So we're now on day four of the Squiggly Career Skill Sprint, and today's skill is all about

coaching yourself. And this is a really important skill for your squiggly career. I think regular

listeners will know that because we've got a book called you, coach you, this is something we really

care about. But we're going to give you the super short summary so you can take action with

this skill today. So what is coaching yourself

all about and why does it matter? It's really about increasing your self-awareness so you understand

a bit more about why you might be feeling or responding a certain way to a situation,

but it's also about taking action. It's the awareness and the action that coaching yourself

results in. And when you are able to

coach yourself, one of the really helpful things is that it reduces your dependency on other people

for your development. So I don't always have to go to Sarah for her advice about what I should do in my

career. And it's not that you can't go and get some of that support. Of course, that is really

useful. But often it's better if you start with yourself first because then you get through hard times quicker

and the actions that you take are more likely to be effective because you've generated them so I feel

like it's like a bit of a super skill in a squiggly career when we crack this one yeah and I don't think we

are suggesting that this replaces career conversations.

I think what we find from our learners and the feedback we get from our community is if you learn

to coach yourself, you sort of get halfway there and then you almost use a career conversation

in a more useful way to fill in the gaps or when you get stuck.

And I think people don't give themselves enough credit that everyone can learn to have this

coaching capability. I think people feel like, oh, no, this is too hard or I'm not a qualified

coach and he's gone to talk to someone else. But actually, when you start to learn these

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