Boost Your Self-Esteem with Micro-Actions!

I will write about my thoughts on how far to chunk down actions when deciding on them at the end of a coaching session.

1. What is an action in coaching?

Since the majority of people receive coaching with the goal of "transforming their behavior," to bring about that change, we decide on "actions that can be done tomorrow or from next week onwards" in the latter half of the session and have them commit to them.

The intention is that the accumulation of these actions becomes a habit, and by bundling several habits together, change occurs, is felt, and as it accumulates over time, it becomes the driving force for achieving goals.

To start with the conclusion, I tend to keep asking questions so that this action setting becomes as small and as reliably achievable as possible. I will write about the reasons for this from several perspectives.

2. Starting habituation with micro-actions

One of the points for being able to start habituation, or for taking root, is to "make the action for habituation as small as possible." I make the action so small that one might think, "Doing such a small step is completely meaningless." At the same time, I set the start date (when to do it) as close as possible, for example, today or tomorrow.

The reason for this is that I imagine that the "moment you decide to do it" is when motivation is highest, and after that, motivation gradually decreases. The world is full of examples where what you thought you would "do" today becomes "oh well" by tomorrow. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why few people can put things into practice even after reading a book or taking a training course and feeling "Alright, I'll do it!"

Therefore, by setting a task at an easy level that is far below the motivation that decreases over time, I ensure the possibility of execution.

• Let's jog 3km a day → Let's start with 300m a day

• I have to clean up my room! → For now, please try doing it for 3 minutes

• I have to save 20,000 yen a month → Why not start with 2,000 yen a month?

In a coaching session, it ends at the point of deciding on the action, so it ends here. If it is a sufficiently small action, I will part ways with you for the time being, thinking that you will probably execute it after receiving coaching.

3. Nurturing habits with care

Therefore, from here on, it is about how to gradually grow the "small action" into a habit. In a sense, this is the part that connects the domain handled by coaching with the individual efforts in daily life.

First, for the first unit of habituation (for example, if the goal is to jog every day, the first day), once the small goal decided at the beginning is achieved, stop there, no matter how much energy you have left. At that time, if you feel unsatisfied, you may extend the goal a little the next day, but never be greedy. Stretch it just enough that you might think, "Isn't it meaningless to add just this much?"

Gradually extend it the next day, and the day after that. Repeat it until you feel uncomfortable if you don't do what you can do. Once you reach this stage, I think it will gradually become fun to gradually extend your goals while completing tasks every day.

And eventually, you will see a point where "even if I extend the goal further than this, it will be a strain." Once that happens, maintain that state and let the habit take root.

4. The accumulation of self-esteem helps with habituation

One of the purposes for which we receive coaching is to "set higher goals than now and move toward them," and to obtain a version of ourselves that is in a better state than now. To do that, we want to make our actions a habit and obtain a version of ourselves that has increased self-esteem.

On the other hand, in coaching aimed at achieving such results, setting overly broad action plans can actually make it harder to take action, leading to a situation where coaching itself creates a state where habits cannot be sustained and self-esteem cannot be raised.

Since habit formation and self-esteem are closely related, perhaps the actions set in coaching should not be strictly selected from various options, but rather something like 'let's just do this for now' should be chosen, while carefully designing it to ensure it can be executed reliably, which might result in a better outcome.

Summary

I wrote this article in the order of how to set small actions in coaching, how to turn actions into habits after a session, and the accumulation of self-esteem from there. The study of habits is profound, and this article only touches on a very small part of it, but I hope it will be useful as I intended to write one of the essences from various habit books.