To excel at the things you do, it pays to know
when you do them best. The question doesn’t refer to the time of day,
but rather the conditions under which you do a thing best. There are
a lot of ways to identify when you do something best. Here are a few:
• When I am eager to do it
• When I want to get it over with
• In the morning
• In the evening
• Before eating
• After eating
• With other people
• By myself
• Right at the deadline
• When I have practiced
The concept of doing something “best” implies that your behavior
has been evaluated. In social psychology, the concept of the looking glass self says that we see ourselves through the mirror of how we think others see us. When we evaluate how well we do, we are to some extent using other people’s standards. This begins when parents and caretakers correct us or praise us as children. In professional life, you are in fact being evaluated by others. As will be discussed later, this feedback is important. PerfectCoaches invites you to be mindful of the standards used by others, but to also set your own standards. These may be the same standards other people apply, but they do not have to be. You decide on the standards and it is up to you to apply them. Change One Thing Now
Jane, the always tardy lawyer, wants to change but doesn’t
know how. This simple exercise can make all the difference
for her (and anyone else who wants to change one behavior
right now). Ask yourself:
“Why do I want to be punctual?”
(Change that to tidy, or organized, or whatever you want
to change).
Then list the moments when you do this best. Are there
circumstances and behavioral cues that help you arrive on
time and finish assignments on time? How can you use this
information to better meet every deadline and appointment?
