#364 Making Effective Use of a Coach as External Storage for Thinking

I'm Fukui, a stay-at-home dad and manager.

On this channel, I share insights related to parenting, talent development, and management, drawing from my 10 years of experience working at an educational NPO after graduation, and my current life as a single father raising my 5-year-old and 2-year-old children while my wife is working away from home.

Today, I'll be talking about the theme of Making Effective Use of a Coach as External Storage for Thinking .

I've returned safely from my business trip to Tokyo, but I packed my schedule too tightly and haven't quite recovered my energy, so I'm trying to make up for it by getting a bit more sleep.

◯ Monthly Coaching Today

I had my monthly coaching session today.

Until now, I've been consciously practicing self-reflection by using daily communication gaps as subject matter to ask myself what I could have done better. However, over the past month, it feels like I've suddenly gained a reliable helper, and because I can think, 'I don't know, let me ask this person!' , the hurdle for putting things on hold has lowered, and I've become able to think, 'I'll ask about this next time,' with ease.

I feel like this is a small but significant change.

Up until now, I was desperate to find solutions by myself—reading books, watching videos, and taking training courses—trying to input my way to an answer. If I don't put things on hold, I can't dedicate my own resources to input, so I end up putting them on hold anyway, but I've realized that putting things on hold is easier said than done.

It feels like I'm just quietly putting a lid on things while they're still fuzzy, which feels a bit like running away, and I still feel a bit reluctant about it. It's pretty macho, isn't it? (laughs)

◯ The Benefits of Being Able to 'Forget' for a While

By being able to think, 'Okay, I'll ask about this next time,' it's almost like I've gotten closer to managing a task list; if I set a date and time to 'ask about this next time' as a task, I can, in a sense, forget about it until that day.

By taking a little space like that, I can face my own thoughts and habits, and I've also started to think more from the perspective of, 'How would a coach think about this? What would they say?' , so I feel like the thoughts inside me are circulating better than before without stagnating.

To put it another way, it's the feeling that 'the humidity in my brain has dropped, and the ventilation in my head has improved.' .

By reducing the amount of worries and fuzziness I carry around by myself, it feels like the workbench for thinking in my brain has been tidied up, and in a sense, with the addition of a coach as external storage, it feels like my workbench has doubled in size, and I feel like my efficiency has increased as well.

I'm sure there are people who wonder if coaching is really any good, but rather than the quality of coaching itself, I personally think it has a lot to do with the compatibility with the coach.

◯ Anything Can Happen

'Anything can happen.'

After being taught those words, I realized how much I had been 'bringing expectations' into my daily life with my children.

'The gap between the ideal and reality that comes from expectations I brought in on my own' —it was a moment where I realized once again how much I was being swayed by that.

I think self-control is ultimately a lifelong challenge for everyone, and I was reminded once again that I want to grow while living alongside the children, sharing with them that I am also still a work in progress.

With that said, today I delivered this episode under the theme of “Effectively Utilizing a Coach as External Storage for Your Thinking”.

Thank you for staying with me until the end.

Have a wonderful day!

See you next time.