The Mirror Exercise - How to Be Your Own Coach
I got some amazing insights and advice from an exercise we did in a recent coaching intensive.
Bear with me – this isn’t just for coaches! This is for everyone, and I think you’ll get a lot out of this.
The exercise we did is called the mirror exercise (you’ll see why later). I wrote about a similar topic in a previous article.
In this exercise, a group of five people were coached by the leader of the intensive. Each of the people in the group being coached and the audience as well, was asked to listen carefully during the coaching and take note of how they would advise or coach each person. After the coaching was complete, we all wrote one sentence of advice in the chat to each of the coachees.
This was very powerful for the person being coached because they got a lot of excellent, thoughtful, and varied input and lots of support.
But the real exercise came from turning that advice back on myself.
That’s the mirror part.
The thing is, we don’t see the world as other people see it - only as we see it. When we give input to others, when we listen carefully to them and provide advice or coaching, we’re doing that from within our own context, from how we see the world and who we’re being in the world in that moment. While the coaching may be super useful to the coachee, it is also a reflection of ourselves.
All that advice, then, is very relevant to our own life and whatever we’re struggling with at the moment.
Here’s the advice I got for myself:
David:
You’ve got this. You already know what to do.
Embrace the “normal” life as your grounding, then find adventure in everything you do.
Your giant, impossible, and inspiring dream is the thing you need to do now. Start it now!
Slow down. Schedule vacations and time off NOW. Stop people-pleasing with your clients.
There is no f-ing threshold to get over. There’s no barrier other than what you’ve created. There’s no “chrysalis” you’re about to be born from. Those are all made up stories getting in the way of your growth and path forward.
Whoa 🤯
Every one of those meant something to me and I’m still taking on that advice and coaching.
See how this works in your own life:
Do you have a judgement about someone?
Would you like to give some advice to someone close to you?
How would you coach that co-worker with that thing they’re struggling with?
Wouldn’t your boss/wife/husband/mom/dad/brother/sister/etc. be so much better if they would only…?
Now look in the mirror and take all of that wisdom you want to give to other people and all those complaints you have about other people and see how it applies it to your own life.
Hints
Complaints may reflect things you don’t like about yourself or things you worry others might think about you.
Advice is wisdom that we need to hear ourselves.
Relevant Side Story
My wife and I were at a meditation retreat once and there was a new teacher we hadn’t been with before. My wife got upset with some of the things the teacher was doing and saying and started writing a letter. This was a silent retreat, and even though we were sharing a bedroom, I could not talk to her about what was going on, so I didn’t know what the letter was about.
I realized after she’d been writing for about two days that either I was in big trouble for something or she was upset with the teacher. Fortunately, it was the latter.
On the third morning, she said quietly to me, “Can I ask you about something?”
I said, “If you’re writing that letter to <teacher>, that letter isn’t for them, it’s for you.”
The letter was her mirror exercise.
End of conversation.
