Coach’s Corner: Kevin’s Journal

As a rule, I require my clients to journal daily in an online journal. As soon as they journal, I receive their posts in my inbox so that I can read and respond with a comment intended to help the clients go deeper in their self-reflection. This is a critical component of the Frame of Mind Coaching Model, which focuses on mindset management and leans on the journaling process to extract valuable data.

I usually provide a journaling prompt to help clients get started. Sometimes at the tail end of a coaching conversation, I add a little homework to their journaling agenda. On this one occasion, I asked the client to journal about what makes him feel “yucky” throughout the week—we had just begun coaching together. My intention was to try to get an accurate picture of his emotional triggers and begin to understand how his beliefs affect his life experiences. Below is an excerpt from his journal.

“Yuckiness—doing other stuff on the internet. ‘Other stuff’ being anything unrelated to work. That's when I feel yucky. My guilt and drive pulls me away from it, so it’s never for long periods of time, but when I feel like I’m not producing value and wasting time, I feel concerned. Those also are the moments when I tend to notice other stuff going on because I'm not wrapped up in my own work. But I’m pretty good about controlling it, and I don’t spend a lot of time during the day not concentrating.

I don't like getting on the subway. I say that a lot to a lot of people, but that's the moment when I feel yuckiest during the day. I don't like how everyone on the subway dislikes everyone else on the subway and how no one's subway etiquette matches—it makes for a really dread-building commute, and I wish I didn’t have to start my days that way. Maybe all we really want is more sun, and we just don't know it.”

Place yourself in the role of this client’s coach. How would you respond to this journal? What would you say? What further information would you want to know? Is there a connection between the description of his discomfort wasting time and his yucky subway experiences? What would you say to learn more about this client?

Use the comment space below to provide a mock response to the client.