Self-Love Journaling for Coaches & Clients by Lynda Monk, MSW, RSW, CPCC

Originally Posted on The Coaching Tools Company as Self-Love Journaling for Coaches & Clients by Lynda Monk, MSW, RSW, CPCC

Since starting coaching in 2007, I have worked with many individuals, groups, teams, and organizations. Over this time, my coaching has predominantly been in the areas of burnout prevention, self-care, and resilience for helpers, healers and leaders, as well as journal coaching for wellness and personal growth.

In this work, I have grown to appreciate that in some ways, as coaches, we help our clients and ourselves, tune into what it truly means to practice self-love. I believe self-love is at the heart of our leadership, our wellness, our efficacy, our confidence, our joy, our fulfillment, and our positive service in the world. And yet, it can feel a bit illusive. What is this thing we call self-love? and why does it matter in our coaching and in our lives?

What is Self-Love, really?

Self-love is the practice of caring for yourself in ways that nourish your well-being, self-compassion, and personal growth. Self-love is the fuel for living a life that honours your core values, needs, desires, feelings, and what matters most to you.

Why does Self-Love take effort and commitment?

Self-love has a nice ring to it, who doesn’t want to experience self-love? While there are some people who equate this with being self-absorbed, or egotistic or narcissistic, this is not the case. Genuine self-love is simply the way we afford ourselves the kindness, love and care we might show someone we truly love and value.

What’s true is, it is often more common for individuals to experience self-doubts, regrets, self-neglect, self-loathing, to not feel good enough, or feel lacking or flawed in some fundamental ways. It is common for people to experience self-neglect and low self-esteem or self-worth. Even talented, intelligent, very capable and kind people can feel this way about themselves!  One’s inner voice can be critical, pushy, and demanding. This inner critic voice can make self-love hard earned for many people!

Like any great love, self-love requires devotion, care and tending. It takes showing up to do the work to love ourselves. As coaches, we do this work for ourselves and we help our clients do it too, directly and indirectly. It might just be our greatest work of all.

What might Self-Love sound like in a coaching session?

Scenario 1:

Maybe you are supporting a client to work on and reach an important goal they have. Your client shows up to every coaching session with all the reasons they have not been able to take-action towards their goal, as intended, since their last coaching session. It is easy to start exploring this inaction from a time management point of view, or priority setting perspective.

But what if it was explored through the lens of self-love?  What might that sound like and look like in the coaching?

Scenario 2:

Imagine you are working with a leader who is suffering from professional burnout. She is exhausted, works long hours, and is often overextended. Your client is bright and hardworking and very devoted to her leadership role, her workplace, and her staff. She comes to her coaching session feeling very anxious and wondering if she can keep pressing on in her work the way she’s currently feeling. She wonders if she should quit her job. You might start exploring this issue from a pros and cons point of view.

But what if you directed the coaching towards the topic of self-care and self-love (regardless of whether she has this job or a different one)? What might that sound like and look like in the coaching?

How could journal coaching be used to help in these scenarios?

What is journal coaching?

Journal coaching is the practice of guiding individuals to utilize transformational journaling to increase self-awareness and to take inspired action towards their goals.

Journaling is a key practice that can help coaches and clients cultivate deeper self-love through regular self-reflection and self-expression. Research shows that personal expressive writing, where you write about your thoughts and feelings, has proven health and personal growth benefits (for example, see the research of Dr. James Pennebaker on Writing to Heal).

Journal writing helps us expand our self-awareness and come into positive and affirming relationship with ourselves. This sounds easy, but I believe, it is actually very big work to practice self-love in a consistent way in our lives. It is also brave work to write our lives and stories down in the pages of a journal. To be willing to know, grow and care for ourselves through journaling is a self-loving act!

Journal coaching is the intentional use of journaling to help support growth and change for our clients.

Back to our coaching scenarios…

What are some journal writing prompts we could offer to our client, along with the invitation to pause and write directly in the coaching session, that might help nourish self-love and new insights?

Scenario 1 Journal Prompts:

As the coach, you might say:

I know you really want to achieve your goal and I also hear that it’s hard to take action towards this goal in your life, that there are lots of things that get in the way.  I’m wondering if you would like to take a few moments to journal and use these writing prompts to help get you started:

1. What do you really think gets in your way of taking-action on your goal? Without judgement and with self-love having a voice here, what comes to mind on this?
2. What do you know to be true?

Take 3 minutes and simply write whatever ideas come.

Scenario 2 Journal Prompts:

I can hear that you are feeling burnt out and exhausted. You are wondering whether to stay in your current job. That is a big decision to make, especially when you’re feeling so depleted at this time.  I would like to invite you to take a couple of minutes to journal, to tune into your wise inner voice. You can use these journaling prompts to help get you started:

1. What do you know you need right now to help you replenish and begin to address this burnout you are experiencing?
2. What is the most self-loving thing you can do right now?

While your client is journaling and reflecting directly in your coaching session, you simply keep time and sit quietly and hold the space while they write.

After the journaling, pause and debrief with the client. You might ask questions like..

1. What was it like to do that writing?
2. What new insights did you gain from your reflections?
3. What is standing out to you?
4. Is there something that feels important to explore next in our coaching session?

There is no need to ask the client to share what they wrote but they are welcome to if they would like to do that. What’s most important is taking time to reflect on what they got out of the journaling. To integrate the new insights, ideas, emotions, shifts, and the like, and to then transition into what actions your client might like to take based on these insights.

Here are some other self-love journaling prompts that you can have in your coach’s toolkit:

1. What does self-love mean to you and how do you want to nurture it?
2. What are three things you love (value, appreciate) about yourself today?
3. What would your most compassionate self say to you to right now?
4. How can you be kinder and gentler with yourself when you make mistakes or let yourself down?
5. What is one act of self-care you can commit to today?
6. What does self-love feel like in your body, mind, and spirit?

Wrap-Up

I have been an avid journal writer for decades. Over time, journaling has become my trusted personal growth and self-care practice and through the years it has evolved into a key tool and process in my coaching work with individuals and groups. I am passionate about the healing and transformational power of journaling. This passion led me and my colleague, Eric Maisel, to co-create a training program called The Art of Journal Coaching. We get to witness others deepen their self-love as coaches, while helping their clients do the same, through this intentional and deep self-reflective practice of going to the page.

I hope this article inspires you to consider how you can bring journaling and the focus of self-love into your own coaching work with others. The world needs our self-love, it is a beacon of light for these complex times we are living and coaching in.

As fellow coach and author, Tama Kieves wrote…

When I eat blueberries, take a hot bath, journal, sleep, or read a novel, I am awakening the love within me. Where there is love, fear can’t survive. Where there is love, there is the remembrance of bright abilities. The more I love myself, the more love I stream into my life.

Here’s to the steady stream of love pouring into us, our coaching and our world!

 

If you enjoyed this article, you may also like:

• Journaling for Self-Care: 4 Tips to Create a Life-Changing Routine by Lynda Monk MSW, RSW, CPCC
• The Scientific Benefits of Journaling for Your Brain! by Dr. Irena O’Brien
• INFOGRAPHIC: How & Why to Get Journaling!
• Journaling as a Transformational Coaching Tool (How to with 5 Keys to Success) by Lynda Monk