I’m a big believer in continuous improvement and personal growth. But how do you know if you are actually making progress in your life and becoming better? Are you moving towards your goals or are you full of self-delusion that keeps you at bay?

I can tell you from personal experience, that we can be dishonest with ourselves. It may seem like you are actually moving forward by reading books, talking to your friends about your goals, and making up strange tasks that you need to do before you actually do what you need to do. You might tell yourself, I “If I knew this or that, or had this amazing experience, then I would be ready and able to do it. But there is never going to be a perfect moment! It’s always going to be a moving target and we need to start acting toward, and working on, our goals. Bottom line – we need more doing, something that will actually move us towards the goal.

We need to make mistakes in order to learn. But we cannot fail by being safe and not putting ourselves out there. Hence we grow by doing and learning from being foolish.

At this moment I feel like I need to make mistakes and learn from them. I want to challenge myself and accomplish my goals. That is why I’ve decided to try personal coaching. Here are a few things that a good coach should be able to help you with:

Outside Opinion

Your coach is not your friend, she doesn’t know who you are and she is not going to accept your excuses or be nice to you. She will only look at the results that are being produced rather than excuses, and keep you accountable. In addition, she can provide an unbiased opinion about how honest you are being with yourself.

Keep you accountable

It’s one thing to make a promise to yourself that you are not going to keep, but making a commitment about your goals to another person who you respect, will make you work harder.

Your best interests

Your coach’s motivation is to help you succeed with your goals. Her interests are aligned with your best interests. She is there to support you and move you along the path to your goals. We all want the best for ourselves, but we are also very easy on ourselves at times, which does not produce results.

Work out psychological issues

A lot of times the problems that we experience are only in our heads, and fear of failure stops us before we can continue to grow. An experienced coach should be very good at helping you to work out those issues.

Deliberate practice

Just like in sports, a coach will make you do drills that will help you when it’s show time. In addition, she will help you measure your performance.

Getting clear on your goals

Starting from the end result, a coach should be able to help you work out what the most important thing in your life is. Are you chasing someone else’s dreams, or is this something you truly want for yourself?

Enjoy your life now

Goals are great, but if you are not enjoying what you are doing, what is the point of living? A coach can, at times, also remind you to have fun and live in the present if she notices that you are getting burned out.

I’m looking forward to working with a coach and putting myself in a higher gear on the road of greater fulfillment and personal growth.