Personal Coaching.

So a former student of mine has become a Life Coach, something I did not know existed before she told me about it. Basically, she will coach someone on whatever aspect of their life they want. Her coaching, she told me, largely takes the form of helping people to formulate their own goals and strategies and solutions, rather than telling them what to do. My guess was that she would be a great coach, because in addition to being a thoughtful person she was a collegiate rower, and so she has had her fair share of coaching in her own life, not to mention her own share of motivation and determination.

Because she needs some volunteer hours in order to be certified, I agreed to be one of her "coachees." So starting today, she is helping me with:
1. Keeping my motivation up to get back in shape and get ready to get back to swimming;
2. Work on keeping my work and my life in better balance; and
3. Nipping my Solitaire addiction.

We started out today with #1, which I knew would be a sort of softball for her, given her own background and experience, but which I knew I really needed if I am going to stay optimistic once I get back in the pool but cannot really swim yet. We determined that motivation to get to the gym was something I lacked, and so my strategies on that front are setting goals for the number of days/week that I will go to the gym and the pool and then also writing down every workout. These are things I have done before, but what really struck me when she said it was that writing workouts down will keep my focus on what I have accomplished. Obvious, in a way, but given how distracted I have been by how far back I am from where I was a year or two ago, and by how much I still have to do to be able to swim, I really needed to hear it.

Now let's see if I can remember it.